INDOLOGYonline

Aryan Theory Jolted

2010-07-05T20:36:00.000-07:00

Aryan-Dravidian divide theory Jolted

www.DeccanHerald.com

M.R. Venkatesh

Coimbatore

The intelligentsia and even the politicians were in for shock at the World Classical Tamil Conference here on Friday, when a Finland-based Indologist turned the spotlight on a Dravidian-Aryan continuum while demolishing the Aryan-Dravidian divide as a myth.

In a landmark presentation that was a complete turnaround from singing paeans to the 86-year-old Dravidian patriarch M Karunanidhi and Tamil culture’s glory, renowned Indologist, Prof Asko Parpola, presenting the conclusions of his three decades-long research on ‘A Dravidian Solution to the Indus Script Problem’, told a stunned gathering that “an opening to the secrets of the Indus Script (which is yet to be deciphered) has been achieved”.

Older forms of Tamil, Kannada and other ‘Dravidian languages’ in his firm opinion hold the key to take forward this finding that the underlying language of the Indus Valley Civilisation “was proto-Dravidian”.

The best way to “read” the signs in ‘thousands of short texts’ of the Indus script was through old Tamil, Prof Parpola, of the Helsinki University in Finland, drove home in his breathtaking 90-minute talk.

Proof of hypothesis

As proof of his hypothesis, Prof Parpola correlated several ‘pictograms’ found in Indus Valley inscribed with ‘Harappan’ stoneware bangles with words like ‘Muruku’ (meaning arm-ring/bangle) from old Tamil literature.

“This (old Tamil) is the only ancient Dravidian source not much contaminated by Indo-Aryan languages and traditions,” Prof. Parpola, the first recipient of the ‘Kalaignar Karunanidhi Classical Tamil Award’, argued.

Pointing out that ‘radiocarbon dating’ has fixed the period of the ‘mature Harappan phase’, when the Indus Script was used to 2600-1900 BCE, he said the ‘Indus Civilisation’ collapsed many centuries before hymns were composed in ‘Vedic Sanskrit’ around 1000 BCE.

However, the rich religious/cultural heritage in South Asia till now has been preserved both by the speakers of Dravidian languages (predominantly in South India) and the people of North India, Prof. Parpola emphasised, to demolish the myth of a clear Aryan-Dravidian divide.

Dr Parpola’s work left the top DMK leadership seated in front, nonplussed, kindling them to rethink the Aryan-Dravidian divide issue.

Chief Minister, M Karunanidhi, though, had to leave half-way, when the news came in that the Congress Legislature party leader in the Tamil Nadu Assembly, D Sudarshanam, who had come for the WCTC, had been rushed to a private hospital here after he suffered a heart attack.

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/77496/jolt-aryan-dravidian-divide-theory.html

Who are Hindus??

2010-06-07T07:42:00.000-07:00

WHO ARE HINDUS?

Daily Pioneer

Jagmohan

Historians, mostly Europeans, formulated and propagated the fiction that light-skinned nomadic tribes from Central Asia, known as Aryans, invaded India in 1500-1000 BC, and their descendents are known as Hindus!

This fallacy now stands exposed

The Indians, who at a later stage of their history, came to be known as Hindus were the indigenous people of the country. Earlier, either out of bias or non-availability of full facts, historians, mostly Europeans, formulated and propagated the view that, between 1500 BC and 1000 BC, there was an invasion of India by hosts of light-skinned nomadic tribes named the Aryans from Central Asia/Europe and the present-day Hindus are the descendents of these tribes. The credit for creation of the Vedic civilisation was, by implication, given to them. They were named as Indo-Aryans.

But the discovery of the Harappan civilisation, consequent to the archaeological excavations carried out at Mohenjodaro and Harappa in the twenties of the last century, exposed several weaknesses of the above view. It was found that, much before the ‘Aryan invasion’ there existed a mature urban civilisation in India. The Indian-ness of this civilisation was noted by no less an authority than John Marshall. Indisputably, this civilisation attained its mature form by about 2600 BC. In its non-mature, or what is called the early Harappan form, it must have come into being much earlier. Its emergence could be fixed in 3100 BC on the assumption that it would take about 500 years for the Harappan civilisation to move from early stage to mature stage.

