Aryan Invasion/migration Theories & Debates -2

[acharya]

<span style='color:red'>CAUTION - PSEUDO SECULARIST WORLD VIEW</span>

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No Vedic roots here
Suraj Bhan
The article 'Grave Secrets of Sinauli' by Atul Sethi (Jul 3) gives important information about a late Harappan cemetery (1700-1300 BC) in western Uttar Pradesh. I visited the excavations and found that the cemetery belongs to post-Harappan but pre-Iron Age.

The significance of the discovery lies in the recovery of swords of copper generally associated with the pre-iron culture of the Ganga-Yamuna Doab. Animal remains along with human bodies are found in some of the graves.

The cemetery is rich in copper and gold ornaments of the Harappan tradition. Although 126 skeletons have been reported from the cemetery yet, it is not possible to say which of them are earlier and which are later.

It would be wrong to say on the basis of Sinauli's findings that Harappans were a part of the Vedic culture and followed prescribed Vedic practices. Such an assertion is based on a poor understanding of north Indian proto-history.

Archaeological investigations carried out in India in the last eight decades have revealed two distinct cultural traditions in north India between 3000 BC and 600 BC.

The earlier tradition is marked by the colonisation of the Indus plains by pastoral communities from Baluchistan, giving birth to the Indus civilisation at around 2500 BC.

The expansion of Harappan state resulted in the establishment of fortified cities there. By 2000 BC, the Indus civilisation declined and the cities were deserted.
<i>
This coincided with the migrations on a vast scale by peasant-pastoral communities of the Copper Age all over north India. The late Harappan regional culture filled the space in the Sutlej-Ganga plains.</i>


The second major movement in north Indian proto-history is distinguished by the advent of a new people in Swat, Kabul, NWFP, northern Punjab and the Bolan region in Pakistan from around 1600 BC.

These cultures were termed as the Gandhar Grave and the Pirak cultures. A related regional culture called the Painted Grey Ware culture occupied the Saraswati, Yamuna and Ganga plains. In course of time these cultures gave rise to early historic towns so famous in the Mahabharata.

A variant of the Painted Grey Ware culture termed Black Slipped Ware culture spread in the lower Doab and parts of Gangetic valley around 1000 BC. These people — using thin Grey, and Black Wares — had affinities with Gandhar Grave culture and penetrated further east around 800 BC.

In central India, around this time, the Painted Grey Ware culture intrudes into the Black and Red Ware levels at Ujjain, Vidisha near Bhopal, Kayatha and certain other sites in the Vindhyas.

This widespread expansion of new people had no genetic relationship with the Harappan, late Harappan or the later Chalcolithic cultures. North India was colonised by successive migrations by different people with different cultural identities.

The Vedic culture showed continuous growth and expansion ever since the advent of the Rig Vedic people in the Sapta Sindhu region, around the middle of the 2nd millennium BC.

The Vedic culture consolidated itself in the Madhya Desh and penetrated into the central and lower Ganga valley and central India a few centuries before the rise of early historic cities.

In contrast, around this time, the Indus civilisation finally declined and came to an end in the basins of Indus and Saraswati and the Ganga-Yamuna Doab.

But the characteristic features of the Indus civilisation like urbanisation, town planning, monumental architecture, long-distance trade, seals and the script, did not survive.

In the face of such clear evidence how could an archaeologist confuse the Harappan or late Harappan cultures with Vedic Aryans? The answer perhaps lies in the perspective of the scholars.

Adherents of the Hindutva ideology viewed Indian society and culture as a monolithic Hindu nation with a Hindu culture (Aryans being their ancestors). They viewed the mosaic of cultures of India's past not as it actually was, but as what they wanted to see in it.

To imagine Sinauli as a Vedic cemetery on the basis of a few selective references in the Sat Path Brahmn of a much later date (8th century BC) is part of this perspective.
The writer is member, Central Advisory Board of Archaeology.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

acharya,
Suraj Bhan is a virulent pro-left guy. You can google his name. Stridently pro-left, right from the Ram Janmabhoomi issue.

[acharya]

X posted from the sanskrit thread - HUSKY
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insane to describe a tamilian as an indo-aryan or a gujrati as a dravidian. neither by ethnicity, and even less by languistic category


This argument is useful for illustrative purposes.
When Indians are faced with such an argument they must note that it rests on the assumption of the IE worldview. It is from the IE worldview that the terms Indo-Aryan and Dravidian arose, and they apply only within the IE worldview.

But the matter as it stands is moot for those that do not subscribe to the IE view and the argument itself becomes a non-argument since the base assumption (the existence of IE and hence the acceptance of the IA-D dichotomy) is not shared.
I don't describe gujaratis or tamils or any other Indians with either of the terms Indo-Aryan or Dravidian; and I don't speak of languages as IA or D outside of the IE-related conversations on this forum (where the topic forces me to use them) - precisely because the basic premise doesn't take with me.

The cleverest and perhaps most dangerous thing that the IE worldview has done is this: they've made it a choice between Indo-Aryan and Dravidian; they've sneakily excised a third tickbox for 'Indian'. IE has essentially forced its base assumption on people and is now succeeding in making the unthinking choose one or other of their two constructs.
This is language control and it's being imposed on us here.

Other examples of language control that is being exercised on Indians today include the imposition of terms such as caste, South Asia, Dalit.

I am boycotting all of this now. The whole thing is that the west is forcing us to play the game. But just don't play it.

IE is nothing more than an assumption and a blind belief in it (although indologists question other parts of their framework, they never question their basic premise). It's built on (as mentioned by others in this thread) the idea that Europeans initially believed that as per the Bible, they and their language descended from the Jews. They were fervently convinced of this for a long time. But since they hated the Jews (because of the usual Christian nonsense), they desperately sought their origins elsewhere. They imagined up a whole different origin for themselves (and involved the poor ancient Greeks and Romans in everything, including unrelated matters), then found India and Samskritam - and realised they liked it better than their old worldview. So they dumped their whole biblical baggage to create a new one where they come up on top, and then forced it on us.

