The Aryan Invasion: New Light on an Old Problem

Books reviewed

Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization by Navaratna S. Rajaram and David Frawley, with
a Foreword by Klaus K. Klostermaier, 2nd edition. 1997. Voice of India, New Delhi. Price Rs
450 (HB), Rs 150 (PB). Pages: 328 + xxi. Reviewed by Professor K.D. Prithipaul.

The Politics of History: Aryan Invasion Theory and the Subversion of Scholarship by N.S.
Rajaram. 1995. Voice of India, New Delhi. Price Rs 150 (HB), Rs 100 (PB). Pages: 243 + xviii.
Reviewed by Professor Uma Erry.

The Aryan Invasion Theory: A Reappraisal, by Shrikant Talageri, with a Foreword by S.R. Rao.
1993. Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi. Price Rs. 350 (HB). Pages 373 + ix. Reviewed by Dr. N.S.
Rajaram.

The Problem of Aryan Origins: From an Indian Point of View, by K.D. Sethna, Second enlarged
edition. 1992. Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi. Price Rs. 450 (HB). Pages 443 + xiii. Reviewed by
Dr. N.S. Rajaram

Review of Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization

The impact of colonization during the British domination was not merely political and economic.
It extended to the collective psychology of the people and the latter’s perception of its own
culture. This was noticeable in the manner in which the educated Indian citizen came to view his
past history. The myth, which quickly gained credence in academic circles, arose from the
Western Indologists’ view that ancient Indian history was initiated by an invasion of Aryans
coming from somewhere in Central Asia. Several generations of Indian scholars, honestly
mistaken by the prestige which the learned philologists trained in the scientific and ‘objective’
methods of research in Western academe, conscientiously taught and wrote the history of their
country by taking the myth of the Aryan invasion as the starting point.

Of late however, some Indian and Western historians and certain institutions in India and the
West have deemed it necessary, under the imperative of truth-seeking, to re-examine the
premises of the Western philologists’ claim of the veracity of an Aryan invasion and its cultural
consequences. Dr. N.S. Rajaram and Dr. David Frawley have, in this context, brought forth a
cogent, coherent argument which purports to lay to rest once and for all the erroneous theory of
the Aryan invasion of India around 1500 BC.

To buttress their thesis, the authors use their deep knowledge of the Sanskrit language, their
acquaintance with the most recent archaeological discoveries, their expertise in mathematics and
in computing science. In short, they bring to focus a remarkable synthesis of several "disciplines"
to unlock the secrets of Sanskrit texts which the early Indologists overlooked. The evidence thus
brought forth from several original sources provides sound reasons to refute the earlier invasion
theory.

The dominant idea which gives the clue to their theme is that while the Aryans have a literature,
but have no history or geography, the Harappans have a sophisticated urban civilization, a
history and geography, but no language or literature. The paradox disappears when the two are
assimilated into a unitive history and geography. It becomes logical then to argue for North India
to be the original home of the Aryans. The authors further argue for a reversal of the movement
of the Aryans: they moved out of India into the outlying areas, into Persia and beyond. This new
theory receives support from archaeology, from a comparative analysis of Mesopotamian and
Egyptian mathematics with Vedic mathematics.

It is evident that the polyvalent learning of the authors provides a better insight into the secrets of
the past than the mere gratuitous speculations of the earlier Indologists, of Max Müller in
particular. In fact the authors do pay a worthy tribute to Max Muller for his many attainments
and his contributions to the discovery of India by Western scholars. At the same time, faithful to
their own insights and convictions, based on their own findings, they demonstrate how the
invasion theory was more an expression of the prejudice fed by the racist theories spawned by
Western academic anthropology supported by triumphant colonial enterprises of the West
European countries. (See also The Politics of History by N.S. Rajaram reviewed in this volume.)

The significance of the work consists in being an important confirmation of Indian history
having at last come into its own, freed from the distortions of the arbitrary normative conclusions
of Western historians. The authors pay tribute to other contributors, like K.D. Sethna, S.
Talageri, S.B. Roy, K.C. Varma, Udaya Veera Shastri and others whose contributions have
altered the perceptions of ancient Indian history with the evidence that it actually had an
indigenous genesis. With a fair measure of self-reliance and confidence they even propound the
thesis that it spread out to other parts of West Asia and Africa.

A welcome aspect of this work is the refutation of certain Marxist Indian historians who persist
in their attachment to superstitious theories bequeathed by the Indologists of Max Muller’s
generation. The authors rightly point out that "not a single significant contribution should have
come from Indian historians belonging to the elite ‘establishment’." At the same time they make
it clear that they are not driven by the need to write an apology of Indian chauvinistic
nationalism. Theirs is a statement of veracity based on hard facts.

At the same time the authors recognize that their work is not the last say in the ongoing process
of unveiling the truth about ancient Indian history. They acknowledge that gaps still remain in
the task of reinterpreting Vedic history. Nevertheless, their contribution provides substantial
material which will enable the historians of India to work for the common purpose of knowing
what happened at the beginning of the Vedic Civilization and collaborate with one another to
bring about a synthetic reconstruction of the historical integrity of the country.

Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization stands out as a major original fresh statement of
what India was. It is lucidly written, marked at times with an unusual sense of humor. The
intricacies of mathematical discussions, of Vedic linguistics, are expressed with clarity in a
language that will appeal to both the scholar and the layman. This is indeed a felicitous way of
writing about a difficult and abstruse subject. The book is commendable for its style, the
seriousness of its purpose, and the originality of the thesis which claims to establish the moral
and intellectual order that marked the early Vedic culture region which then stood as a
greenhouse in which were grown saplings which were subsequently transplanted and grew into
civilizations in the surrounding lands.