In the light of above facts, to determine the origin of Hindus, four crucial and inter-connected questions would have to be considered in depth.

These questions are:

(i) Was there an ‘Aryan invasion’ of India in the period 1500 BC to 1000 BC?

(ii) What was the nature of the Harappan civilisation and how did it appear and, after existing for several centuries, how did it suddenly disappear?

(iii) Was there any river by the name of Saraswati, and were cataclysmic changes in the system of this river and system of Indus river responsible for the speedy decline and death of the Harappan civilisation? and

(iv) Is the ancestry of Hindus traceable to the Harappan or even earlier period, and were some of the early Vedic hymns composed in this period?

Each of the above four questions would be dealt with in separate parts that follow:

The Aryan Invasion

Though the propagators of the ‘Aryan Invasion’ theory have been adhering to it for a long time, it has really very weak legs to stand on. Swami Vivekanand has rightly underscored: “There is not one word in our scripture, not one, to prove that the Aryans ever came from anywhere outside India.” In the same strain, Dr B.R. Ambedkar has asserted: “The theory of Aryan invasion is an invention. It is based upon nothing but pleasing assumptions. It is a perversion of scientific investigation, it is not allowed to evolve out of facts. On the contrary, the theory is preconceived and facts are selected to prove it.”

The observations, made by Mount-Stuart Elphinstone, in 1841 in his book,History of India, are no less significant. “Neither in the code of Manu nor the Vedas, nor in any book is there any allusion to a prior residence or to a knowledge of more than the name of any country out of India… to say that it spread from a central point is a gratuitous assumption.”

Nor can the theory of Aryan invasion provide answers to a number of pertinent questions, such as these:

(a) Is it believable that the ‘Aryans’ who otherwise showed strong attachment to lands, mountains, rivers and forests would not carry with them the memories of any landmark of their previous homeland and nurse no nostalgia about their past? Do they not speak of themselves exactly as sons of the soil would speak?

(b) How is it that the invaders brought with them no item of previous use — pottery, utensils, tools, weapons of war and chase, objects of worship, art etc, — and also left no trace of mass killings of the natives or a large-scale destruction of fortifications or habitation which should have resulted from invasions?

(c) Is it conceivable that the people belonging to the Harappan civilisation, who had created an advanced urban society, with a developed writing system, would be without any literature, while the invaders, admittedly unlettered, would leave behind profound literary material in abundance in the form of Vedas and Upanishads etc?

(d) Is it not clear that the Rig-Vedic expressions like sabha, samiti, samrat, rajan, rajaka, which indicate the existence of organised assemblies and rulers of different ranks, are relevant not to the nomadic invaders, but to the advanced urban society of the Vedic Aryans who were indigenous in habitants of Harappan settlements?

(e) Do not the botanical studies of flora and fauna, mentioned in the Rig Veda, show that such a flora and fauna could exist only in the tropical climate of northwest India and not in the cold climate of Central Asia?

(f) Have not the bones of the horse of the domesticated variety been found in the recent excavation at Kalibangan, Ropar, Malvan, etc, and has not the domestic nature of Surkotada horse been confirmed by Sandon Bokonyl, an internationally renowned authority on the paleontology of the horse.

(g) Was not the evolution of chariot more likely in the flat lands of North India rather than in the uneven terrain of Central Asia, particularly when we have now found several examples of terracotta wheels with spokes, painted or in bas relief at sites like Rakhigarhi and Banwali?

In the absence of any credible answers to the above questions, the hollowness of the invasion theory stands thoroughly exposed.

Equally untenable is the theory of migration with which some scholars have tried to replace the invasion theory, having found it difficult to stick to their earlier stand. In fact, the proponents of this theory, driven by bias, have been abandoning old arguments and advancing new ones, whenever fresh evidence cropped up consequent to ongoing excavations and research. Source: Daily Pioneer

Anti-Brahmanism: Study

2010-05-06T14:00:00.000-07:00

Anti-Brahmanism: A Case Study to Indian Muslims

U. Mahesh Prabhu

ivarta

The Great Uprising of 1857 unnerved the British, though for a while. Within two or three years of quelling it, and with great ferocity, they set to work putting together a version of the incident that would suit their ends. “The uprising was confined to just a few pockets”, they said, adding, “it erupted as a result of local misunderstandings”, and that “there was no national sentiment behind it for the leaders themselves fought only for their feudal privileges-one because her son was not being recognized, another because his pension was being stopped, and so on.” This version was believed to be the true narration of the incident for so long that it even finds mention in Nehru”s “Discovery of India”!

