The ancient Persians, who occupied the lands west to the Indus River called the whole country

lying across the Indus River Sindh and its inhabitants Sindhus, a designation that was later taken over by the Greeks who succeeded them and resulted in the now commonly used designations of India and Indians. The uslims, who began invading India from the eighth century onward, used the term !indu as a generic designation for non" uslim Indians, identical with #idol worshipers.$ In the %&'(s )nglishmen, writing about the religions of India, added "ism to !indu and coined the term !induism, making an abstract and generic entity out of the many diverse and specific traditions of the !indus. *hile !indus have appropriated the designation !indu and use it today to identify themselves over against uslims or +hristians, they have e,pressed reservations with regard to the designation of !induism as the #religion of the !indus.$ !indus emphasi-e that the !indu dharma is more comprehensive than the *estern term religion. it designates an entire cultural tradition rather than only a set of beliefs and rituals. The /edas, the oldest literary monument and a collection of hymns composed in an archaic Sanskrit, are universally considered the foundational scriptures of !induism. The authors of these hymns called themselves 0ryans, #1oble People.$ The date of the composition of these hymns and the original habitat of the 0ryans has become one of the most contested issues in Indian studies. The polemical literature has reached such dimensions and the emotions have been raised to such heights that only a sketch of the controversy and some hints about its ideological background is known. 0round %&2( a group of )uropean Sanskritists suggested that the best e,planation for the many common features of what later were called the Indo")uropean languages was the assumption of an invasion of a band of 0ryan warriors, who till then had been living somewhere between +entral 0sia and *estern )urope, into India. The igveda, the oldest Sanskrit source, describe the battles, which the 0ryas, under their leader Indra, fought against the 3asyus, whose land they occupied. aking the self" designation arya 4noble5 a racial attribute of the putative invaders, every te,tbook on Indian history began with the #0ryan invasion$ of northwestern India, the struggle between the #fair"skinned, blonde, blue"eyed, sharp"nosed 0ryans on horse chariots$ against the #black"skinned, snub"nosed indigenous Indians.$ This putative #0ryan invasion$ was dated ca. %6(( bce, and the composition of the hymns of the igveda was fi,ed between %7(( and %8(( bce. The 0ryan invasion theory was conceived on pure speculation on the basis of comparative philology, without any archaeological or literary evidence to support it. It was resisted as unfounded by some scholars from the very beginning. This putative #0ryan invasion$ was dated ca. %6(( bce, and the composition of the hymns of the igveda was fi,ed between %7(( and %8(( bce. The 0ryan invasion theory was conceived on pure speculation on the basis of comparative philology, without any archaeological or literary evidence to support it. It was resisted as unfounded by some scholars from the very beginning. )ighteenth and nineteenth"century )uropean attempts to e,plain the presence of !indus

in India with the commonly held biblical belief that humankind originated from one pair of humans " 0dam and )ve. *ith regard to India this problem was addressed by the famous 0bbe 3ubois 4%99(:%&7&5, whose long so;ourn in India 4%9<8"%&8'5 enabled him to collect a large amount of interesting materials concerning the customs and traditions of the !indus. 0ddressing the origins of the Indian people, 0bbe 3ubois, loath #to oppose =his> con;ectures to =the Indians?> absurd fables,$ categorically stated. #It is practically admitted that India was inhabited very soon after the 3eluge, which made a desert of the whole world. The fact that it was so close to the plains of Sennaar, where 1oah?s descendants remained stationary so long, as well as its good climate and the fertility of the country, soon led to its settlement.$ Re;ecting other scholars? opinions that linked the Indians to )gyptian or 0rabic origins, he ventured to suggest them #to be descendants not of Shem, as many argue, but of @aphet.$ !e e,plains. #0ccording to my theory they reached India from the north, and I should place the first abode of their ancestors in the neighbourhood of the +aucasus.$ The reasons he provides to prove his theory are utterly unconvincingAbut he goes on to build the rest of his #migration theory$ 4not yet an 0ryan invasion theory5 on this shaky foundation. *hen the affinity between many )uropean languages and Sanskrit became a commonly accepted notion, scholars almost automatically concluded that the Sanskrit"speaking ancestors of the present"day Indians had to be found somewhere halfway between India and the western borders of )urope from where they invaded the Pun;ab. *hen the ruins of ohen;o 3aro and !arappa were discovered in the early twentieth century, it was assumed that these were the cities the 0ryan invaders destroyed. In the absence of reliable evidence, they postulated a time frame for Indian history on the basis of con;ectures. +onsidering the traditional dates for the life of Gautama, the Buddha, as fairly well established in the si,th century bce, supposedly pre"Buddhist Indian records were placed in a seCuence that seemed plausible to philologists. 0ccepting on linguistic grounds the traditional claims that the igveda was the oldest Indian literary document, a, Dller, a greatly respected authority in /eda studies, allowing a time span of two hundred years each for the formation of every class of /edic literature and assuming that the /edic period had come to an end by the time of the Buddha, established the following seCuence that was widely accepted. gveda, ca. %8(( bce " Ea;urveda, Samaveda, 0tharvaveda, ca. %((( bce " Brahmaas, ca. &(( bce "Frayakas, Gpaniads, ca. 2(( bce Hn the other side, there were references to constellations in /edic works whose time frame could be reestablished by commonly accepted astronomical calculations. The dates arrived at, however, 76(( bce for one observation in the igveda, '8(( bce for a date in the Iatapatha BrJhmaa, seemed far too remote to be acceptable, especially if one assumed, as many nineteenth"century scholars did, that the world was only about si, thousand years old and that the flood had taken place only 76(( years ago. Hne would e,pect the proponents of an event to provide proof for its happening rather than demanding proofs for a non"event. The controversy about the 0ryan invasion of India has become so bi-arre that its proponents simply assume it to have taken place and

