09-25-2006, 11:49 PM
Pioneer Book Reviews 25 Sept. 2006
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Invasion that never took place
What NS Rajaram has done in this in-depth study is to hit a mortal blow to the Aryan invasion conjecture, using archaeology and pre-historic anthropology to establish the ancient roots of Indic civilisation, writes MV Kamath
<b>SARASWATI RIVER AND THE VEDIC CIVILISATION, NS RAJARAM, ADITYA PRAKASHAN, RS 300</b>
One of the biggest lies ever propagated by our foreign masters, the British, was that India was originally inhabited by a "rabble of aboriginal savages" and that civilisation was brought to India by so-called Aryans who invaded it from somewhere in Central Asia or Europe, while another branch of the same people migrated westward towards Europe to become ancestors of the modern Europeans.
This theory helped the British in two ways. In the first place, they could divide Indians into two parts: Successors to the so-called Aryans living in the north; and, the people who originally lived in the north but were driven away from their homes to migrate to the south (Dravidians). A north-south divide was thus created. In the second place, it gave the British a moral justification to rule India.
As a BBC report (October 6, 2005) puts it succinctly, "If (the Aryan invasion theory) gave a historical precedent to justify the role and status of the British raj, they could argue that they were transforming India for the better in the same way that the Aryans has done thousands of years earlier." The idea mooted by the BBC had been propagated decades ago by the British not only to justify their role as conquerors but also give Indians a tremendous inferiority complex.
In the House of Commons in 1929, when Britain was at the height of its power, British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin observed, "Now after ages... the two branches of the great Aryan ancestry have again been brought together by providence... By establishing British rule in India, God said to the British, 'I have brought you and the Indians together after a long separation... It is your duty to raise them to their own level as quickly as possible... brothers as you are."
The myth of an Aryan invasion of India may have been originally propagated by a German-turned-Briton, Max Mueller, but the theory went unchallenged for a long time. For decades, Indians brought up under British rule accepted the insult until scholars - more objective and inquiring - began to look at Indian civilisation more scientifically and come to clear conclusions that dispelled myth imposed on Indians. One myth was that India had been invaded by Aryans.
The Aryan invasion theory was totally exposed as untrue. This made it clear that everything associated with India - whether in the realm of science, philosophy, language and civilisation - was cent per cent Indians. It was proved beyond doubt that the Harappan writing was more than a thousand years older than the oldest West Asian writings, that the Indian artist anticipated the Greek artist by more than 2,000 years, that Indian intellectuals were the first to conceive astronomy even earlier than the Greeks, that it was India which originated the concept of zero and the decimal system and that genetic evidence shows that the people of India lived by themselves within the Indian borders for tens of thousands of years and were not foreigners to the Indian soil.
Conclusive scientific evidence has now been obtained to show that there never has been such a people as an "Aryan race", which is racist in conception. Besides, it is wrong to connect the Indian caste system to the concept of Aryan invasion that equated "upper caste'' Hindus genetically closer to west Europeans than lower caste Hindus - a theory not only unscientific, but also bordering on fabrication.
What NS Rajaram has done in this brilliant study is to hit a mortal blow to the Aryan invasion theory, using archaeology and pre-historic anthropology to push his argument through. In this, of course, he had to bring in the history of the river Saraswati and the origins of the Indus-Saraswati civilisation that was in existence for more than a thousand years before the supposed Aryan invasion.
What Western 'scholars' in their ignorance forget was that there is a not a single mention of any alien invasion or migration of 'Aryans' in ancient Indian literature; what has been noted instead is migration of Indians out of India. In other words, it was India that took civilisation to the west and not the other way round. Western scholars could not accept that the Sanskrit word 'Arya' merely meant 'noble' and had no association with race. Rajaram quotes the Sanskrit saying, Mahakula kulin arya sabhya sajjana sadhavah, that meant "an arya is one who hails from a noble family, is of gentle behaviour and demeanour, is good natured and of righteous conduct''.
But where does the river Saraswati come in the picture? It was alongside the river Saraswati that the great Harappan civilisation prospered. The end of that age occurred around 2000 BC with the final drying up of the river. It was the drying up of the river that caused the collapse of the Harappan civilisation and not any invasion.
The Rig Vedic people were in India as early as 4000 BC. They were not aliens and the decipherment of the Indus script clearly shows that Vedic Sanskrit Indian civilisation was more ancient than the Mesopotamian civilisation. This has been proved by recent finds of underwater settlements in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu dating to before 7000 BC.
The falsity of an Aryan invasion has been exposed before - as in 1993 by S Talgeri - but Rajaram has produced fresh evidence that is unchallengeable. It was not the so-called Aryans who brought civilisation to India but it was the Indian who took civilisation to the West.
The Vedic people were a maritime people who lived in the enormous riverine delta and it is now a scientific fact that biological connections between South-East Asia and India are much closer than that of India and central Asia or Europe. Also, Vedic India has a strong maritime component and recent research has shown that Indian cotton was exported to south and central America going back to 2000 BC. It was not Columbus who discovered a sea route to America but the Yadavs who excelled in boat building and navigational skills. Those are recent findings, scientifically proved.
