IndiaStar Book-Review:

Bhagwan Singh's

Vedic Harappans

		IndiaStar--A Literary-Art Magazine -Book Review- Vedic Harappans by Bhagwan Singh (New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 1995)   Reviewed by Jaspal Singh (Editor's intro: Jaspal Singh is a poet and philosopher whose collection of poems Jhula Ghar will be published shortly.)   South Asian history has been greatly distorted by the tendentious, colonial, and Eurocentric rendition of the development of the region. One of the most distorted area of history has been the question of Aryans and the Indus Valley civilization. Bhagwan Singh discusses this whole "Aryan Problem" and settles it with convincing arguments. As the title Vedic Harappans suggests, Bhagwan Singh is not treading the old path. For him, Vedic literature is describing the Harappan reality. He states, " In short, if we discount the colonial legacy of docile self-denials and falling quickly in line with alien expectations, archaeology was at no stage at variance with the Aryan character of the Harappan civilization." On the question of the Aryan Invasion, he discusses all the arguments put forward by the proponents of this theory and concludes in the chapter titled "The Myth of Aryan Invasion," : "There is neither any literary account of invasion of India by Aryans nor any archaelogical evidence to support such a hypothesis." He forcefully argues this case,"As we have seen, the Vedic people did not come from outside. The Harappan cities, the first flowering of Indian Civilization, did not fall because of their invasion." About Aryans, Bhagwan Singh argues with evidence," Aryans were born with ar/al, the digging stick or hoe in their hands. It was neither their colour, nor their blood nor yet the size and sharpness of their nose which made them proud of themselves. They were proud of their being Aryans or cultivators at a time when the tribes surrounding them were at the stage of hunting and gathering." It was the Aryans who discovered agriculture and initiated the agrarian revolution and a new mode of production." Earlier the Aryans were called Devas. The term derives from ti/di, burn, shine. It was the discovery of fire including the technique of producing, maintaining, and controlling it that revolutionised their thinking qand prompted them to undertake new ventures." He concludes after examining all the evidence, "The Aryans were primarily agriculturists. They derived their name from this advancement at a time when people around them were lingering at the lower stage of gathering and hunting. Some of them from their own kindered communities refused to move ahead and censured them for their 'madness' or for ruining the natural sources which provided them liberally." Later on the Aryans developed into great traders and travelled to all over the known world of the time and took their agriculture, trade, language and customs with them. Bhagwan Singh also examines the hypothesis of proto Indo-European language in the chapter "The Language the Harappans Spoke." He states, " Proto-Indo-European is not a fact but an idea floated in order to displace Sanskrit from the centre of discussion. It is the product of a magical realism created for projecting the white man's racial superiority back into the hoary past." He concurs with the view that Sanskrit is a refinement of different Prakrits which were spoken at the time in India. And that out of these Prakrits, natural languages, a refined and classical language -- Sanskrit -- emerged. "It is admitted that Sanskrit and Vedic languages are refinements of the Prakrit languages..." (Harmatta 1992). Bhagwan Singh has dealt with this matter at length in his Hindi book, Arya Dravid Bahashayon Ki Moolbhoot Eikta. Vedic Harappans is a "must read" book for South Asians, particulalry for those seriously interested in the history of the region.