They invented the Aryans whom no one had heard of and of whom there is no evidence. (There is no historical marker anywhere in the world that states "here lie the Aryans"; there's only records of items and cultures that they find flattering enough to consider as 'Aryan'.)
The AIT was where their ancestors got to be some super-people who brought civilisation everywhere.
Then they thought that these Aryans probably would have had an original homeland, and hence was born the Aryan urheimat idea. And so they started frantically looking for the homeland which they assumed that the supposed Aryans (whom they'd invented) would have had. Thereafter they were also looking to rebuild the 'PIE' supposedly spoken by the supposed Aryans in their supposed Urheimat. If only the Fates (in the Greek sense) would have let them keep on wasting their time this way and stop bothering others. But no, their fetish has affected the view of world history and the histories, societies and politics of many countries.

Their AIT hinged on their methods of classifying languages. Their linguistics rules appear to be non-deterministic and I have serious suspicions that these rules are influenced by their biases in favour of their belief in Aryans. And since no one had a time machine to go back in time and check on the facts, they felt secure in their imperialistic position from where they got to dictate matters.

Coming to today, this new breed of believers got a bit more sophisticated: along with a new name (IE) and whole 'sciences' established to research into the Oryans, PIE and PIE Urheimat, they've also managed to get some Indians and others to swallow their whole premise, hook, line and sinker.
The present-day findings in genetics and Indian archaeology and that of the Tarim Basin did put a damper on things, but still - they still have their central linguistic model which by its very nature of non-determinism cannot be disproved (or proved). Because it's not very scientific, it does not lend itself to scientific scrutiny. That's probably the only reason why the AIT theory, which today survives partially as the IE framework, still holds (which in turn is trying to revive a mutated form of the AIT).

- No invasion, no migration, no influx of Oryans into India. No significant C Asian genetic input (such as it is could merely be from Shaka time, or it could be counter-indicative: what if a few small tribes of Indians settled all of W Asia and C Asia - this is also supported by the fact that the Tarim Basin dwellers were specifically not European but are the same as IVC instead).
- Therefore the method by which they'd imagined Indo-Aryan (and so Samskritam) was introduced into India has fallen through.
- Therefore the very nature of the link of Samskritam and European languages has to be re-investigated (but indologists don't do that). Possibilities for the link, as stated by others elsewhere on this forum, include a much earlier Indian contact with Europe, as opposed to the late 'first contact' Greece made with India.
The nature of the relation between Samskritam and ancient Avestan is not a mystery, of course, as our religious scriptures already clearly show how it came about.

Logically speaking, the rejection of the scenario (related to the AIT/AMT) where Caucasian IE-speakers came to India, should have made indologists take another look at their basic premise and the nature of the linguistic connections. But do the Indologists question their linguistic model, their central assumptions of Oryans, PIE and Urheimat? Oh no. Because their linguistic rules (which were themselves created by a belief in the AIT) says that PIE exists.
Therefore, they're either too conceited ('how can we possibly be wrong?') or too lazy ('200 yrs of 'scholarship' down the drain!') to bother. Or they're motivated by something else entirely - just like they were during the British Empire.

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[Guest]

I have been reading posts on this forum, and I feel inputs like posted here are some of the most far reaching contributions behind busting the AIT, and especially in correcting public knowledge about it. Please don't stop untill the last nail is stuck in the coffin of the falsehood. Good luck!

Acharya Ji, Husky Ji, and others,

I am interested in reading / researching about the background and authentic history of AIT theory. Can you kindly help me/re-direct me reg where to start, and what are some of the key resources, dwelling light on:

- milestones of AIT theory over last 2 centuries
- how it got developed,
- who contributed to it and what were vested motives, if any?
- As of today, what are its unchallenged points?
- What is the most viable alternative theory(ies) to AIT? How matured?
- Who are the Key Indologists who have accepted/propogated this alternative theory, and who are the onese still supporting AIT?
- Why is Indian leftists so much stuck on this?

Please feel free to send me a personal message, if that would be more appropriate.

Thanks

[acharya]

Good questions

We will disect each one of them one by one.

It has to be understood in a systematic way to understand and digest this entire history.

[Guest]

A quick crack:

The story goes something like this, with the discovery of sanskrit, Europe discovered its childhood. In other words, a self definition of themselves and their
past. Thus, William Jones and Muller's representation of Hinduism has much to do with their own nostalgic search for the supposed lost origins of European culture. Thus India and Hinduism was important so far as it can teach Europeans about their “supposed” past. Ergo, India was necessary for Europe’s own self definition.

In seeing the glorious past of Hindus and seeking to connect with europe's glorious past, a theory of "Aryan race" had to be invented. Equating a linguistic affinity between Sanskrit and European languages with racial affinity, Müller looked in India for Aryan ancestors of Europeans.

Then the task of discovering for Hindus, the “real” or “true” Hinduism which they locate in the Vedas. Then, looking vedas bereft any spiritual meaning and only as a historical document, they set out on civilizing hindus and reforming hinduism and embarked on a mission to construct a purified form of Hinduism modelled on Protestant Christianity.

Then comes along White man's burden in full blown form. Somwhere along the line, they want to destroy the culture. What's the best way to kill a culture? Take away the methods and means to express it - Language. So, Witzel like folks get appointed to Sanskrit Chairs, and Romila Rat Thapar becomes Historian, which brings to the last point. Leftists, such dumbasses they are, want to see and portray everything in "class struggle" mold, and Aryan Invasions gave them a ready made model, so why reinvent a class struggle? So, they run with it.

Biggest dumbasses are still "secular hindus" to fall for all this crap and not do their home work.