demand that its opponents offer arguments that it had not taken place. In the following a number of reasons will be adduced to attest to the fact that the 0ryan invasion of India assumed by the invasionists to have taken place around %6(( bce " did not take place. The supposed large"scale migrations of 0ryan people in the second millennium bce first into western 0sia and then into northern India 4by %6(( bce5 cannot be maintained in view of the established fact that the !ittites were in 0natolia already by 88(( bce and the Kassites and itanni had kings and dynasties by %2(( bce. There is no hint of an invasion or of large"scale migration in the records of ancient India. neither in the /edas, in Buddhist or @ain writings, nor in Tamil literature. There is a striking cultural continuity between the archaeological artifacts of the Indus" Sarasvati civili-ation and later phases of Indian culture. a continuity of religious ideas, arts, crafts, architecture, and system of weights and measures. The archaeological finds of ehrgarh dated ca. 96(( bce 4copper, cattle, barley5 reveal a culture similar to that of the /edic Indians. +ontrary to former interpretations, the igveda reflects not a nomadic but an urban culture. The racial diversity found in skeletons in the cities of the Indus civili-ation is the same as in today?s IndiaL there is no evidence of the coming of a new race. The Rigveda describes a river system in 1orth India that is pre"%<(( bce in the case of the SarasvatM River and pre"82(( bce in the case of the 3advati River. /edic literature shows a population shift from the Sarasvati 4igveda5 to the Ganges 4Brahmaas and Puraas5 for which there is also evidence in archaeological find There is continuity in the morphology of scripts. !arappan : Brahmi " 3evanagari. The PurJic dynastic lists, with over %8( kings in one /edic dynasty alone, date back to the third millennium bce. Greek accounts tell of Indian royal lists going back to the seventh millennium bce.The igveda shows an advanced and sophisticated culture, the product of a long development, #a civili-ation that could not have been delivered to India on horseback. The astronomical references in the igveda are based on a Pleiades"Kttika calendar of ca. 86(( bce. /edic astronomy and mathematics were well"developed sciences. these are not features of the culture of a nomadic people. The Sarasvati is freCuently praised as the mightiest of all rivers, as giving nourishment to the people and, uniCue among them, flowing pure from the mountains to the ocean. It is the most often mentioned river in the igveda " and it no longer e,ists. Its absence led to the suggestion that it might have been a symbolic rather than a real river, an idea supported by the later identification of Sarasvati with the Goddess of *isdom and Nearning. ore recent geological investigations have helped to reconstruct the ancient riverbed of the SarasvatM and also established that it had dried out completely by %<(( bce due to tectonic shifts. Hf the 8,2(( archaeological sites so far discovered that were connected with the Indus civili-ation, over %,6(( were found located on the Sarasvati River basin, including settlements larger than Indus sites of ohen;o 3aro and !arappa. It is hardly meaningful to assume that the invading /edic 0ryans established thousands of settlements on its banks four centuries after the Sarasvati had dried out. *hen the first remnants of the ruins of Indus civili-ation came to light in the %<8(s, the proponents of the 0ryan invasion theory believed to have found the missing