The reader must rush to read this very well written book on a subject which will fascinate
someone even unacquainted with the history of India.

Editor’s comment: Professor Prithipaul’s review was based on the manuscript of the first
edition, but applies in all essentials to the second. The second edition is recommended.

Professor K.D. Prithipaul

Department of Comparative Religion, University of Alberta, Canada

Review of The Politics of History

N.S. Rajaram in his book, The Politics of History explodes our belief in the age-old theory of the
Aryan invasion and shatters the myth about the origins of the Vedic civilization. He has provided
an unbiased and a genuinely inquiring reader with sufficient and stimulating material for thought.
His book is an excellent study of ancient India and the Vedic civilization; the honest reader has
no choice but to re-examine his understanding of history. Truth by its very nature demands
courage to acknowledge and accept it. The book offers a clearer and deeper insight into our
ancient past, the Vedas and the Puranas. The present-day Indian historians need to correct their
myopic vision of history and their die-hard prejudices. They should not only realign their
frontiers of knowledge, but also be bold enough to rewrite the history of the land.

Rajaram’s book is the most systematic and thorough study of the Aryan invasion theory
presented to date. He traces the origin and development of this ugly theory which, according to
him, is "a colossal intellectual blunder" of the 19th century European scholars, particularly, Max
Müller. The author points out that Indian history was created by men who were neither Indians
nor historians but European linguists. What were the causes of this grim blunder and how did it
happen, is discussed in the chapter "Sahibs and Pundits." Ignorance of the scientific method and
lack of archaeological data coupled with European politics and missionary interests were the
main forces behind this mythical creation. Also the upsurge of German nationalism in the 19 th
century, and the German dislike of any association with Semitic origin, added to this conspiracy.
The author shows how this contributed to the growth of racial science, which dominated
European thought in the 19th century. European linguistics had a great deal more to do with the
Aryan invasion theory than was realized.
The author strongly condemns the present-day Indian historians of the elite institutions in India,
who have totally ignored the latest findings of archaeology carried out by scientists and scholars
like S.R. Rao, V.S. Wakankar and Shrikant Talageri, findings which, when studied and
integrated with the Puranas, give us a totally different sense. (See review of Talageri’s book in
the same feature — Editor.) The Vedic civilization dates back to 7000 BC, whereas the
Harappan civilization represents nothing but a continuation of the early Vedic civilization. It was
indeed the "twilight of the Vedic civilization" and belonged to the Sutra period of the Vedic
literature. And this vast civilization came to an end because of ecological reasons, particularly
the drying up of the mighty Sarasvati River. That there was a mighty river, which used to flow
through Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan has been discovered by Wakankar’s exploration and
confirmed by satellite photography. Archaeological sites have been found on the riverbed which
show that the river gradually became weaker and finally dried up around 1900 or 2000 BC. But
to get back to the accounts in ancient literature, the second Mandala of the Rigveda mentions the
great Sarasvati River about fifty times, while the Ganga is mentioned only once, and the seventh
Mandala, attributed to Rishi Vasistha, says, "the Sarasvati is a mighty stream" that flowed from
the "mountain to the sea … nourishing the children of Nahusha," RV VII.95.2. The ‘Children of
Nahusha’ refers to the rulers of the famed Bharata Dynasty, and the inhabitants of the Sarasvati
heartland. (Sic: The whole of the Rigveda, and not just the second Mandala mentions the
Sarasvati about fifty times — Editor.)

In his analysis of the Aryan invasion theory, according to which the Aryans entered into India,
from Central Asia — the writer has assigned a whole chapter to Max Müller, the father of this
"divine theory". The chapter ‘Max Müller’s Ghost’ gives a comprehensive account and
evaluation of his work. While he exposes his sham scholarship and a rather superficial rendering
of the Rigveda, he lauds the great effort to bring out a monumental 51-volume (Sic: 50) "Sacred
Books of the East", which ironically led to a resurgence of interest among the Indians in their
ancient works. Thus his early goal of discrediting the Indian scriptures by giving a negative
interpretation had exactly the opposite effect. Max Müller rejected the astronomical evidence for
Vedic chronology as suggested by Colebrook. He assigned Vedic dates so as to coincide with his
firm belief in Biblical chronology, "according to which the creation of the world was said to have
taken place at 9 AM on October 23, 4004 BC." Though Max Müller later repudiated his own
chronology for the Vedic literature, he was "an extremely political creature, who did not hesitate
to use his position as Vedic scholar to advance the cause of German nationalism with his theories
about the Aryan race."