The British did not stop at rewriting history books. They initiated a series of real politick measures. As Brahmins had provided the ideological leaven for the uprising, the campaign of calumny against them was redoubled.

They started their propaganda against the Brahmins and an era of anti-Brahmanism began which lives on till date.

Though the British just gave a boost to such sentiments, they were not the beginners of the legacy. In the book “Diwan-i-Salman“, Khwaja Masud bin Sa”d bin Salman wrote of the Battle of Jalandhar (Punjab) thus: “The narrative of any battle eclipses the stories of Rustam and Isfandiyar. By morning meal, not one soldier, not one Brahmin remained alive or free. Their heads were levelled to the ground with flaming fire. Thou have secured the victory to the country and to religion, for amongst the Hindus this achievement will be remembered till the day of resurrection.”

In Mughal times, Sheikh Ahmad (Mujaddid) of Sirhind wrote a letter to Mirza Darab excerpts of which read thus: “Hindu Brahmans and Greek philosophers have spent a lot of time on religion. Since their efforts were not according to the Shariat of the prophet, they were all fools. They will remain devoid of salvation.”

According to the Tawarikh Firishta, Firoz Shah Bahmani (circa 1398-99), kidnapped 2,000 Brahman women, who were later freed by Raja Devaraya of the Vijayanagara Empire.

A country is never fully defeated as long as its martial and intellectual leaders exist. A self-conscious imperialism undertakes to reduce them as its first important task.

Muslims coming to India found brave, armed, men and a Brahman class providing cultural and spiritual leadership. Dr. Ambedkar, quoting Muslim historians, says the first act of religious zeal by Mohammad bin Qasim, the first Arab invader, was circumcision of Brahmans. “But, after they objected, he put to death all above the age of seventeen.”

Rev. C. Buchanan said Indians should be baptized because “it attaches the governed to the governors.” They thought that Brahmans came in the way of their dream of a baptized India. They started blackening and discrediting them. A brochure called “The Book of Wisdom” with 279 verses was widely circulated by missionaries under William Carey, touted as the father of the Indian press. It was one of the first he printed and is addressed to the “mean, despicable Brahmans”. The brochure promises hell for heathens and salvation through Christ.

The British administration found Brahmans to be the only “national” caste, held in much respect and capable of providing political leadership. They fomented anti-Brahman movements in different parts of the country which are still very powerful in today”s secular India.

Their fears were well-founded. Brahmins were the intellectual leaders of the Independence struggle. Thus anti-Brahmanism was a construct of the last two centuries. And though learnt under the colonial-missionary aegis, it became an important category of future social thinking and political action.

Brahmans began to be described as “cunning, parasitic, exploiters and authors of the iniquitous caste system”.

A lot of scholarship and intellectual labour was put into this thesis before it acquired its present momentum and currency. Anti-Brahmanism originated in, and still prospers in anti-Hindu circles.

It is particularly welcome among Marxists, missionaries, Muslims, separatists, and casteists, of different hues. When they attack Brahmans, their target is unmistakably Hinduism.

Even in the freedom struggle, the contribution of Brahmans under the leadership of the Mahatma was enormous. A great percentage of his followers were Brahmans and hence, the country owes quiet a lot to them, and they certainly deserved special privileges.

But when freedom was attained, their services were quickly forgotten. In the name of empowering the lower caste, their right to a fair chance in education, service, and so many other things, was snatched away.

There is no credible testimony to the fact that Brahmins ever opposed upliftment of the lower caste, yet the government, for the sake of “strengthening the weak”, in every sense, weakened the strong.

Today, the situation is such that Brahmans have been practically deprived and made to suffer in the same way as the Dalits were “made to suffer”.