Story done, will wait for the experts to fill in the gaps.

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[Guest]

We must also find out and name the first Hindus/Indians who taught these whites Samskritam. The persons who translated the Manusmriti for them ( and acquicised in some mistranslations also) should also be found out.

And did they naively believe that the Whites were <i>really</i> interested in the things they were feigning curiosity about?

While many prominent Indians believed in this theory and conjectured about the urheimet ( spelling?) and all that, there should have also been many who saw through the game and wrote about it.

Besides Aurobindo who were they ?

I feel this thread should explore all these and that people in the know will put,lay men like me, wise !

[Guest]

Bits and pieces that are relevant:

1 The Bible on the origins of 'races', and Christian Europe's belief of origins until modern times:
Genesis chapter 9, from Biblegateway verses 18 to 27:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>The Sons of Noah</b>
18 The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were <b>Shem, Ham and Japheth</b>. (<b>Ham was the father of Canaan</b>.)
19 These were <b>the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the earth</b>.
20 Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard.
21 When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent.
22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father's nakedness and told his two brothers outside.
23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father's nakedness. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father's nakedness.

24 When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what <i>his youngest son</i> had done to him,

25 he said,
       "Cursed be <b>Canaan</b>!
       The lowest of <b>slaves</b>
       will he be to his brothers."

26 He also said,
       "Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem!
       <b>May Canaan be the slave of Shem</b>.

27 May God extend the territory of Japheth;
       may <b>Japheth</b> live in the tents of Shem,
       and <b>may Canaan be his slave</b>."
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Japheth is sometimes argued to be Noah's oldest son, Shem the second and Ham the youngest. See this Christian site:<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The names of Noah's sons are always listed in the same order in the Bible. However Japheth was actually the oldest, Shem the middle son, and Ham the youngest.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<b>The biblical races:</b> Ham was considered the father of the Hamitic Race (African people), Shem the father of the Semitic Race and Japeth the father of the Europeans. The US Churches were mostly anti-abolitionist and argued from the biblical standpoint that Africans were 'naturally' meant for slavery because of Noah's curse on the Hamitic race.
Note that although some versions of Bibles (especially today) want to replace the Hebrew word for slave with 'servant' in translation, they are merely being PC and trying to make the bible acceptable in today's world. The actual translation of the Hebrew word is <i>slave</i>.

That same Christian site groups all brown and eastern Asian people in the Hamitic race, after discussing how Europe's imperialism was the fulfilment of the 'prophecy' about Japheth:<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The enlargement of Japheth is now obvious from history. The European nations rapidly built what we like to call our great "western civilization." It rose on the foundations of Greek and Roman philosophy. Our science, economic system, educational system and style of government have allowed the development of a rich and expansive character. In due time it was the Norse, then the English, the French, the Spanish, the Italians, the Portuguese who sailed the seas to the West and to the South colonizing the New World, and Africa, India and the Far East. These expansionist moves were mostly at the expense of the Hamitic peoples who already lived in those lands.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

2 Japheth, the European 'race' and its early influence on Indology
Wikipedia's article on the biblical <b>Japheth</b> as at 25/26 July 2006 (Wikipedia are more reliable in articles about neutral/non-negative aspects of Christian and biblical 'history'):
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Japheth [] is one of the sons of Noah in the Bible. He is most popularly regarded as the youngest son, though some traditions regard him as the eldest son. Genesis 10:21 refers to relative ages of Japheth and his brother Shem, but with sufficient ambiguity to have given rise to different translations. The verse is translated in the KJV as follows, "Unto Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber, the brother of Japheth the elder, even to him were children born.". However, the Revised Standard Version gives, "To Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber, the elder brother of Japheth, children were born."

In Arabic citations, his name is normally given as Yafeth [] ibnu Nuh (Japheth son of Noah).

For those Jews, Muslims, and Christians who take the genealogies of Genesis to be historically accurate, Japheth is commonly believed to be the father of the Europeans. <b>The link between Japheth and the Europeans stems from Genesis 10:5</b>, which states that the sons of Japheth moved to the "isles of the Gentiles," commonly believed to be the Greek isles. According to that book, <b>Japheth and his two brothers formed the three major races</b>:

- <b>Japheth is the father of the Japhetic race </b>
- Ham is the father of the Hamitic race
- Shem is the father of the Semitic race
The term <span style='color:red'>"Japhetic" was also applied by <b>William Jones</b> and other pre-Darwinian linguists to what later became known as the <b>Indo-European language group</b>.</span> In a different sense, it was also used by the Soviet linguist Nikolai Marr in his Japhetic theory.

In the Bible, Japheth is ascribed seven sons: Gomer, Magog, Tiras, Javan, Meshech, Tubal, and Madai. According to Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews I.6):

"Japhet, the son of Noah, had seven sons: they inhabited so, that, beginning at the mountains Taurus and Amanus, they proceeded along Asia, as far as the river Tanais (Don), and along Europe to Cadiz; and settling themselves on the lands which they light upon, which none had inhabited before, they called the nations by their own names."
Josephus subsequently detailed the nations supposed to have descended from the seven sons of Japheth.

Among the nations various later writers have attempted to assign to them are as follows:

Javan: Greeks (Ionians)
Magog: Scythians, Slavs, Irish, Hungarians
<b>Madai: Mitanni, Mannai, Medes, Persians, Indo-Aryans, Kurds </b>
Tubal: Tabali, Georgians, Italics, Illyrians, Iberians, Basques
Tiras: Thracians, Goths, Jutes, Teutons
Meshech: Phrygians, Caucasus Iberians, Algonquians
Gomer: Scythians, Turks, Armenians, Welsh, Picts, Irish, Germans.
In the same vein, Georgian nationalist histories associate Japheth's sons with certain ancient tribes, called Tubals (Tabals, Tibarenoi in Greek) and Meshechs (Meshekhs/Mosokhs, Moschoi in Greek), who they claim represent non-Indo-European and non-Semitic, possibly "Proto-Iberian" tribes of Asia Minor of the 3rd-1st millennias BC.