Max Müller ’s theory was taken up by the nineteenth century linguists and other scholars, who,
after discovering Sanskrit and the relationship which it bears to European languages, hit upon the
existence of a Proto Indo-European language to preserve their ‘pet theory’ of the Aryan invasion.
The linguistic approach to history reveals how the human mind can pervert facts, and how
preconceived ideas can falsify one’s view of events. Nineteenth century linguists "built whole
historical scenarios around untested linguistic conjectures." It proved to be a "monumental
failure of vision" as shown by archaeology, which began to have an enormous bearing on the
study of history. "All fanciful historical scenarios began to crumble" in the face of data from
archaeology, mathematics and other sources, observes the author. Archaeologists have now
proved the existence of a vast civilization, the great Sarasvati-Sindhu Civilization, spread over
more than a million and a half square kilometers.
Where did the Aryans originate from? Who were they, and what does the word Aryan mean, and
how it was misinterpreted by European Indologists, are all discussed in [the chapter] ‘Emperor’s
Clothes.’ According to the Puranas, Eastern UP and Northwest Himalayas (Sic: Northeast
Himalayas) was the original home of the Aryans. While there is no evidence and support for the
Aryan invasion theory, there is abundant evidence to show that massive movements of the Vedic
Aryans took place out of India (that is, in the reverse order) into West and Central Asia.
Linguistic analysis by S.S. Mishra, as well as archaeological records of the Hittites, Mittani and
the Kassites all point to an expansion of the "Vedic Aryans out of India into West and Central
Asia." And this is also what the Puranas have to say: they record a series of migrations out of
India resulting from wars as well as natural calamities. Aryan tribes settled in Persia, Parthia and
Anatolia. (The Puranas record them as Parsus and Partavas.) Indian emperor Mandhata drove the
troublesome Druhyus out of India before 4600 BC, and according to Talageri (1993), "they
became the Celtic Druids of Europe, which fits in with the latter’s tradition of tracing their origin
to Asia." Then there is question of Zoroaster, his date and his origin. The Bhavisya Purana (139,
13-15) records, "contrary to the Vedic practices, your son will become famous by name of Mag.
His name will be Jarathushtra Mag — and will bring fame to the dynasty. His descendents will
worship fire and will be known by the name Mag (Saka), and being Soma worshippers (Magadha
Sakadvipi) will be known as Mag Brahmins." All this is so contrary to what we have been
subjected to learning in history books.

Putting aside the verdict of the Puranas and the Vedas, we may legitimately ask how has the
writer resolved the main issue, in other words, what is the scientific basis used by the author for
repudiating the Aryan invasion theory? What are the flaws and contradictions pointed out by the
writer?

The chapter ‘Ancient India and the Modern World’ focuses on this main issue. The strength of
the main argument and the evidence rest on the recent findings of archaeology and satellite
photography, which have proved the existence of the ancient Sarasvati River and unearthed
archaeological sites on the riverbed; what the historians earlier labelled as the Indus Valley sites
in areas where none of the Indus rivers flow, and were therefore a source of mystery to
archaeologists, have now been proved to lie along the course of the great Sarasvati River.
Wakankar’s discovery of the ancient Sarasvati helped to resolve the mystery. Mark Kenoyer, a
North American archaeologist (1991) has provided a detailed archaeological map of the whole of
Northwest India.

But the Rigveda tells us all this and much more; while it mentions the Ganga only once, it lauds
the great Sarasvati fifty times. It also describes the geography of North India as it was before the
Sarasvati dried up. The Harappan Civilization of the Indus Valley was a continuation of the
Vedic Civilization; its ending coincided with the drying up of the Sarasvati around 2000 BC.
Archaeological studies have shown that there was a gradual depletion of water resources that
culminated in a drought in the 2200 BC to 1900 BC [period]. It was a global phenomenon that
affected civilizations across the immense belt of Southern Europe to India. As S.R. Rao says,
"People were forced to seek new lands for settlement. The refugees from Mohenjo-Daro and
Southern sites in Sind fled to Saurashtra and later occupied the interior of the peninsula." In
addition to all this, the writer provides evidence of geography, astronomy and literature and
metallurgy, and evidence of the mathematics or the Sulbasutras, often called Vedic Mathematics,
which was discovered by Seidenberg to be the source of "all ancient mathematics from India to
Old Babylonia to Egypt to Pythagorean Greece."

All this is an unmistakable pointer to the existence and supremacy of a vast Vedic Civilization
spanning over thousands of years and kept alive throughout by a living tradition. India is the only
country where the ancient past still breathes. Jean Le Meé, a French student of the Vedas
observes, "the pyramids have been eroded by the desert wind, the marble broken by earthquakes
and the gold stolen by robbers, while the Veda is recited daily by an unbroken chain of
generations traveling like a great wave through the living substance of mind." If historical
research could be intensified by the new generation of scholars, by combining tradition with
science, all history and not just India will benefit, says the author of this brilliant book.

Professor Uma Erry

Bhavan’s Journal, July 15, 1996

Review of The Aryan Invasion Theory, A Reappraisal

The writing of Indian history has been dominated by political considerations for well over a
century. First it was the nineteenth century European biases which sought to present European as
the pinnacle of world civilizations. This was compounded by the aspirations of the emerging
German nationalism, and British colonial interests. Christian missionaries also got on the
bandwagon of European colonialism and rewrote the history of India to facilitate conversion.
The result was the Aryan invasion version of ancient history and the denigration of Indian
contributions. After independence, one had reason to hope that Indian scholars might go back to
the primary sources and use scientific methods to recast Indian history on a more rational basis.
They after all are in the best position to do so.

Unfortunately this did not come about. For reasons that are unnecessary to go into here, the
Indian history establishment came to be dominated by Marxist ideologues who went about
recasting all periods of Indian history to be conformity with the Marxist theology. This resulted
in a serious lowering of standards and the failure of any Indian school of thought to emerge,
despite a millennia-old Indian tradition and its matchless records. This background is necessary
to understand why really significant and original contributions to Indian scholarship have come
from outside the leftist dominated academic mainstream.

