(Queries) Vedic texts traditional interpretation related | L.M. Fosse <-> Bhagwan Singh

[Megh Kalyanasundaram]

Namaste, 

In ARYAN PAST AND POST-COLONIAL PRESENT, L.M. Fosse has stated that Bhagwan Singh's "...construction of the Aryans as merchants and agriculturalists with maritime activities"  "...can hardly be justified on the basis of the Vedic texts as traditionally interpreted."

"It is obvious that Singh’s construction of the Aryans as merchants and agriculturalists with maritime activities is fitted to the Harappan civilization as we know it from the archaeological remains. It can hardly be justified on the basis of the Vedic texts as traditionally interpreted. ... Marshall musters cultural data from the Veda only to conclude that they differ significantly from what we know about the Harappans. Singh’s book is a protest against precisely such conclusions. It deals predominantly with material culture and tries to relate data from the Vedas to archaeological material from the Harappans’ civilization." (Fosse 2005:443 in The Indo-Aryan Controversy (ed. Edwin F. Bryant and Laurie L. Patton)) [Emphasis added]

Fosse clearly seems to be writing from a position of 'deep expertise' and 'authority' in traditional interpretation/s (?) of  Vedic texts. To make matters less clear, he does not seem to have explicitly identified the interpretation/s being referred to as traditional. (I would be most glad to be corrected if have missed any explicit identification, not an inferred one). 

Queries: 

1. Is Fosse's statement—"It can hardly be justified on the basis of the Vedic texts as traditionally interpreted"—the last word in this matter, from the point of view of traditional interpretation/s of Vedic texts?
2. Would anyone know if there has been a response to this statement, either from Shri Bhagwan Singh ji or from any other scholar familiar with traditional interpretation/s of Vedic texts? 
3. Shri Bhagwan Singh ji's (1995) book, in Fosse's own words, was apparently a "protest against precisely such conclusions," in reference to Marshall having mustered, according to Fosse, "cultural data from the Veda only to conclude that they differ significantly from what we know about the Harappans." One needs to guess, thanks to the lack of explicit specificity in Fosse's comment, that perhaps Sāyaṇācārya's commentaries might be one (if not the only one) being alluded to as traditional interpretation. Surely Sāyaṇācārya could not have known of a "Proto-Indo-European hypothesis" and, specifically in this context, a "Harappan civilization". Surely did not have to look for correlations between archaeological remains from Harappan civilization and Vedic texts as, to start with, there was no Vedic/Harappan binary in Sāyaṇācārya's time. Seen in this light, does anything other than examining Bhagwan Singh's scholarship for its own merit make sense at all? Therefore, is anyone aware of a point-wise (or at least sufficiently detailed but pointed) critique of what Shri Bhagawan Singh ji has posited (in, for instance, Trade and Commerce in the Vedic Age (1993)) beyond the seemingly limited (< than 3 full pages) response of Fosse, punctuated by copious ad-hominem though (sample this Fosse (1995:442): "However, Singh’s obvious lack of scholarly training robs him of the ability to use his reading to his advantage, and the views presented on the 500 pages of his book fail dismally to convince")?

Sincerely,

Megh

[Megh Kalyanasundaram]

Namaste, 

In continuation of the note I am responding to, with this one, and by way of some additional context: the relevance of the 3 queries could be seen in the light of the following excerpt (highlighted in green below), from the paper Interrogating Indus inscriptions to unravel their mechanisms of meaning conveyance published in Nature on July 09th 2019. 

"In this context, the historical evidence extracted from the earliest available literatures of ancient India should be thoroughly analyzed."

Best,

Megh

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[Megh Kalyanasundaram]

Namaste, 

To the 3 queries raised on July 22, 2019, vide https://groups.google.com/d/msg/bvparishat/kKxASUdOir4/BxFd0dJWBAAJ, here are is a related one added: 

4. If anyone is aware of any published disagreement/critique of statements in the image below, excerpted from p. 8-9 of this open-access 2015 paper (Indian Journal of History of Science, 50.1 (2015) 1-25, DOI: 10.16943/ijhs/2015/v50i1/48109) and would kind enough to share the reference, I would be grateful. [Mohenjodaro M.2430 and introduction of मृगशीर्ष (mṛgaśīrṣa) related]

Sincerely,

Megh

[Megh Kalyanasundaram]

A severely under-appreciated, under-referenced, pioneering tome: Bhagwan Singh's The Vedic Harappans (1995, pp. xxiv+494, 52 illus., ISBN 81-86471-04-9). 

28 pages of just bibliography! 

Best,

Megh