Aryans: Subhash Kak

[Mediaman]

Aryans

Subhash Kak
(Subhash Kak is a professor at Louisiana State University,
Baton Rouge. His recent books are "In Search of the
Cradle of Civilization'' and ``The Secrets of Ishbar:
Poems on Kashmir and other Landscapes.'')

Introduction
The concept of invading hordes of Aryans conquering northern India
around 1500 BC arose in the nineteenth century for a variety of
reasons. Linguists had established that the north Indian, Iranian, and
most European languages were structurally related and belonged to the
same family, which was given the name Indo-European. A homeland was
postulated and it was assumed that the residents of this homeland
spoke a common language, called "proto-Indo-European'' (PIE), which
was the ancestor to the historically
known ancient languages such as Sanskrit, Avestan, Greek, Latin, and
soon. Based primarily on linguistic considerations, several theories
were proposed according to which this homeland was likely to have been
in southeastern Europe or Central Asia. By assigning an arbitrary
period of 200 years to each of the several layers of the pre-Buddhist-
Vedic literature, the period of around 1500 BC was arrived at for the
entry of the Aryans into India.

This alleged Aryan invasion was then tied up with the mention of the
horse in the Vedic literature by asserting that the invading Aryans
brought horses and chariots with them. This hypothesis was considered
proven by claiming that the domestication of the horse took place not
too much before 1500 BC. It was assumed that the horse provided
military advantage to the Aryans, which made it possible for them to
conquer the indigenous inhabitants of India.

Early objections
Scholars soon pointed out many problems with this theory. First, the
earliest Indian literature has no memory of any such entry from
outside and its focus is squarely the region of the seven rivers,
``Sapta Sindhu'', with its centre in the Sarasvati valleys and
covering a great part of north and northwest India ranging from Indus
to Ganga to Sarayu. Second, Indian traditional king lists go back into
fourth millennium BC and earlier; also, the more reliable lists of
teachers in the Vedic books cannot be fitted into the Aryan invasion
chronology. Third, it was contended that the beginnings of the vast
Vedic literature needed a greater time horizon easily reaching back at
least into the third millennium BC. Fourth, astronomical references in
the Vedic literature refer to events as early as the fourth millennium
BC. The Puranas remember migrations out of India; such migrations were
invoked to explain the reference to Vedic gods in treaties between
kings and to other Indic names in West Asian texts and inscriptions in
the second millennium BC; but the supporters of the Aryan invasion
theory saw these West Asian Indic references as traces of the
migratory path of the Aryans into India. Fifth, The Vedic literature
nowhere mentions riding in battle and the horse was rare in Vedic
times and the word ``ashva'' for horse was often used figuratively for
speed. Sixth, there was no
plausible process explaining how incursions by nomads could have
overwhelmed the original languages in one of the most densely
populated regions of the ancient world. Seventh, the Vedic literature
spoke of the Aryans as living in a complex society with an important
urban element; there is mention of cities, ocean-going ships, numerous
professions, which is contradictory to the image of barbaric invaders
from the north.

Although the assumptions at the basis of the Aryan invasion theory
were arbitrary and there was little supporting evidence, the reason
this theory became popular was that it fulfilled several unstated
needs of the historians at the time. It reinforced the racial
attitudes popular in the nineteenth century so that the highly
regarded Vedas could be assigned to a time before the Aryans in India
mixed with the indigenous races. The conquest of India by the British
was taken to be similar to the supposed earlier conquest by the Aryans
and so this theory played an important imperialistic function. Slowly,
as the Aryan invasion date became the anchor that was used to fix
other ancient events in the histories of the Indian, Iranian, and
European peoples, scholars became ever more reluctant to question the
assumptions on which it was based.

New discoveries and insights
Archaeological discoveries made in the Indian sub-continent in the
past century have slowly accumulated evidence which has led to a
discrediting of the Aryan invasion model. These discoveries have been
reinforced by new insights from history of science,
astronomy, and literary analysis. The main points of the evidence are
highlighted below:

* It has been found that the Sapta Sindhu region -- precisely the same
region which is the heartland of the Vedic texts-- is associated with
a cultural tradition that has been traced back to at least 8000 BC
without any break. It appears that the Sarasvati region was the centre
of this cultural tradition and this is what the Vedic texts also
indicate. The term ``Aryan'' in Indian literature has no racial or
linguistic connotations.

* According to the work of Kenneth Kennedy of Cornell University there
is no evidence of demographic discontinuity in archaeological remains
during the period 4500 to 800 BC. In other words, there was no
significant influx of people into India during this period.

* B.B. Lal of the Archaeological Survey of India discovered fire
altars in his excavations at the third-millennium site of Kalibangan.
It appears now that fire altars were in use at other Harappan sites as
well. Fire altars are an essential part of the Vedic ritual.