Fortunately there are signs of fresh wind blowing. There are now scholars — mainly outside the
establishment — who are both original thinkers and compelling writers. One of them is Shrikant
Talageri, the author of the book under review. His book upsets the whole framework built on the
belief that the Rigveda contains the oldest records of India; Talageri’s contention, well
supported, is that the much-maligned Puranas actually contain the accounts of the oldest
dynasties of India. With this seemingly simple shift, he not only presents a coherent picture of
ancient India, but also arrives at a plausible scenario for the origin and spread of the Indo-
European speakers. When Talageri’s book appeared in 1993, this was like a bolt from the blue;
the late Girilal Jain wrote a major article on it, which appeared on the center page of the Times of
India. But today, the idea seems less shocking. Let us now take a look at what Talageri has to
offer.

His book is ambitious and broader in scope than what its title indicates. His goal in fact is to
provide an answer to one of the great questions of ancient history — the problem of the origin
and spread of Indo-European speakers. Here is the problem: going back at least to the eighteenth
century, historians and linguists have puzzled over the fact that people from India and Sri Lanka
to England and Ireland speak languages clearly related to one another. We now call these
languages members of the great Indo-European family. The recognition of these as members of
the same language family led to the perfectly natural supposition that the ancestors of these
speakers must at one time have lived in a single homeland. Ever since that time, the location of
this Indo-European homeland has been one of the central problems of ancient history. As
Talageri observes:

When we consider the historical importance of the speakers of these languages, it

becomes obvious that the earliest common history of these languages constitutes the most
important unsolved mystery of ancient times. (pp 1-2).

One cannot seriously argue with this assessment. Some of his claims however will strike many as
extravagant, if not audacious. Towards the end of his book he goes on to assert:

The whole description is based on the most logical, and in many respects the only
possible, interpretation of the facts, ...

Any further research, and any new material discovered on the subject, can only confirm
this description. There may be minor points on which rectifications may become
necessary, such as the exact identities and the interrelationships of the various Indo-
European groups, past and present; ... (p 368)

Can he really be serious — claiming that all future work can only lend support to his theory
except on some minor points? But this is not all. Speaking of his use of the Rigveda to correlate
the accounts found in the Puranas, he makes the astounding statement:

In respect of the Vedas, there has always been a school of opinion in India which holds
that everything is contained in the Vedas. While this can be taken with a heavy pinch of
 salt, the fact remains that a handful of hymns (out of a total of 1028 hymns which
constitute the Rig Veda) provide us the key for solving the biggest historical problem of
all time. (p 6; emphasis mine.)

But strange as it may seem, his claims are not entirely unfounded. There are to be sure some
problems; his chronology runs into contradictions both with Indian records and the records of
ancient Europeans, especially the Celtic Druids. Fortunately this is not a major problem in the
overall scheme. With the chronological framework that can now be formulated — with the help
of data that was not available when Talageri was working on his book — most of these
difficulties disappear. So it is possible to get a picture of the ancient age of the Vedas described
in the Puranas, by studying the two together. I shall return to this point again, for this is now of
paramount importance in any reconstruction of ancient history.

As I read it, Talageri's main contribution is that he shows that the Puranas actually contain a
fairly complete account of ancient India going back some one hundred generations before the
Mahabharata War. Anyone familiar with the past century or so of Indological research will have
no trouble recognizing this as a profound transformation in perspective.

The truly radical point of departure in Talageri's approach is the fact that he does not accept the
Rigveda as the starting point chronologically of the Aryan civilization of India. He shows
convincingly that the Puranas preserve the earliest historical accounts, and the Vedas, in fact,
confirm this. (Again it is important to note that this was much more radical five years ago when
his book first appeared, than it may seem today.) And what makes all this possible is the
discarding of the now discredited Aryan invasion theory. To his credit, Talageri does not stop
there, he goes on to provide an alternative.

The first step in Talageri's reappraisal is to analyze and explode the Aryan invasion theory. There
are at least two incarnations of this theory: the first is the nineteenth century version propagated
mainly by Max Müller and his followers. This is essentially what is followed by the Indian
establishment historians, and also what is found in most history books today. Then there is its
more modern incarnation created among others by Gordon Childe, and whose principal exponent
in recent times was probably Marija Gimbutas. This is the so-called ‘Kurgan theory’, more of
which later. Talageri subjects these to a critical examination and shows them both to be baseless.
His analysis of the so-called 'Kurgan' theory of Indo-European origins is on the whole more
valuable than his critique of the old version which has been effectively demolished by others.

His criticism of the Kurgan theory is masterful. This theory identifies the material culture
associated with the 'Kurgan' gravesites dated to the fourth millennium BC in South Russia and
the Pontic region as belonging to the proto Indo-Europeans. It is now enjoying some academic
vogue as the potential homeland of the Indo-Europeans. What is astonishing about the whole
thing is that there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to suggest that these people spoke Indo-
European; there are no literary or linguistic records. But this has not deterred its proponents from
claiming that they must have spoken proto Indo-European. And yet this identification is sought
to be established by equating Kurgan archaeology with Indo-European linguistics! As Mr.
Talageri perceptively notes the whole exercise is nothing but an example of "the extent to which
any facts can be made to appear to ‘prove’ any hypothesis by an entrenched and predetermined
scholarship."