<b>In the 19th century</b>, Biblical syncretists associated the sons of Noah with ancient pagan gods. Japheth was identified by some scholars with figures from other mythologies, including Iapetos, the Greek Titan; the Indian figures Dyaus Pitar and Pra-Japati, and the Roman Iu-Pater or "Father Jove", which became Jupiter. Some or all of these resemblances may be mere coincidence; the actual Proto-Indo-European etymology of Latin Iuppiter or Iūpiter, i.e. "Jupiter", is usually reconstructed as *dyeu-pəter, "sky-father" (the * denotes a hypothetical, unattested form).<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

If 'Madai' referred to the Medes (in the time o OT composition), then they were probably one of the Indian/Iranian people known to the middle-east in the times that the OT was composed. No mention of Parthia and Persia as separate countries is a strange thing. Were the Medes thought to have given rise to the Parthians and the Persians? Is this why they imagine that the trail of the supposed Oryans was from the W into the E in India?

The OT composers seem to have merely listed the peoples they knew of according to their particular classification system at the time.
To think that European linguistic and racial 'sciences' are based on the classification schemes of the OT composers who did not know all the people of the world (Australian aboriginals, native Americans) nor anything about genetics!

Strange that in the final paragraph they are arguing about "the <i>actual</i> Proto-Indo-European etymology of Latin Iuppiter" which itself is based on the Biblical assumption being true (only the 19th century biblical syncretists are corrected, not the underlying idea with its Biblical origins).

The evolving history of the names of 'European race': Japhetic to Caucasian/European. Then, with the discovery of Samskritam, Aryan also became a racial marker. With the ban on 'Aryan' as a race, Indo-European is sneakily used by some as a race or ethnicity.

[Guest]

3 Sir William Jones: observed that Samskritam bore a certain resemblance to classical Greek and Latin
Wikipedia on this indologist as at 25/26 July 2006 - William Jones (philologist):
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Sir William Jones (September 28, 1746 – April 27, 1794) was an English philologist and student of ancient India, <b>particularly known for his proposition of the existence of a relationship among Indo-European languages</b>.

Jones was born at Beaufort Buildings, Westminster; his father (also named Sir William Jones) was a mathematician. The young William Jones was a linguistic prodigy, learning Greek, Latin, <b>Persian</b>, Arabic and the basics of Chinese writing at an early age. By the end of his life he knew thirteen languages thoroughly and another twenty-eight reasonably well, making him a hyperpolyglot.

Though his father died when he was only three, Jones was still able to go to Harrow and on to university. He graduated from University College, Oxford in 1764. Too poor, even with his award, to pay the fees, he gained a job tutoring seven-year-old Earl Spencer, son of Lord Althorp and as such an ancestor of Princess Diana. He embarked on a career as a tutor and translator for the next six years. During this time he published Histoire de Nader Chah, a French translation of a work originally written in Persian done at the request of King Christian VII of Denmark who had visited Jones - who by the age of 22 had already acquired a reputation as an orientalist. This would be the first of numerous works on Persia, Turkey, and the Middle East in general.

For three years beginning in 1770 he studied law, which would eventually lead him to his life-work in India; after a spell as a circuit judge in Wales, and a fruitless attempt to resolve the issues of the American Revolution in concert with Benjamin Franklin in Paris, he was appointed to the Supreme Court of Bengal in 1783.

In the Subcontinent he was entranced by <b>Indian culture, an as-yet untouched field in European scholarship, </b>and founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal. Over the next ten years he would produce a flood of works on India, launching the modern study of the subcontinent in virtually every social science. He also wrote on the local laws, music, literature, botany, and geography, and made the first English translations of several important works of Indian literature.

<b>Contributions</b>
Of all his discoveries, Jones is best known today for <b>making and propagating the observation that Sanskrit bore a certain resemblance to classical Greek and Latin</b>. In <i>The Sanscrit Language</i> (1786) he <b>suggested that all three languages had a common root</b>, and that indeed they <b>may all be further related, in turn, to Gothic and the Celtic languages, as well as to <i>Persian</i></b>.

<b>His third discourse</b> (delivered in 1786 and published in 1788) with the famed "philologer" passage is often cited as <b>the beginning of comparative linguistics and Indo-European studies</b>. This is Jones' most quoted passage, <b>establishing his tremendous find in the history of linguistics</b>:
<!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a <i>wonderful structure</i>; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Athough the Dutchman Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn (1612–1653) and others had been aware that Ancient Persian belonged to the same language group as the European languages no later than the mid-17th century, and American colonist Jonathan Edwards Jr., published in 1787, had demonstrated that Algonquian and Iroquoian language families (families not merely languages) were related with supporting data (which Jones lacked), it was Jones' discovery that caught the imagination of later scholars and has become the semi-mythical origin of modern historical comparative linguistics.

Jones is also indirectly responsible for some of the feel of the English Romantic movement's poetry (including the likes of Lord Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge), as his translations of "eastern" poetical works were a source for that style.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Of course Samskritam and ancient Avestan (Persian) are related, but William Jones could see the relation between Samskritam and Greek & Latin <i>before</i> he could see the relation between Samskritam and Persian (even late Parsi)? He was a 'linguistic prodigy' who had 'learnt Persian' according to this Wikipedia article. Was something wrong with his observation skills?