Rajaram, in the circumstances, gives us a wholly now picture of ancient Vedic India that places his work in a class of its own, unsurpassed as of now, but made possible by recent scientific and historical discoveries. "Let us make the whole world aryan," says the Rig Veda. And it is about time, too.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Invasion that never took place
What NS Rajaram has done in this in-depth study is to hit a mortal blow to the Aryan invasion conjecture, using archaeology and pre-historic anthropology to establish the ancient roots of Indic civilisation, writes MV Kamath
<b>SARASWATI RIVER AND THE VEDIC CIVILISATION, NS RAJARAM, ADITYA PRAKASHAN, RS 300</b>
One of the biggest lies ever propagated by our foreign masters, the British, was that India was originally inhabited by a "rabble of aboriginal savages" and that civilisation was brought to India by so-called Aryans who invaded it from somewhere in Central Asia or Europe, while another branch of the same people migrated westward towards Europe to become ancestors of the modern Europeans.
This theory helped the British in two ways. In the first place, they could divide Indians into two parts: Successors to the so-called Aryans living in the north; and, the people who originally lived in the north but were driven away from their homes to migrate to the south (Dravidians). A north-south divide was thus created. In the second place, it gave the British a moral justification to rule India.
As a BBC report (October 6, 2005) puts it succinctly, "If (the Aryan invasion theory) gave a historical precedent to justify the role and status of the British raj, they could argue that they were transforming India for the better in the same way that the Aryans has done thousands of years earlier." The idea mooted by the BBC had been propagated decades ago by the British not only to justify their role as conquerors but also give Indians a tremendous inferiority complex.
In the House of Commons in 1929, when Britain was at the height of its power, British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin observed, "Now after ages... the two branches of the great Aryan ancestry have again been brought together by providence... By establishing British rule in India, God said to the British, 'I have brought you and the Indians together after a long separation... It is your duty to raise them to their own level as quickly as possible... brothers as you are."
The myth of an Aryan invasion of India may have been originally propagated by a German-turned-Briton, Max Mueller, but the theory went unchallenged for a long time. For decades, Indians brought up under British rule accepted the insult until scholars - more objective and inquiring - began to look at Indian civilisation more scientifically and come to clear conclusions that dispelled myth imposed on Indians. One myth was that India had been invaded by Aryans.
The Aryan invasion theory was totally exposed as untrue. This made it clear that everything associated with India - whether in the realm of science, philosophy, language and civilisation - was cent per cent Indians. It was proved beyond doubt that the Harappan writing was more than a thousand years older than the oldest West Asian writings, that the Indian artist anticipated the Greek artist by more than 2,000 years, that Indian intellectuals were the first to conceive astronomy even earlier than the Greeks, that it was India which originated the concept of zero and the decimal system and that genetic evidence shows that the people of India lived by themselves within the Indian borders for tens of thousands of years and were not foreigners to the Indian soil.
Conclusive scientific evidence has now been obtained to show that there never has been such a people as an "Aryan race", which is racist in conception. Besides, it is wrong to connect the Indian caste system to the concept of Aryan invasion that equated "upper caste'' Hindus genetically closer to west Europeans than lower caste Hindus - a theory not only unscientific, but also bordering on fabrication.
What NS Rajaram has done in this brilliant study is to hit a mortal blow to the Aryan invasion theory, using archaeology and pre-historic anthropology to push his argument through. In this, of course, he had to bring in the history of the river Saraswati and the origins of the Indus-Saraswati civilisation that was in existence for more than a thousand years before the supposed Aryan invasion.
What Western 'scholars' in their ignorance forget was that there is a not a single mention of any alien invasion or migration of 'Aryans' in ancient Indian literature; what has been noted instead is migration of Indians out of India. In other words, it was India that took civilisation to the west and not the other way round. Western scholars could not accept that the Sanskrit word 'Arya' merely meant 'noble' and had no association with race. Rajaram quotes the Sanskrit saying, Mahakula kulin arya sabhya sajjana sadhavah, that meant "an arya is one who hails from a noble family, is of gentle behaviour and demeanour, is good natured and of righteous conduct''.
But where does the river Saraswati come in the picture? It was alongside the river Saraswati that the great Harappan civilisation prospered. The end of that age occurred around 2000 BC with the final drying up of the river. It was the drying up of the river that caused the collapse of the Harappan civilisation and not any invasion.
The Rig Vedic people were in India as early as 4000 BC. They were not aliens and the decipherment of the Indus script clearly shows that Vedic Sanskrit Indian civilisation was more ancient than the Mesopotamian civilisation. This has been proved by recent finds of underwater settlements in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu dating to before 7000 BC.
The falsity of an Aryan invasion has been exposed before - as in 1993 by S Talgeri - but Rajaram has produced fresh evidence that is unchallengeable. It was not the so-called Aryans who brought civilisation to India but it was the Indian who took civilisation to the West.
The Vedic people were a maritime people who lived in the enormous riverine delta and it is now a scientific fact that biological connections between South-East Asia and India are much closer than that of India and central Asia or Europe. Also, Vedic India has a strong maritime component and recent research has shown that Indian cotton was exported to south and central America going back to 2000 BC. It was not Columbus who discovered a sea route to America but the Yadavs who excelled in boat building and navigational skills. Those are recent findings, scientifically proved.
Rajaram, in the circumstances, gives us a wholly now picture of ancient Vedic India that places his work in a class of its own, unsurpassed as of now, but made possible by recent scientific and historical discoveries. "Let us make the whole world aryan," says the Rig Veda. And it is about time, too.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->