The author next looks at the linguistic evidence which I'll try to summarize in as simple terms as
possible. Though they exhibit great similarities, linguists hold that the Dravidian languages of
South India and the so-called Indo-Aryan languages of North India belong to different language
families. The similarities however cannot be brushed aside; they are by no means limited to
vocabulary and lexical borrowing. A good sentence in a Dravidian language like Kannada for
instance, when literally translated, becomes a good sentence in Hindi or Bengali. Also, Kannada
has the same number of cases (eight) as Sanskrit while even the oldest Greek has only five.
Nonetheless we can accept that the classification of languages as they now stand to be useful.
But problems arise when linguists, and even worse, historians with preconceived notions, invoke
'linguistic evidence' to reconstruct the history and chronology of peoples and nations that existed
thousands of years ago. This is a point that cannot be overemphasized.

Indo-Iranian is the main and the oldest member of the Indo-European group — or so the linguists
tell us. Even the oldest records from outside India — the Hittite and the Mittani of West Asia —
already show Sanskrit and not any hypothetical proto Indo-Iranian. And Vedic Sanskrit is by far
the oldest Indo-European language known. Indian records are on the whole the oldest of Indo-
European records. So any attempt to find an Aryan or Indo-European homeland outside of India
at once runs into formidable difficulties. The only way to get around this is to claim that the
Vedas describe their invasion from a foreign land as was done by the early invasionists, or
fabricate a scenario disregarding all evidence as later done by the Kurgan advocates. The result
often is grotesque logic. As Talageri points out in the case of one invasionist:

The very idea of considering the present-day distribution of Indo-European languages as

making a "strong prima-facie case against the theory that India was the original home of
the Aryans" is indicative of the bias involved. (p 68)

That is to say, the very fact that the oldest and the greatest concentration of Indo-European
speakers happens to be in India is used as proof that the languages are not native to India! One
could similarly say (with more justice) that the present day distribution of English is enough to
make a very strong prima facie case against England being the original home of the English. And
it is a similar story with Dravidian speakers. They are now concentrated in South India, but they
are claimed to have migrated from the north, having come from "their original homeland in the
islands of the Aegean and along the tracts of mainland along the Aegean Sea — Greece and Asia
Minor" as Chatterji put it (p 68). It is probably unnecessary to point out that Chatterji's claim was
based on no evidence at all.

So the thrust of the methodology is the argument that when a language or a group of languages is
concentrated in a particular area, its speakers must have come from some place else where there
is no trace of the language. This essentially is the logic behind making the Harappans Dravidian
speakers. It is impossible to refute an argument when it rests on no evidence. (Jha’s
decipherment of the Harappan script has demolished it.)

Happily the author does not follow such methods; he has shown sound judgement in balancing
linguistics with other records from literature and archaeology. His interpretation of archaeology I
am afraid is at times weak, and lands him in some chronological difficulties. But before getting
to that part, I want to discuss what I see as his main contribution, the reconciliation of the
Rigveda with the Puranic accounts. And this above everything else is what makes his book a
landmark in the study of ancient India.

Until recently, and even today, the tendency has been to dismiss Puranic accounts as myth and
treat the Rigveda as the primary historical source for ancient India, and even for the Indo-
Europeans. This was a forced interpretation assuming the Rigveda to be the record of invading
nomadic barbarians from the north. Anything in the Puranas that contradicted this interpretation
was to be disregarded. This is absurd from the Indian point of view, for the Vedas are not
history; it is the Puranas that embody the Indian historical tradition. The problem for modern
scholars is that the Puranas know of no Aryan invasion from the northwest. In fact, they record
several emigrations of Indians through the northwest into Central Asia and beyond.

The situation can be summarized as follows. The Puranas are unambiguous in placing the Aryan
kings and dynasties within India, and give no evidence of any foreign associations. The Iranian
traditions are equally firm in placing Vivanhant (Sanskrit Vivaswan) well outside Iran as their
ancestor. And there is no other place anywhere in the world which has any tradition of ever
having been ruled by any of the kings or dynasties named in the Puranas.

Further, the few historical glimpses that we do get from the Rigveda are confined to the Punjab
region and the northwest, and they support the Puranic accounts. As Talageri observes:

In the face of this it is all the more remarkable that the geneological lists and traditional
accounts given by the Puranas can be confirmed, in their geographical aspects, by
comparing them with the relevant names attested by the Rig Veda. The fact that the Rig
Veda seems to confirm the Puranic accounts in every case is positive proof of the
geographical validity of the Puranic accounts. (p 293)

The crucial point that Talageri has grasped that most others have missed is the following: the
geographical horizon of the Puranas includes all of North India, while that of the Rigveda is
limited to the Sapta Sindhu region (the Punjab) ruled by the Bharatas or the Purus. As a result,
the only non-Puru kings recorded by the Rigveda are those that came in contact with the Punjab
region — or the land of the Purus. This does not indicate any movement of the Vedic Aryans
from the Punjab region to the rest of India, but simply a reflection of this narrower geographical
horizon of the Rigveda vis a vis the Puranas. Talageri’s most remarkable conclusion is the
following: the Aryan dynasties' expansion in North India was from east to west and not from the
nortwest to the Ganga valley as the invasionist dogma would have it. As Talageri observes:
 ... the joint testimony of the Rig Veda and the Puranas provides incontrovertible evidence
that there were these dynasties ... during, and even before, the composition of the
majority of the hymns of the Rig Veda: and that the movement of these dynasties took
place from east to west and not vice versa.(p 297; emphasis added)

Even the Purus of the Saraswati heartland, who loom large in the Rigvedic tradition, were
originally from the east. Sudyumna, whose grandson Nahusha founded the new kingdom on the
Sarasvati was an Easterner from northern UP. The 'children of Nahusha' — the Purus — were
responsible for the coding of knowledge in the Rigveda. Even then the rishis never claimed to
have created them but to have only received from their legendary ancestors the Devas in the East
— purva — which means both east and ancient. In fact it is so explicitly stated in the following
remarkable passage from the Mahabharata (Ganguli's translation).