As seen above: to Jonesy, Samskritam appeared better than Europe's pride (ancient Greek and Latin): 'more perfect, more exquisitely refined'. He found that it had 'so strong an affinity to Latin and Greek that it couldn't be an accident' (nevertheless, this same 'sharp' observer could only suppose that Samskrit 'might' further be related to Persian). Hence the claim: Samskritam must be connected to the Europeans <i>somehow</i> - after all, it's better than Europe's classical languages according to this 'linguistic prodigy'! The Oryans will emerge soon, Jones having now postulated the Japhetic language family group (later to be called Indo-European family group - see previous post which states that Jonesy was the one who used 'Japhetic' for the language family before it started being called IE).

Strange, Jones is already convinced - without the help of the indologist linguistic stretchercises of today - that Samskritam belongs to the Japhetic (European, from European race) language group whilst the Bible makes Indians themselves a Hamitic people. Could this have influenced the AIT - where Japhetic Europeans needed to have invaded Hamitic India so that the presence of a Japhetic language in a Hamitic country can be explained? (This is a rhetorical question by the way, as the answer is obvious in Jones' choice of Japhetic to name the language family)

[Guest]

I know that somewhere in the IF forums people already stated the following. Kosla Vepa has put up something very important everyone has to read, if they hadn't done so yet, at:
http://indicethos.org/IRF1-PartI.pdf

I haven't finished reading it yet (I plan to go through the remaining pages), but from what I have read it appears to contain the information that is required to enable Indians to make up their own mind.



Post 67:<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->naively believe that the Whites were really interested in the things they were feigning curiosity about<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->We still do. Look at how many Hindus have contributed Hindu documents to western non-Hindu Samskritam sites (one of which clearly links to indology sites and through those to anti-Hindus like Witzel and Farmer). We are still helping them, loading their canons which we don't see are pointing at us.
We can no longer be described as naive (like the Hindus were under British rule); the words to describe us today are 'stupid and ignorant'. And we will be sorry unless we stop it.

[Guest]

If memory serves, <b>dubois the missionary</b> started "brahmins" vs everyone else <b>& in "racial" terms</b>. The biblical jurist, poet and linguist - William Jones, ran with it. With him Muller of course (who never visited India ?).

William Jones started speaking on behalf of brahmins. That is one of the hall marks of the colonialism, isn't it? Colonialism makes the subjugated and defeated participate in their own defeat and by the time their minds are colonized, will start offering their gratitude to those who screwed them over, wiped off their culture and looted the country. In the beginning however, Jones assumed the role of the defeated (hindus) and speaks on their behalf. <i>For example: Jones in his hymn to ganga dedicates to "brahmen", who the heck were they? No one knows or will ever know.</i>

He then speaks as if he was a hindu, the grateful native who welcomes the arrival of the British and Britain’s desire to govern Indian subjects by their own laws. Process of colonized mind, now firmly in place. We begin to screw ourselves, new identity emerges and keeps morphing to fit any ideology other than "sanatana dharma" - and still continues with Brown sahibs.

The point is, no one had to volunteerily screw themselves or played along - this probably speaks to "naivete", (although, I am not disputing the existence of such vermin - again in 20/20 hindsight).

[Guest]

Thanks to the experts for enlightening all of us. Please keep posting the background of AIT.

To try and see firsthand what Jones was doing - I looked up the internet. Looks like the writings of Mr. William Jones has been published in 1993 as "The Collected Works of Sir William Jones" which contains 6240 pages!!! It is only printed by New York University Press, costs a grand, and is out of print. I have also searched the cataogues of libraries I have access to, and the book is not available.

Here is the info from NYUP. http://www.nyupress.org/books/The_Collecte...ts_id-2036.html

Any idea where his works can be accessed? And how come NYUP is publishing his works - Rather than UK or Indian presses??? Is that normal?

[Guest]

our friend romani has now signed in under a new name called "soka norman" and has been peppering me with probing questions. i present below two of his mails and then shall proceed to answer them (others can join me as well).


letter #1)

what is the conection betwin Moses whch live in 1500 bc and Akenaten which live in 1300 bc???

I didnt find any teachings of Jesus about force conversion .The developing of political christianism seem to be the base of this deviation.


Is missionarism imoral? what about buddhist missionares send by Buddha.
What about Swami Vivekananda and his missionary society?

Missionary role -the role of missionary is to show to indians that love betwin persons(thats why christian god have 3 persons that love each other) is the final purpose of life and not non-duality-advaita which is beyonde love.
Acording to missionaries this is the missing thing of hinduism.
While for some ,the person(not individual) is a ilusion for others is the supreme reality.
The person is the unification betwin dvaita and advaita


letter #2)

7) sanskritic/hindu influence has been exported out of india to places as far as ireland (druidism = poor man's hinduism), lithuania (their language is the most similar to sanskrit of all european languages), and europe in general. Also to middle east via the mittanis and hitties etc.


Lithuanian 70% sharing words whit sanskrite .?
Intersting .I was learning that thracian language is extremly related whit lithuanian but not so whit indo-iranian.I was beliving that thracian-lithuanian cognates was related whit a thracian migration in Lithuania.
The theory that IE languages develop by borowing not by a comon proto-IE have the same oldness as AIT. The first curent seem to dissapierd.
Druidism? Hinduism whitout philosophical sistem.Thats why is the poor man.

[Guest]

From Microsoft Encarta 1996 - <i>take note: assumes AIT and assumes IE worldview</i>:
[Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 1996. © 1993-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.]

'Aryan' languages:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Aryan Languages</b>. See <i>Indo-European Languages</i>.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Indo-European languages:<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Indo-European Languages</b>, the most widely spoken family of languages in the world, containing the following subfamilies: Albanian, Armenian, Baltic, Celtic, Germanic, Greek, Indo-Iranian, Italic (including the Romance languages), Slavic, and two extinct subfamilies, Anatolian (including <span style='color:red'>Hittite) and Tocharian</span>. About 1.6 billion people speak Indo-European languages today.

