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Open Forum Aryan invasion?Colonial myth lives ?nine lives? with leftist historian lobby support By Dr Mahesh Kalra Latest developments in archaeology and their analysis have firmly contradicted the theory of Aryan Invasion that was proudly endorsed by nineteenth century Indophiles like Sir William Jones and Friedrich Max Muller; notable pioneers in the field of Indology who went to their graves swearing by the Aryan Invasion theory! All of us will clearly recall the history texts of our fifth and sixth standards that loudly proclaimed Aryan invasions in ancient India that ?allegedly? overran an already established civilisation of indigenous people who were demoted as ?Daasas? or ?Dravidians? after being vanquished by the foreign Aryan invaders. The same textbooks mentioned in the passing albeit hurriedly, the discovery of an advanced ancient civilisation whose remains were unearthed at the twin locations of Harappa in Punjab and Mohen-jo-daro in Sindh. Discovered by the British colonial archaeologists in the late 1920s, the importance of these sites of the famed ?Indus Civilisation? (c. 3000~1500 BCE, Mature period 2600~1900 BCE) was not explored initially juxtaposed to the theory of Aryan invasion that assumed that India was inhabited by hordes of uncivilised aborigines prior to the arrival of the Aryans. Later, on retrospection after ?analysing? the Indus civilisation discovery, the Aryan invasion theory was revised from an invasion of implicitly advanced Aryan people on an aboriginal population to an invasion of nomadic barbarians (Aryans) on an advanced urban civilisation! This revised argument was proposed in the mid-20th century by British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler who presumed that the new finds were a ?pre-Vedic and non-Aryan? civilisation. The decline of the Indus civilisation at Harappa and Mohen-jo-daro (that was contemporaneous to the proposed migration of the Aryans 1500-1700 BCE) was seen as an independent confirmation of the earlier theory. Among the archaeological signs claimed by Wheeler to support the theory of an invasion were the many ?unburied corpses? found in the top levels of Mohen-jo-daro. These corpses were interpreted to be the ?victims? of a conquest of the ancient city by the marauding Aryans by Wheeler, who famously wrote in an oft-quoted phrase in 1947 that ?Indra stands accused?. Indra was also called ?Purandara?, the Destroyer of forts in the Vedas and Wheeler thus reasoned, ?Why would he be called destroyer of forts if there were no forts to destroy??. However, latest developments in archaeology and their analysis have firmly contradicted the theory of Aryan Invasion that was proudly endorsed by nineteenth century Indophiles like Sir William Jones and Friedrich Max Muller; notable pioneers in the field of Indology who went to their graves swearing by the Aryan Invasion theory! Their models of the great migration of Aryans from a homeland somewhere in the middle of Central Asia to their historically attested areas of settlement in North India have not been endorsed by modern historians for a multitude of reasons. Chief opponents of the Aryan Invasion theory are the ?nationalist? historians who see the theory as a late ?colonial conspiracy? to divide the Indians on yet another plane at the worst or at the best as an imperial attempt to quiesce the ?British national conscience? in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This group also see the theory as a conspiracy to tar the ?golden age? of the Vedic era with an presumed yet unproven genocide by the noble Vedic Aryans; that ?there are no mention of large scale attacks on civilian populations in the Vedic texts and such behaviour was contrary to the accepted norms of martial conduct in ancient India? seems to prove them right. Other serious points raised by this group is the absolute lack of proof of such a massive translocation in the form of references (to the transmigration) in the Vedas or the Puranas. Surely, the Vedas would have mentioned such a huge transmigration if it had indeed taken place or dedicated some hymns to the contrast between the original homeland of the Aryans in Central Asia and the ?Aryavarta? as India is referred to in these texts. Similar doubts about the theory were raised in the nineteenth century by Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone who personally headed the East India Company?s mission to Afghanistan in 1805. He noted the contrast between the arid Afghan countryside and the verdant landscape of Peshawar in the north-west frontier and commented that such contrast was unlikely to escape the attention of the highly observant Aryan sages who compiled the Vedas. Modern findings have proved Wheeler?s theory obsolete as forensic investigations on the Mohen-jo-daro corpses have revealed that only two of the corpses had died because of violence; rendering Wheeler?s assumption of a mass genocide absolutely wrong. Noted Indologist and oriental historian, Edwin Bryant has attempted to balance the debate for and against the Aryan invasion theory in his book The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture by highlighting the strength and weakness of each side. The Aryan invasion theory also rests on the absence of horses in form of clay toys found in Indus civilisation sites of Harappa and Mohen-jo-daro and as horses were first tamed in Central Asia, it was assumed that the Aryans won over the native Harappans by virtue of the tactical superiority attained by them because of their Central Asian equestrian stock. Other pointers are the unfamiliarity of Aryans with the elephant, a very Indian animal as exhibited by their name for it Haathi (a beast with a hand) and their borrowing of names for familiar agricultural implements like the plough from local Dravidian languages that pointed to their pastoral past. Sanskrit language