This quarter is called purva [east, also ancient] O! Brahmana, for the reason that in far
older times, it was first overspread by the Devas. Here first chanted the Vedas, the
glorious God who promotes the welfare of the worlds. Here was recited to the chanters of
the Vedas, the Savitri by Savitar the Sun God.

Mahabharata, Udyoga Parva (108)

This is truly extraordinary! As the author points out, the only alternative is to assume "... that the
ancient composers of the Rig Vedic hymns and the editors of the Puranas hatched a deep, and
extremely subtle conspiracy to doctor their texts in such a way as to give a false picture ..." (p
297)

Next, Talageri effects a remarkable synthesis showing that several accounts in the Puranas,
supported by the Rigveda, can help us trace the movement of Indo-European speakers from India
out to the west, into Central Asia and even beyond into Europe. In particular, he makes an
admirable case for the Druhyu people of the northwest and Afghanistan being driven out of India
in a series of campaigns beginning with Mandhatr. These he claims became the Celtic Druids of
England. A remarkable inference.

As noted earlier there are some chronological problems. His chronology places the first wave of
the Celtic (Druid) migration in about c. 2500 BC. The Battle of Ten Kings in which Sudas drove
out the Pruthu/Parthavas (Parthians), the Alinas (the Hellenes, the ancient Greeks) and several
others are assigned to c. 2100 BC. And this is palpably too late. Though I am convinced that his
identifications are mainly on target, we also know that the Druids were in Europe long before
then. Their own tradition traces their origin to Asia in about 3900 BC. So the massive migration
following Mandhatr's campaign must have taken place well before 4500 BC.

The basic problem is the author's acceptance of c. 1400 BC date for the Mahabharata War. He
has incorrectly assumed that the date is supported by astronomy when in fact it is not. In reality,
astronomy overwhelmingly supports the traditional 3100 BC (approximate) date. Harappan
archaeology — and Jha’s decipherment — also contradicts the c. 1400 BC date for the
Mahabharata War. (To be fair, Talageri himself has more than once told me that chronology was
not one of his main concerns while writing the book.)

In summary, Shrikant Talgeri has made a very major contribution to the study of ancient history.
His work cuts the Gordian Knot of Indo-European homeland and can pave the way for a rational
approach to history. No serious student of ancient India can afford to ignore it.

N.S. Rajaram

Review of The Problem of Aryan Origins

When the long overdue revision of Indian history makes it to the history books, K.D. Sethna will
have to be accorded on honored place. Long before the increasingly popular interpretation of the
Harappan civilization as post Vedic became the norm, he had begun to chip away at the wall of
superstition that protects the Aryan invasion theory. His book under review, The Problem of
Aryan Origins, takes the reader on a grand tour of what is the central problem of ancient Indian
history. When the first edition appeared in 1980 it must have seemed heretical indeed,
questioning the Aryan invasion theory no less. In the years following, the Aryan invasion theory
has lost much of its sanctity. In fact, no archaeologist I know of, Indian or Western, any longer
believes in such an invasion. Its proponents are now decidedly on the defensive.

The second edition, which has more than doubled in length, includes five supplements, notably
the long Supplement V, discussing the Finnish scholar Asko Parpola's major study: "The Coming
of the Aryans to Iran and India and the Cultural and Ethnic Identity of the Dasas" that had
appeared in Studia Orientalia in 1988. Unless there is a major miracle that can reverse all the
recent findings, Parpola's thesis will be seen by future historians as the last major effort in
support of the Aryan migration hypothesis and the Aryan-Dravidian divide. And in his 220 page
discussion (Supplement V), Sethna has written its final epitaph. Thus the book is a valuable
study of the history and evidence relating to theories about the ancient Aryan society of India. (It
is rumored also that Parpola is no longer working on the Aryan problem.)

The Problem of Aryan Origins is made up of distinctly two parts. The first part consists of a
collection of more or less independent essays in thirteen chapters and two Appendixes that made
up the first edition, and four Supplements added in the second. The second part is the truly
monumental Supplement V, surely one of the most thorough analyses of the Aryan invasion
theory ever written.
In dealing with a book as comprehensive as Sethna’s The Problem of Aryan Origins, it is
impossible to cover all its salient features in a single review. I will therefore select a few that are
likely to be of interest to the broadest cross section of potential readers. After introducing the
basic problems of the Aryan invasion theory, he briefly discusses the famous Mittani documents
from Asia Minor dating back to c. 1480 BC. These record a treaty between the Hittites and the
Mittani in which Vedic deities have been invoked. Another Mittani document — a manual on
horse training — was found to contain technical terms in what is virtually pure Sanskrit. Neither
shows any Iranian traces. This is therefore a serious blow to the orthodox view that the Iranians
and the Indians had not yet separated from their original Indo-Iranian 'homeland' until 1300 BC.
The Rigveda, according to this theory, dates only from about 1200 BC at the earliest. But the
Mittani documents give evidence of Sanskrit and not the earlier Vedic.