<b>Establishment of the Family </b>
Proof that these highly diverse languages are members of a single family was largely accumulated during a 50-year period around the turn of the 19th century. The extensive Sanskrit and ancient Greek literatures (older than those of any other Indo-European language except the then-undeciphered Hittite) preserved characteristics of the basic Indo-European forms and pointed to the existence of a common parent language. By 1800 the close relationship between Sanskrit, ancient Greek, and Latin had been demonstrated. Hindu grammarians had systematically classified the formative elements of their ancient language. To their studies were <span style='color:red'>added extensive grammatical and phonetic comparisons of European languages.</span> Further studies led to specific conclusions about the sounds and grammar of the assumed parent language (called Proto-Indo-European), the reconstruction of that hypothetical language, and estimates about when it began to break up into separate languages. (By 2000 BC, for example, Greek, Hittite, and Sanskrit were distinct languages, but the differences among them are such that the original tongue must have been fairly unified about a millennium earlier, or about 3000 BC.) The decipherment of Hittite texts (identified as Indo-European in 1915) and the discovery of Tocharian in the 1890s (spoken in medieval Chinese Turkestan, and identified as Indo-European in 1908) added new insights into the development of the family and the probable character of Proto-Indo-European.

<b>The early Indo-European studies established many principles basic to comparative linguistics.</b> One of the most important of these was that the sounds of related languages correspond to one another in predictable ways under specified conditions (see Grimm's Law and Verner's Law for examples). According to one such pattern, in some Indo-European subfamilies—Albanian, Armenian, Indo-Iranian, Slavic, and (partially) Baltic—certain presumed q sounds of Proto-Indo-European became sibilants such as s and ß (an sh sound). The common example of this pattern is the Avestan (ancient Iranian) word satem (“100”), as opposed to the Latin word centum (“100,” pronounced “kentum”). Formerly, the Indo-European languages were routinely characterized as belonging either to a Western (centum) or an Eastern (satem) division. Most linguists, however, no longer automatically divide the family in two in this way, partly because they wish to avoid implying that the family underwent an early split into two major branches, and partly because this trait, although prominent, is only one of several significant patterns that cut across different subfamilies.

<b>Evolution </b>
In general the evolution of the Indo-European languages displays a progressive decay of inflection. Thus, Proto-Indo-European seems to have been highly inflected, as are ancient languages such as Sanskrit, Avestan, and classical Greek; in contrast, comparatively modern languages, such as English, French, and Persian, have moved toward an analytic system (using prepositional phrases and auxiliary verbs). In large part the decay of inflection was a result of the loss of the final syllables of many words over time, so that modern Indo-European words are often much shorter than the ancestral Proto-Indo-European words. Many languages also developed new forms and grammatical distinctions. Changes in the meanings of individual words have been extensive.

<b>Ancient Culture</b>
The original meanings of only a limited number of <span style='color:red'>hypothetical Proto-Indo-European words</span> can be stated with much certainty; derivatives of these words occur with consistent meanings in most Indo-European languages. This small vocabulary suggests a New Stone Age or perhaps an early metal-using culture with farmers and domestic animals. The identity and location of this culture have been the object of much speculation. Archaeological discoveries in the 1960s, however, suggest the prehistoric Kurgan culture. Located in the steppes west of the Ural Mountains between 5000 and 3000 BC, this culture had diffused as far as eastern Europe and northern Iran by about 2000 BC.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Indo-Iranian languages:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Indo-Iranian Languages</b>, group of related languages spoken by more than 450 million people in a region extending from eastern Turkey to Bangladesh and including most of India. The Indo-Iranian languages form a subfamily of the Indo-European languages.

The Indo-Iranian languages are generally divided into an Iranian branch and an Indo-Aryan, or Indic, branch. Major Iranian languages include ancient Avestan and Old Persian, various medieval languages (see Persian Language), and modern Persian, Pashto or Afghan, Kurdish (see Kurds), and Baloch (see Balochistan). Also of Iranian stock are the languages of the ancient Scythians and Sarmatians and a modern remnant, Ossetic (see Ossetians), spoken in the Caucasus. The Indo-Aryan branch includes the ancient Sanskrit language; medieval languages called Prakrits; and modern languages such as Hindi-Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, and other languages of India (see Indian Languages), Nepali (official in Nepal and Sikkim), and Sinhalese (official in Sri Lanka). Considered to be an Indo-Aryan subgroup <b>or a third Indo-Iranian branch </b>are the Dardic languages, which include Kashmiri and Romany (Gypsy).

Early Sanskrit literature is the oldest of any Indo-European literature <b>except Hittite</b>. Sanskrit and Avestan resemble each other closely and are <span style='color:red'>considered to reflect extremely faithfully the consonantal system and elaborate inflections of the Proto-Indo-European language.</span> The modern Indo-Aryan and Iranian branches have tended to simplify the ancient consonantal system and to replace inflections with word combinations. The Indo-Aryan languages were also influenced by the sounds and grammar of the non-Indo-European Dravidian language family.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