archaeological evidence " here were the #great cities$ that Indra of the igveda conCuered and destroyed. But no evidence of wars came to light. 0rchaeo"geographers established that a drought lasting two to three hundred years devastated a wide belt of land from 0natolia through esopotamia to northern India around 8'(( bce to 8((( bce. Based on this type of evidence and e,trapolating from the /edic te,ts, a new theory of the origins of !induism is emerging. This new theory considers the Indus valley civili-ation as a late /edic phenomenon and pushes the 4inner Indian5 beginnings of the /edic age back by several thousands of years. Instead of speaking of an Indus /alley civili-ation the term Sarasvati"Sindhu civili-ation has been introduced, to designate the far larger e,tent of that ancient culture. Hne of the reasons for considering the Indus civili-ation #/edic$ is the evidence of town planning and architectural design that reCuired a fairly advanced algebraic geometry " of the type preserved in the /edic Iulvasutras. *hile the igveda has always been held to be the oldest literary document of India and was considered to have preserved the oldest form of Sanskrit, Indians have not taken it to be the source for their early history. Itihasa" Puraa served that purpose. The language of these works is more recent than that of the /edas. !owever, they contain detailed information about ancient events and personalities that form part of Indian history. *e cannot read ItihJsa"PurJa as a modern te,tbook of Indian history but rather as a storybook containing information, facts and fiction. Indians, however, always took genealogies seriously, and we can presume that the Puraic lists of dynasties, like the lists of guru"paramparJs in the Gpaniads, relate the names of real rulers in the correct seCuence.Hn these assumptions we can tentatively reconstruct Indian history to a time around 76(( bce. G. P. Singh defends the historical accuracy of the PurJic dynastic lists and calls the PurJas #one of the most important traditions of historiography in ancient India.$ These lists he says #disprove the opinion that the ancient Indians 4mainly the !indus5 had no sense of history and chronology.$ 0 key element in the revision of ancient Indian history was the recent discovery of ehrgarh, a settlement in the !indukush area, that was inhabited for several thousand years from ca. 9((( bce onward. This discovery has e,tended Indian history for thousands of years before Indus civili-ation. +ivili-ations, both ancient and contemporary, comprise more than literature. It cannot be assumed that the /edic 0ryans, who have left a large literature that has been preserved till now, did not have any material culture that would have left visible traces. The only basis on which Indologists in the nineteenth century established their views of /edic culture and religion were the te,ts that they translated from 0ncient Sanskrit. The admission of some of the top scholars 4like Geldner, who in his translation of the igveda " deemed the best so far " declares many passages #darker than the darkest oracle,$5 of being unable to make sense of a great many /edic te,tsAand the refusal of most to go beyond a grammatical and etymological analysis of these " indicates a deeper problem. The ancient Indians were not only poets and literateurs, but they also had their practical sciences and their technical skills, their secrets and their conventions that are not self"evident. Some progress has been made in deciphering technical Indian medical and astronomical

literature of a later age, in reading architectural and arts"related materials. !owever, much of the technical meaning of the oldest /edic literature still eludes us. It would be enormously helpful in the Cuestion of the relation between the igveda and the Indus civili-ation if we could read the literary remnants of the latter. In spite of many claims made by many scholars who laboured for decades on the decipherment of the signs, nobody has so far been able to read or translate these signs. +omputer scientist Subhash Kak believes to have rediscovered the #/edic +ode,$ on the strength of which he e,tracts from the structure as well as the words and sentences of the igveda considerable astronomical information that its authors supposedly embedded in it. The assumption of such encoded scientific knowledge would make it understandable why there was such insistence on the preservation of every letter of the te,t in precisely the seCuence the original author had set down. Hne can take certain liberties with a story, or even a poem " transposing lines, adding e,planatory matter " and still communicate the ideas of the author. !owever, one has to remember and reproduce a scientific formula in precisely the same way it has been set down by the scientist, or it would not make sense at all. *hile the scientific community can arbitrarily adopt certain letter eCuivalents for physical units or processes, once it has agreed on their use, one must obey the conventions for the sake of meaningful communication. )ven a nonspecialist reader of ancient Indian literature will notice the effort made to link macrocosm and microcosm, astronomical and physiological processes, to find correspondences between the various realms of beings and to order the universe by establishing broad classifications. /edic sacrifices " the central act of /edic culture " were to be offered on precisely built, geometrically constructed altars and to be performed at astronomically e,actly established times. It sounds plausible to e,pect a correlation between the numbers of bricks prescribed for a particular altar and the distances between stars observed whose movement determined the time of the offerings to be made. Subhash Kak has advanced a great deal of fascinating detail in that connection in his essays on the astronomy of the /edic altar. !e believes that while the /edic Indians possessed e,tensive astronomical knowledge that they encoded in the te,t of the igveda, the code was lost in later times and the /edic tradition was interrupted. Based on the early dating of the igveda 4ca. 7((( bce5 and on the strength of the argument that /edic astronomy and geometry predates that of the other known ancient civili-ations, some scholars have made the daring suggestion that India was the #cradle of civili-ation.$ They link the recently discovered early )uropean civili-ation 4which predates ancient Sumeria and ancient )gypt by over a millennium5 to waves of populations moving out or driven out from northwest India. Nater migrations, caused either by climatic changes or by military events, would have brought the !ittites to western 0sia, the Iranians to 0fghanisthan and Iran, and many others to other parts of )urasia. Such a scenario would reCuire a complete rewriting of ancient world historyAespecially if we add the claims like /edic Indians had established trade links with +entral 0merica and )ast 0frica before 86(( bce. 1o wonder that the #new chronology$ arouses not only scholarly controversy but

emotional e,citement as well. uch more hard evidence will be reCuired to fully establish it, and many claims may have to be withdrawn. But there is no doubt that the #old chronology$ has been discredited and that much surprise is in store for students not only of ancient India, but of the ancient *orld as a whole. 0n entirely new twist to the Cuestion has been added by a recent suggestion that modern humankind did not originate circa one hundred thousand years ago in 0frica, as was long assumed, but in 0sia. and if in 0sia, why not in the Indus /alleyO To answer that Cuestion, much more archaeological work is necessary and many more pieces of the pu--le will have to be put together.