This impression is confirmed by more finds. All later documents, there are now many, show only
the influence of Sanskrit and Indic languages. Diehard invasionists may maintain that they are
really from an archaic form of Indo-Iranian, but the facts don't support the claim. As Sethna
observes:

... most of the strange appellations have been reduced to their Sanskrit counterparts:

Artasumara = Ritusmara, "remembering the divine law [ritu]"

Artadama = Ritudharma, "abiding in the divine law"

Abirata = Abhiratha, "owner of a superior chariot" ...

Anyone who knows Sanskrit will recognize them. As Sethna observes: "We may without
hesitation assert that hardly any of the Indo-Iranian looking names fall outside Sanskrit to raise
the presumption of a possible origin outside India for the ancestors of the Rigvedic seers." (pp
32-33) So the influence of Sanskrit on these documents is undeniable.

In Chapter 5, the author gives an interesting discussion of the spoked wheel which was known to
the Rigvedic seers and also the Harappans. The former is obvious to anyone familiar with the
Rigveda, for example, the great hymn I.164 by Dirghatamas. At the same time, I find it
interesting that no one (except a historian of science like Seidenberg) seems to have noticed that
Baudhayana in his Sulbasutra gives an ingenious mathematical method for designing spoked
wheels. It is one of the most interesting mathematical applications of antiquity.

Chapters 8 and 9 discuss the origin and presence of the Aryans in antiquity. Sethna feels that if
the Aryans have are to be regarded as outsiders, their original homeland will have to be placed in
the Arctic regions; the Rigveda permits no other interpretation. This in a circuitous fashion can
be made to support the thesis that the expansion of the Aryans in India was from east to west.
This as I pointed out in my review of Talageri's book has some literary support. There is no
evidence whatsoever for a movement from the northwest to the Ganga valley before the drying
up of the Sarasvati river. The other chapters are all interesting, for Sethna, in addition to being an
outstanding scholar has a talent for shedding fresh light on problems by examining them in
unusual ways. This brings me to the five Supplements that were added in the second edition.

The Supplements are all interesting, but I’ll cover the last four which will be of the greatest
interest. In Supplement II, Sethna takes up the issue of the horse which was believed to be absent
among the Harappans but is obviously important in the Rigveda. Much has been made of the
supposed fact that the Harappan seals do not depict horses, and therefore the horse riding Aryans
must have come later. That is, the Harappans must have been pre-Rigveda. This ‘argument by
silence’ is not without risk. As Sethna points out, there is no depiction of the cow either, but
seals depicting the bull are commonplace. From this are we to conclude that the Harappans had
perfected a method of raising bulls without cows?

(Incidentally, it is wrong to say that the horse is not found on the Harappan seals. As Jha pointed
out to me, the horse is depicted on at least one seal. It carries the message which, when
deciphered reads, "arko ha asva" meaning "Sun like the horse". It is a clear reference to the
symbolism of the Vajasaneya Samhita of the Yajurveda. — Editor)

All this has now been rendered moot by more recent discoveries about the horse in ancient India.
As Sethna notes, the Neolithic sites of Koldihwa and Mahagara have yielded evidence for the
presence of the domesticated horse in India dating back to 6570 BC. This is far anterior to
anything known in Eurasia. Thus the prominence of the horse in the Rigvedic lore is entirely
consistent with indigenous origin of the Vedic Aryans. This is not to say that the Central Asian
breed did not become more popular later; after all they have always been recognized to be a
superior breed. But that does not in anyway contradict the presence or the domestication of the
Indian horse. There is now evidence of Uralic (Central Asiatic) linguistic borrowings from the
Rigveda (p 278). The knowledge of the horse goes back in India to well before the seventh
millennium BC.

In Supplement III, the question shifts to the date of the Harappan civilization. It is of course
widely known that the radiocarbon method tends to underestimate ancient dates. As a result,
these dates have to properly calibrated which is something of an art. Initially, the ending of the
Harappan civilization was given as 1500 BC to make it coincide with the postulated date of the
Aryan invasion. Even a staunch invasionist like Mortimer Wheeler could not find scientific
support for it and opted for 1700 BC. Possehl now finds it impossible for its end to be later than
1800 BC. (It may in fact go further back. — Editor)

In Supplement IV, Sethna expresses his views on the archaeological finds at Dwaraka reported
by marine archaeologist S.R. Rao. He seems to agree with Rao in attributing the inundation of
Dwaraka to the flood following the death of Sri Krishna of the Mahabharata. This in turn means
assigning 1400 BC for the Mahabharata War. How are we to justify this? Even setting aside the
astronomical data which points to c. 3100 BC for the War, this contradicts Sethna's own
determination that the Harappan civilization belonged to the Sutra period. The Sutra texts
definitely know both the War and the Mahabharata characters. What happens to Panini's famous
sutra — vasudevarjunabhyam vun? Or, how about the Chandogya Upanisad which knows
Krishna the Son of Devaki? I suggest that we better not be hasty in drawing too broad
conclusions from scanty archaeological data.

One of the inscriptions found at Dwaraka is claimed to read: 'Maha-kacha shah-pa' which is said
to mean 'Lord of the sea, protect'. But this is based on Rao’s attempted decipherment of the Indus
script which we now know to be wrong. This is insufficient ground on which to assign the site to
the Mahabharata period. The date of Rao’s excavation is contemporary with the Kassite Empire
in Babylon. Rao himself has found Kassite artifacts at the site. This suggests that the Dwaraka
that Rao has excavated may have been a Kassite colony.