<i>take note: assumes AIT and assumes IE worldview</i>:
Wackypedia introduction on the <b>Mitanni</b> (with the usual AIT-AMT-influx scenarios) - as at 27/28 July 2006:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Mitanni or Mittani (in Assyrian sources Hanilgalbat, Khanigalbat) was a <b>Hurrian kingdom </b>in northern Syria from ca. 1500 BC. The name was later used as a geographical term for the area between the Khabur and Euphrates rivers in Neo-Assyrian times. Mitanni is <b>thought</b> to have been a feudal state led by a warrior nobility of partly Indo-Aryan descent, reaching Syria at some point during the 18th or 17th century BC in the course of the Indo-Aryan migration that separated Middle Bronze Age Proto-Indo-Iranians into the Indo-Aryan and Iranian branches.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Wackypedia intro to <b>Hurrians</b> starts with:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->For the history of the kingdom of Mitanni (<b>1500-1300 BC</b>), see Mitanni.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Wackypedia on the <b>language of the Hurrians</b>:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Hurrians spoke an ergative-agglutinative language, conventionally called Hurrian, unrelated to neighboring Semitic or Indo-European languages, but clearly related to Urartian — a language spoken about a millennium later in northeastern Anatolia — and possibly, very distantly, to the present-day Northeast Caucasian languages.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Excerpted from Wackypedia's article on the <b>Mitanni</b>, as at 27/28 July 2006:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Indo-Aryan superstrate</b>
Some theonyms, proper names and other terminology of the Mitanni exhibit an Indo-Aryan superstrate, suggesting that an Indo-Aryan elite <b>imposed</b> itself over the Hurrian population in the course of the Indo-Aryan expansion. <b>In a treaty between the Hittites and the Mitanni</b>, the deities Mitra, Varuna, Indra, and Nasatya (Ashvins) are invoked. Kikkuli's horse training text includes technical terms such as aika (eka, one), tera (tri, three), panza (pancha, five), satta (sapta, seven), na (nava, nine), vartana (vartana, round). Another text has babru (babhru, brown), parita (palita, grey), and pinkara (pingala, red). Their chief festival was the celebration of the solstice (vishuva) which was common in most cultures in the ancient world. The Mitanni warriors were called marya, the term for warrior in Sanskrit as well.

Sanskritic interpretations of Mitanni royal names render Shuttarna as Sutarna ("good sun"), Baratarna as Paratarna ("great sun"), Parsatatar as Parashukshatra ("ruler with axe"), Saustatar as Saukshatra ("son of Sukshatra, the good ruler"), Artatama as "most righteous", Tushratta as Dasharatha ("having ten chariots"?), and, finally, Mattivaza as Mativaja ("whose wealth is prayer"). Some scholars believe that not only the kings had Indo-Aryan names; a large number of other names resembling Sanskrit have been unearthed in records from the area.

It has been widely <span style='color:red'>conjectured that this original Mitanni aristocracy who bore Indo-Aryan names, had emigrated from the north and <b>imposed</b> themselves upon the indigenous Hurrians of Syria who were not Indo-Aryan, <b>although historical clues are scarce.</b></span> Some[citation needed] have attempted to connect the name M(a)itanni with Madai (Medes), an Iranian people which established an empire to the West centuries later. In addition, Kurdish scholars believe that one of their clans, the Mattini which live in the same geographical region, preserves the name of Mitanni [2]. Archaeologists have attested a striking parallel in the spread to Syria of a distinct pottery type associated with what they call the Kura-Araxes culture, however the dates they usually assign for this are somewhat earlier than the Mitanni are thought to have first arrived.

Finally, for what it's worth, Eusebius, writing in the early 4th century, quotes fragments of Eupolemus, a now-lost Jewish historian of the 2nd century BC, as saying that "around the time of Abraham, the Armenians invaded the Syrians", corresponding approximately to the arrival of the Mitanni, since Abraham is traditionally assumed at around 1700 BC, and the Mitanni would have entered Assyria from the area known as Armenia in Eupolemus' time.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Notes:
- Whether the Mitanni populace ever turn out to be Iranian Medes or Iranian Kurds, the language used by their aristocracy was related to Samskritam and was <i>not</i> Iranian. And since "scholars believe that not only the kings had Indo-Aryan names; a large number of other names resembling Sanskrit have been unearthed in records from the area" this could mean more of the populace was or had become Indo-Aryan speaking (instead of Iranian-speaking).
- Once again there is the unverified conjecture that these people invaded and imposed themselves on the populace. "Historical clues are scarce". (Though 'scarce' is more than what they have for the AIT.)
- Are ignorant wackypedians confusing themselves by equating the dynastic title of the Mauryas with the word 'marya'?
According to the contents at http://www.sunyaprajna.com/Worldview/SRKco...nBrahmins&Caste
posted by Rajesh_G in another thread:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Chandragupta <b>Maurya</b> and the Maurya Dyanasty - Maurya originates from <b>Muria</b>, a tribe which used to collect Peacock (Mor) feathers, also goat herders<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Whilst the meaning of Marya - from http://www.aa.tufs.ac.jp/~tjun/sktdic/cg...c-srch.cgi
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->search `marya' in `Apte Dic'
meanings of "marya" [1]
a.{a-stem}
1.mortal
#36399

meanings of "marya" [2]
m.{a-stem}
1.a man;
2.a young man;
3.a male;
4.a lover;
5.a stallion;
6.a camel<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->And just in case, I also searched for maarya (doesn't turn up) and maryaa:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->search `maryaa' in `Apte Dic'
meanings of "maryaa"
f.{a-stem}
1.a limit<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->And now Maurya - which turns out to be only a name:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->search `maurya' in `Apte Dic'
meanings of "maurya"
m.{a-stem}
1.name of a dynasty of kings beginning with chandragupta
#37757
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

