Arguments Against Aryan Invasion Theory

Sameer, your reply No. 2

You have written an erudite piece then why be apologetic about it? First of all, people of this area of Desis have to get their history correct then only, we can learn from our mistakes otherwise we will keeping on proving that `History repeates itself`. For any type of development be it mental, physical, spiritual, economic, social, poltical or scientific, one has to learn from the past so that mistakes are not repeated and duplication of efforts is avoided.

Learning old history not only provides insights to what our forefathers were but also teaches us to accept our past with grace rather then either sidestepping the same or keep on wasting time on inventing a false identity even of our forfathers. Ignorance is not always a bliss and old Indian Histry is history of this area, this sub-continent and the people who are living here now and have been here for centuries. Changing belief or faith does not bury the past and refusing to accept its existence only put people on the path towards self-destruction through lying, making heros out of villains and inventing a non-existing utopia.

dear sameer

thank you for a very good article.

i learnt quite a bit.

i would like to wager rs 500 that this article will elicit less than a fourth of the response that the one above it, ``girl married to dog``, will.

regards

aakar patel

Sameer,

Thanks for an interesting article. There is a saying that ``absence of evidence is not evidence of absence``. While people want to disbelieve the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT), it is a fact that India is a melting pot of races, primarily Aryan and Dravidian. The proportion of Aryan blood, in terms of features and skin color, clearly decreases as we go from the north to the south. We cannot explain this by just climate difference because both North India and South India are very hot places and people work in the open in both areas. Therefore, it defies logic that Aryans will evolve from African roots in hot and dry North India. It is much more likely that in the cold Central Asia, the migrating humans from Africa developed fair skin, sharper features and evolved into Aryans. These Aryans then spread into Europe and Asia including India.

The key question is whether the Aryan migration into India was peaceful or violent. For a migration to be peaceful, the land has to be virtually empty to accommodate the new arrivals. It is hard to imagine that migrants from Central Asia could build up such a vibrant culture and civilzation in vedic India by themselves. Therefore, the only explanation is that waves of Aryans came, conquered the existing civilization including pre-Aryan and earlier waves of Aryans, assimilated into the existing civilization, built an even more enriched civilization and finally got conquered by the next wave of Aryan migration. The date of 1500 BC may have been wrong. However, there was a layer upon layer of Aryan invasions leading to migrations of more and more Aryans into India. Why do I support invasions rather than just migration ? If there was just migration, we would have Dravidian culture supreme in India. We do not see that. We also find the structure of the caste system consistent across the entire subcontinent. How could such a diverse subcontinent develop such a common system voluntarily across the subcontinent ? It points to military victory and assimilation of victorious newly arriving Aryans into the upper castes. Thus the caste system was used as a means to entice and absorb waves of Aryan migration into the civilization.

The only way I can prove my hypothesis is based on induction. Look at the last three invasions of the subcontinent - Sakas, Muslims and the British. In each of these cases, small groups of determined, fair skinned invaders conquered the subcontinent by their sheer guts and hunger for victory. None of these groups had a sophisticated culture. However, in interaction with the locals, they developed and enriched Indian civilization beyond belief. India was the richest country in the world during Akbar`s rule and it was the crown in the jewel for Britain. In each of these cases, the locals tried their best to assimilate the newcomers. For the Sakas, they offered them pride of the place as Rajputs, Jats etc. The Sakas accepted and dissolved into India. When muslims showed up, these same Rajputs fought against the new arrivals. The muslims did not come as one army. Rather there were numerous invasions over centuries. Later muslims conquered and overcame earlier muslims. Although muslims did not accept assimilation, they did sythesize a common desi civilization that was unique in the muslim world and quite removed from Turkish or Persian civilization. Finally when the British came, the muslims and hindus fought against the latest arrivals. The British also won India in an incremental fashion. Again we find tremendous effort to synthesize a common civilization in the way both hindus and muslims adopted modern, western thought (Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Sir Syed etc.).

Thus by induction I say that the Aryans were no different than these later arrivals. They won India incrementally and got assimilated into the native civilization.

phew! Nicely written but what does all this mean to the average desi person? What is the significance of these findings to an Indian or Pakistani in this day and age?

No offense but I think exploring and perusing old world history is nothing but bored men dying to have an intellectual discussion to kill time and make themselves look smart.

scout (don`t hit me please)

Regarding Feuerstein, Kak and Frowley, their idea is that the reason for the decline of the Harappan civilization (which had many sites along the course of the dried up Ghaghar-Sarawati-whatever) is that the Saraswati died up because of a tectonic event that diverted the Yamuna and Sutlej that were tributaries of this river into the Ganga and Indus respectively.

Since the Harappan civilization started its decline around 1900 BC, they date the occurrence of this event to 1900 BC.

Since the Rig Veda describes the Saraswati as a mighty river the Rig Veda must predate this event, and Indo-European language arrived in India well in the Harappan era, if not earlier.

However, this is going about things a little backwards. The real thing to do is to date the river -- surely the dried river bed will have shells (calcium carbonate) of molluscs from the time when it dried up that can be carbon-dated.

The Saraswati would have drained into Kutch, surely a sedimentary record can be extracted and dated (and the volume of flow of the river can be estimated).

It may turn out that the Saraswati indeed dried up around 1900 BC. Or it may be that the Harappan civilization began to decline for a variety of reasons and the Saraswati dried up later.

Anyway, one site that might be worth examining is :

http://www.probys.com/sarasvati/

-arun gupta

ASSAD_K: I wrote this piece when one of Prof. Hoodbhoy article dealing with the 5th grade curriculum was being discussed at chowk. That must have influenced the last couple of sentences of this piece. Reading it now does look it out of place and unnecessary in a piece about old history. I agree completely with you that there are lot more important things to be taught before something related to old history. Would you forgive me for this?

[Another friend complained about the conspicuous absense of Pakistanis from a discussion about old Indian history at Murad Ali Baig`s thread. Let me assure him that most Pakistanis are also interested in matters other than religion and Kashmir. Unfortunately I was away and did not want to involve in any serious debate at chowk. Moreover, I am certain this piece, written by a person of Pakistani origin, reached at chowk editors table before a very fine article by Mr. Baig.]

(Author wishes to see the inclusion of arguments counter to the Aryan Invasion Theory in the Pakistani History Textbooks, in a straight forward and easily understandable manner. )

I must confess.. the Aryan invasion theory is hardly the most pernicious thing present in our history textbooks! I shan`t compile a list fot hings I`d rather see first..!