This brings me to Sethna's monumental Supplemental V. A few years from now Paropla's thesis
is likely to be seen as the last hurrah of the Aryan invasion theory. Asko Poropla's work is
scholarly and contains many significant contributions. But in the final analysis, his theory that
the Aryans entered India in the second millennium BC is simply not tenable; it runs into too
many contradictions. Even Parpola is forced to acknowledge that evidence for earlier Aryan
presence is too strong; so he is forced into the argument that some Aryans came earlier but the
main wave came in the second millennium. This is not very convincing. His attempt to decipher
the Indus script assuming it to be proto Dravidian is also a failure.

Sethna's 220 page-long Supplement V on Parpola’s work is truly comprehensive and summarizes
both sides of the Aryan invasion theory. The article is somewhat technical but absolutely
indispensable for any student of ancient history, and not just of India. In this review, I can only
touch on a small part of it.

One of the more interesting (and important) finds reported by Sethna is evidence regarding the
domestication of the horse in South India in very ancient times. Evidence for the presence of
wild horse as well as the domesticated variety has been forthcoming in India going back to
Neolithic times (pp 219-222). Remains of the domesticated horse have been discovered in the
Vindhyas and the Ganga valley going back to the fifth and even the sixth millennium BC. I
already noted some of its implications earlier.

Then there is the issue of linguistics. Ever since the discovery of Sanskrit by European scholars
in the eighteenth century, the Indo-European homeland of the hypothetical ancestors of the
Indian and the European speakers of this great language family has been the Holy Grail of
historical linguistics. Unfortunately, unrestrained speculation and its recent politicization by
Indian Marxists has placed the whole field in some disrepute. As an extreme case one can cite a
Marxist scholar completely ignorant of Sanskrit invoking something she calls Old Indo-Aryan to
'prove' that Aryan speakers could not have been native to India. It is not surprising that such
appeals to non-existent languages by non-linguists should have brought some discredit to the
field.

Leaving aside such exercises, we may note that comparative linguists have constructed a proto
Indo-European — actually several of them — which they claim to be the ancestor of Sanskrit. It
is well to note that neither comparative linguistics nor such reconstructions would be feasible
without Sanskrit. The question now is — where was this Indo-European homeland if it ever
existed? A point to be noted is that no language older than the Rigvedic Sanskrit is known. And
the Rigvedia knows no homeland other than India. That is, if there was an Indo-European
homeland, all evidence points to India. Sethna quotes the distinguished linguist Satya Swarup
Misra on this point:

... Sanskrit is in all other respects nearer to proto-Indo-European than any other Indo-
European historical language. This is a pointer to the fact that the place where Sanskrit
exists or existed has a claim to be the original home of the Indo-Europeans. Greek,
Hittite, Latin, etc. belong to a much later chrono-logical change: on the basis of linguistic
change they are comparable to Middle Indo-Aryan ...

Thus Sanskrit is the most archaic Indo-European language and it also retains Indo-
European flora and fauna quite appreciably. Therefore if India is accepted as the original
home of the Indo-Europeans speakers many of the complications of the Aryan problem
will be solved. (pp 273-274)

The key here is that the most natural solution to the problem is to accept India as the original
home. In my review of Talageri's book I observed how the historical puzzles in the Puranic and
Vedic accounts can be reconciled once we drop the idea of the foreign origin of the Aryans. This
leads to the recognition that the movement of the ancient Aryan dynasties in ancient India was
from east to west. Thanks to all this, we are now beginning to get a fairly coherent picture of
ancient India. This makes the Aryan presence in India very much earlier than what history books
tell us. And this early Indian presence of the Aryans is strongly supported by archaeology.

A particularly telling discovery in this regard is that of fire-altars at various Harappan sites like
Kalibangan. This is very strong evidence for the Harappan civilization being Vedic Aryan. Even
a staunch invasionist like Parpola is forced to acknowledge that the fire-altars of Lothal and
Kalibangan, "... carry with them an indication of Indo-Aryan presence." (p 308)

This has far-reaching implications for history and chronology. As Seidenberg has shown, all of
ancient mathematics evolved from the Sulbasutras, or 'Vedic mathematics' as they are often
called. This places the mathematics of the Sulbas in the early centuries of the third millennium
BC if not earlier. The Sulbas, of which the Baudhayana Sulba is the oldest and the most
important, were composed explicitly to serve as technical manuals for the construction of fire-
altars. This I believe is clinching evidence that the Harappans were Vedic Aryans of the Sutra
period. If anything, some of the Sutra literature, at least the mathematical knowledge contained
in the Sulbasutras already existed prior to the Harappan civilization. (This also has the merit of
accounting for the science behind the architectural achievements of the Harappans. — Editor)
I will mention one more key piece of evidence. Sethna regards the knowledge of silver as post
Rigveda. It is true that the Rigveda does not know silver; rajata, which appears only once in the
Rigveda, is generic for white. Silver working began around 4000 BC. On the strength of this
Sethna concludes that the bulk of the Rigveda must have existed by 4000 BC. This makes the
Harappan Civilization post-Rigveda. This is exactly what the Harappan seals also, following the
decipherment tell us.

In this review I have done no more than highlight a few of the treasures found in Sethna's book,
particularly his great Supplement V. There is a great deal more — from linguistics to literary
interpretations to comparative mythology and archaeology. In short, The Problem of Aryan
Origins is required reading for every serious student of history.

Dr. N.S. Rajaram