IndiaStar: A Literary-Art Magazine
The Aryans and Ancient Indian History
by 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 so
on. 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 Rigveda 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 repesents 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.