was believed by the nineteenth century orientalists, especially by Sir William Jones to be an Indo-European language and hence had many common features to other Indo-European languages like Old Persian (Avestan), Celtic (Old Irish), Italic (Latin) and Germanic (Old English) languages. According to this theory, these languages originated from a common ancestor called the ?Proto-Indo-European? (P.I.E.) language that was diversified into these Indo- European dialects. However, many modern historians in the west who were interviewed by Bryant were of the opinion that current evidences do not support an invasion of South Asia in the pre- or proto-historic periods. Instead, it is possible to document archaeologically a series of cultural changes like languges reflecting indigenous cultural developments from prehistoric to historic periods; that points to a continuous development of a superior culture that culminated into the Vedic Aryan culture. Thus, the evolving Sanskrit assimilated the original Dravidian languages by adopting local names for various objects. One of the famed opponents of the Invasion theory is American Hindu scholar David Frawley (or known by his honorific Hindu name Vamadeva Shastri) who has opposed the theory in his two books The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India and In Search of the Cradle of Civilization. David Frawley opposes the Aryan invasion theory with his own theory on the missing river Saraswati being the centre of the Indus civilisation Frawley criticizes the 19th century racial interpretations of Indian prehistory as a wishful theory of a conflict between invading caucasoid Aryans and native Dravidians. According to Frawley, European Vedic interpreters used this same racial idea to elucidate the Vedas. The Vedas speak of a battle between light and darkness and this was interpreted as a war between light skinned Aryans and dark skinned Dravidians. Such so-called scholars did not bother to examine the fact that most religions and mythologies including those of the ancient American Indians, Egyptians, Greeks and Persians have used the idea of such a battle between light and darkness (symbolic of the conflict between truth and falsehood) in a metaphorical way. Further, he points out that European scholars pointed out that caste in India was originally defined by colour or Varna into 4 classes and these points to the colour coding of the populace. In Mahabharata, Varna classified the Brahmins as white, the Kshatriyas as red, the Vaishyas as yellow and the Shudras as black. However, Frawley points out that these colours refer to the gunas or qualities of each class metaphorically; white being the color of purity (sattvaguna); dark that of impurity (tamoguna); red the color of action (rajoguna), and yellow the colour of trade (also rajoguna). The racial idea reached yet more ridiculous proportions when Vedic passages speaking of their enemies (mainly demons) as without nose (a-nasa) were interpreted as a racial profiling of the flat-nosed Dravidians. This idea was taken further and Hindu gods like Krishna, whose name means dark, or Shiva who is portrayed as dark, were said to have originally been Dravidian gods taken over by the invading Aryans (under the simplistic idea that Dravidians as a dark-skinned people must have worshipped dark colored deities). In a similar fashion, some scholars pointed out that Vedic gods like Saavitar or the Sun-God (to whom the Gayatri Mantra is dedicated) had golden hair and golden skin, thus proving the presence of blond and fair-skinned people living in ancient India. However, Savitar was a Sun-god and the Sun-god is usually represented as golden in color in all ancient cultures. Additionally, the Indus civilization is interpreted as the lost civilization on the banks of the now-extinct river Saraswati by Frawley and was very much a part of the Vedic civilization. Frawley insists that the Indus civilization should be renamed as the "Saraswati Civilization" and he insists that since the ancient Saraswati* dried up around 1900 BC., the Vedic texts that speak so eloquently of this river must predate this period. *Important proof of the Saraswati civilization theory is the satellite findings for presence of untapped water in Thar Desert area of Rajasthan by Indian scientists revealed the probable presence of the river Saraswati in the area during the pre-historic period and was revealed to the NDA Government in 20003. The report was suspiciously hushed up by the UPA Government as it assumed power in 2004. It is well known that in the Rig Veda, the greatest and the holiest of rivers was not the Ganga but the now dry Saraswati. The Ganga is mentioned only once while the Saraswati is mentioned some 50 times and there is a whole hymn devoted to her. Extensive research by the late Indian archaeologist Dr. Wakankar has shown that the Saraswati changed her course several times, going completely dry around 1900 BCE. Map showing the course of the ancient river Saraswati; that was the lifeline of the Harappan civilization and its drying up was responsible for Harappa?s decline and not the Aryan Invasion as was assumed earlier According to Edwin Bryant, Frawley?s thoughts have acquired much popular support among the laity in the West. Bryant opines that linguistically Sanskrit has developed on the grammatically inferior but more popular languages of Pali and Prakrit that forms a ?continuum of cultural proof? against the invasion theory. Also, Bryant concludes that there is proof that there was in ancient India a continuous cultural development under a small minority of an elite noble class of Indians whose culture was wrongly assumed to have been imported from the West under the guise of the Aryan Invasion theory. Thus, Aryans as a people were Indians in origin has been almost conclusively proved by historians worldwide and in India.

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