* Geologists have determined that the Sarasvati river dried up around
1900 BC. Since Sarasvati is the greatest river of the Rigvedic hymns,
one conclusion that can be drawn is that the Rig-Veda was composed
prior to 1900 BC.

* Study of pottery styles and cultural artifacts has led
archaeologists such as Jim Shaffer of Case Western Reserve University
to conclude that the Indus-Sarasvati culture exhibits a continuity
that can be traced back to at least 8000 BC. Shaffer summarizes:
'The shift by Harappans [after the drying up of the Sarasvati river
around 1900 BC] is the only archaeologically documented west-to-east
movement of human
populations in South Asia before the first half of the first
millennium BC.'' In other words, there has been no Aryan invasion.

* A. Seidenberg of University of California at Berkeley reviewed the
geometry of the fire altars of India as summarized in early Vedic
texts such as the Shatapatha Brahmana and compared it to the early
geometry of Greece and Mesopotamia. In a series of papers, he
was able to establish that this Vedic geometry should be dated prior
to 1700 BC.

* It has now been discovered that altar constructions were used to
represent astronomical knowledge. Furthermore, an astronomical code
has been found in the organization of the Vedic books. This code
establishes that the Vedic people had a tradition of observational
astronomy which means that the many astronomical references in the
Vedic texts that point to events as early as 3000 or 4000 BC can no
longer be ignored.

* Recent computer analysis of the texts from India have shown that the
Brahmi script of the times of the Mauryan king Ashoka is derived from
the earlier third millennium script of the Indus-Sarasvati age. This
again is strong evidence of cultural continuity.

* The archaeological record shows that the Indus-Sarasvati area was
different from other ancient civilizations in many cultural features.
For example, in contrast to ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia, it shows
very little monumental architecture; it appears that the political
organization and its relationship to other elites in the society was
unique. This is paralleled by the unique character of the Vedic
literary tradition with its emphasis on knowledge and the nature of
the self.

* Remains of the horse have been discovered in the Harappan ruins. A
clay model of a horse was found in Mohenjo Daro. New findings from
Ukraine show evidence of horse riding as early as 4000 BC. The notion
that the Aryans burst into history as horse riding nomads sometime
after 2000 BC stands totally rejected.

Taken together, the cumulative evidence completely belies the Aryan
invasion theory. If an influx of people into India took place it
should be earlier than 4500 BC if one considers the demographic
evidence, and perhaps before 8000 BC if one considers other related
evidence. On the other hand, it is equally plausible that the Sapta
Sindhu region was the original homeland of the Aryans from where they
migrated to Iran and Europe, as remembered in Puranic legends.

Linguistic issues
Recently, linguists have called into question the very assumptions
that are at the basis of the genealogical model of the Indo-European
family of languages. It has been suggested that the ancient world had
very many language families and that population increase and greater
contacts and trade with the emergence of agriculture coupled with
large-scale political integration led to extinction of languages and
also to a transfer of languages across ethnic groups. In such a
complex evolutionary process it is meaningless to pin a specific
language on any racial type.

In the Indian linguistic area itself it has been found that there
exist deep structural relationships between the north Indian and the
Dravidian languages. It is likely that the Vedic period represents an
age much after the contact between these two linguistic families had
begun; in other words, the early Vedic period might represent a
synthesis between the north Indian and the Dravidian cultural
histories.

Chronology of the Vedic literature
The collapse of the Aryan invasion theory, and the assumptions upon
which it was based, opens many other questions related to the
chronology of the Vedic literature. Certain key dates in Indian
literature were decided by assuming the flow of ideas from Greece to
India. For example, the Sutra literature was dated to after 300 BC
primarily because it was assumed that the geometry of the Shulba
Sutras came after Greek geometry. Now that Seidenberg has shown that
essentially the same geometry was present in the earlier Brahmanas,
which definitely predate Greek geometry, the question of the
chronology of the Sutra literature becomes important. Using
astronomical references it appears that the Vedic Samhitas should be
dated to the third millennium BC, the Brahmanas to the second
millennium BC, with the Upanishads and the Sutras coming somewhat
later. But further
research is needed here.

An interesting question that arises is: why did the Aryan invasion
theory hold sway for so long? The answer is complex and related to the
use of a flawed method. The invasions were considered verified by a
circular logic. The dates within the invasion theory were used to
characterize the nature of the evolution of Vedic Sanskrit, and this
was in turn related to observed peculiarities of other ancient Indo-
European languages such as Hittite, Avestan, Armenian, Greek, Latin,
and so on. Migrations at different times from the supposed homeland
were then invoked to explain these peculiarities. This is circular
logic, and consequently no amount of linguistic evidence can lead to
the falsification of the model.

The debunking of the Aryan invasion theory raises many questions about
the earliest periods of the Indo-European linguistic groups and the
connections between their cultures.