<i>take note: assumes AIT and assumes IE worldview</i>:
Here is Microsoft Encarta '96 on the matters of the Hittite language:
[Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 1996. © 1993-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Hittite Language</b>, Indo-European language of the extinct Hittite civilization, surviving in cuneiform inscriptions on tablets excavated at sites in Asia Minor in the region occupied by ancient Hatti (see Hittites). Hittite, Luwian, Palaic (all recorded before 1000 BC), Lydian, and Lycian (both recorded c. 500-200 BC) form the Anatolian subfamily of Indo-European languages. Palaic was spoken in the country called Pala, north of Hatti, and Luwian was spoken in the country called Arzawa, west of Hatti, and in Cilicia, south of Hatti; Lydian was spoken in northwestern Anatolia, Lycian (descended from Luwian) in the southwest. The Hittites called their language Nesian, after Nesa, the first town that they settled, near the site of present-day Kayseri, Turkey.
Hittite texts in cuneiform writing date to <b>1600 BC </b>and are the <b>oldest written records</b> of any Indo-European language. Hittite was identified as an Indo-European language only in 1915, by the Czech Orientalist Bedrich Hrozný, and the related languages even more recently. Linguists are not yet certain whether the Anatolian group broke away from the parent language, Proto-Indo-European, before any other known Indo-European tongue, or whether it was merely one of the earliest to break away. Scholarly research recognizes a much larger number of Indo-European words in the Hittite language than was previously suspected; the source of many other words remains to be identified.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->So <b>because of the AIT and IE</b> the Hittites win the competition for oldest IE literature by about a 100 years (compared to the arbitrary 1500 bce date for the AIT)
A number of Christian websites now state that the Hittites mentioned in their Bible are not the same as the IE-speaking Hittites and have renamed the biblical people as Hethites instead. This is also confirmed in Wackypedia:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hittites<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The term "Hittites" is taken from the KJV translation of the Hebrew bible, translating [] "Children of Heth". The archaeologists who discovered the Anatolian Hittites in the 19th century initially identified them with these Biblical Hittites. Today, their identification with either the Hittite Empire proper[citation needed] or the Neo-Hittite kingdoms is a matter of dispute.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Hittites<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Hittites (also Hethites) and Children of Heth, translating Hebrew [] are the second of the eleven Canaanite nations in the Hebrew Bible. They are purportedly descended from one Heth [], a son of Canaan, son of Ham, and they are mentioned in Genesis as having sold land to Abraham.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

AIT is all BS and their theory assigns 1500 BCE for it.

Microsoft Encarta seems to claim that the Hittite had cuneiform records <i>written</i> down in about 1600 BC.

Should we worry about this as the Vedas were never written down and were only <i>orally</i> transmitted !

Little should we care what these Indologists claim.

[Guest]

Who Was ABRAHAM?

In a paper by Gene D. Matlock, B.A., M.A., the author starts by the following:
------ In his History of the Jews, the Jewish scholar and theologian Flavius Josephus (37 - 100 A.D.), wrote that the Greek philosopher Aristotle had said: "...These Jews are derived from the Indian philosophers; they are named by the Indians Calani." (Book I:22.)
"Megasthenes, who was sent to India by Seleucus Nicator, about three hundred years before Christ, and whose accounts from new inquiries are every day acquiring additional credit, says that the Jews 'were an Indian tribe or sect called Kalani...'" (Anacalypsis, by Godfrey Higgins, Vol. I; p. 400.) --------
And proved that Jews are culturally from India, thus Jews writings and mathematics are rooted in India, and not vice versa. The entire article is here:
http://www.viewzone.com/abraham.html

What do you think of this theory?

[Guest]

Post 78: <!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->AIT is all BS and their theory assigns 1500 BCE for it.

Microsoft Encarta seems to claim that the Hittite had cuneiform records written down in about 1600 BC.

Should we worry about this as the Vedas were never written down and were only orally transmitted !

Little should we care what these Indologists claim.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I'm with you on this. (I'll enlarge my warning at the top of the first Encarta-post larger and copy them to the top of the other posts). I don't believe in the AIT, in Aryans and Dravidians, nor in Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages - yes, from what I've read, I have decide that IE really is a matter of faith than anything else.
I just posted the articles and excerpts that I thought others might not generally have access to/might not have looked at. They reveal many underlying things that are not necessarily related to the IE view.

For instance:
- The fact that the Hittite records are 1600bce is probably used as proof that it is older than Vedas whose date was randomly assigned;
The fact that the dating for the Hittite-Mitanni treaty is found to be older than the date randomly accorded the AI of India is supposedly an additional proof that IE language was introduced into India. (The linguistic gymnastics to prove that the Mitanni treaty was written in an 'older' form of 'Indo-Aryan/Indo-Iranian' can be ignored. This is based on the IE assumption and they merely want to prove it with their linguistic exercise using their biased rules). Some indologists thought that it has been proven that AI of India was in 1500bce and so call upon the Mitanni treaty as proof that an Indian-like language existed external to India before the AI. (Elst also mentioned an example case of where indologists assume the 1500bce automatically when trying to defend the AIT/AMT)
- That indologists have grouped Kashmiri separately from the other Indian languages, and that it is 'Dardic' (?) and that this might be an Indo-Iranian subbranch separate of 'Indo-Aryan' and Iranian.
- About the Encarta statement: "By 1800 the close relationship between Sanskrit, ancient Greek, and Latin had been <i>demonstrated</i>." Nothing had been demonstrated. It had only been argued informally; then this gave rise to the IE linguistic rules which then 'proved' that the informal arguments were true. See the cyclical proof:
informal proposition that they are genetically related languages (belong to family) <-> biased with that assumption, rules are created to prove these languages are part of the same family <-> family tree once created obeys all these linguistic rules, hence 'proving' initial informal argument. "Q.E.D."
- Telling statement from Encarta: "The early Indo-European studies established many principles basic to comparative linguistics."
So, these rules and principles were created (and influenced) when they had first decided that the languages must be related. Linguistics is not Quantum Physics - even if it has to still be content to carry out its work in theoretical space, it bases itself on maths and works with mathematical proofs. Linguistics <i>insists</i> on working in theory only - even though it doesn't have to, because the other fields like archaeology, genetics, anthropology can track down populations and their movements and can confirm or contradict the large-scale models generated by linguistics. (Each language in the old times needed speakers to transmit them, unless all societies had the same alphabet and were literate.)
- Encarta statement: "Hindu grammarians had systematically classified the formative elements of their ancient language. To their studies were added extensive grammatical and phonetic comparisons of European languages."
Europe wasn't objective in this at all, because it became a matter of their own identity (IE is very much connected with European identity)