There are 50 “sulabh shauchalayas” (public toilets) in Delhi; all of them are cleaned and looked after by Brahmans (this much-needed public institution was started by a Brahman).

A far cry from the elitist image that Brahmans have! There are five to six Brahmans manning each toilet. They came to Delhi eight to ten years ago looking for a source of income, as they were a minority in most of their villages, where Dalits constitute the majority (60 to 65 per cent). In most villages in UP and Bihar, Dalits have a union which helps them secure jobs.

Did you know that you also stumble upon a number of Brahmans working as coolies at Delhi”s railway stations? One of them, Kripa Shankar Sharma, says that though his daughter is doing her graduation in science, he is not sure if she will secure a job. “Dalits often have five to six children, but they are confident of getting them placed easily and well,” he says.

As a result, the Dalit population in villages is increasing. He adds, “Dalits are provided with housing, even their pigs have spaces; whereas there is no provision for “gaushalas” (cowsheds) for the cows of the Brahmans”.

This reverse discrimination is also found in bureaucracy and politics. Most of the intellectual Brahman Tamil class has emigrated outside Tamil Nadu. Only 5 seats from the 600 in the combined UP and Bihar assemblies are held by Brahmans-the rest are in the hands of the Yadavs.

At least 400,000 Brahmans of the Kashmir valley, the once respected Kashmiri Pandits, now live as refugees in their own country, sometimes in refugee camps in Jammu and Delhi in appalling conditions. But who gives a damn about them? This is all simply because their vote bank is negligible.

At Tamil Nadu”s Ranganathaswamy Temple, a priest”s monthly salary is Rs 300 (as per the Census Department findings) and a daily allowance of one measure of rice. The government staff at the same temple receive Rs 2,500 and above every month. But these facts have not modified the priests” reputation as “haves” and as “exploiters”. The destitution of Hindu priests has moved none, not even the parties sympathetic to Hindus.

The Indian government gives Rs 1,000 crores (Rs 10 billion) in salaries for “imams” in mosques and Rs 200 crores (Rs 2 billion) as Haj subsidies. But no such help is available to the Brahmans and the upper castes.

As a result, not only the Brahmans, but also some of the other upper castes are suffering in silence today, seeing the minorities slowly taking control of their majority.

Even after so many years of persecution by invaders and their own countrymen, Brahmans still continue to suffer in silence and yet, contribute in a very positive way to this land. Not a day has ever been recorded in history when Brahmans, anywhere in this land, have resorted to arms.

There are incredible success stories attributed to them. Had there been no Brahmans, the IT sector of India, in which the media and government take pride, would not have even existed. There are so many industrialists, academicians, journalists, engineers, and doctors, who continue to contribute to this land by trying to forget their deprivation.

In light of this, I wish to ask my Muslim brethren as to what they are complaining about. Can they complain of more atrocities than the Brahmans? Everyone has had their share of bad luck. I am a Brahman, but I hold no prejudice against Muslims or Christians for they are my countrymen today. I always say “we have issues to resolve” and not “scores to settle”.

Yet, whenever I try to expose the negations and false concoctions of Muslim and Christian intellectuals I am easily branded a “fanatic”, “fundamentalist” and what not.

The point I wish to wish to make here is simple. If Brahmans, after facing so much opposition from everyone including those of their own faith, can keep up their courage, write stories of passion, and contribute proactively, without brooding over their plight, then it is certainly possible for the Muslims to do so provided they come to terms with modern world dynamics and shun violence in all forms and types.

F. Gautier on Brahmins/Dalits @ http://www.rediff.com/news/2006/may/23franc.htm

Colonial anti-Brahminism @ http://www.hinduismtoday.com/archives/1997/11/1997-11-10.shtml

Anti-Brahminism/Semitism @ http://globeonline.wordpress.com/2008/08/13/anti-semitismbrahminism/

source

Read : Comments & Articles Below:

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Oh, But You Do Get It Wrong! By Aditi Banerjee

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?262511

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WHOSE HISTORY IS IT ANYWAY? By Dr. Aseem Shukla

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/aseem_shukla/2010/03/whose_history_is_it_anyways.html

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Motivated INDOLOGY

http://indiaview.wordpress.com/2007/12/26/communal-clash-13-arrested/

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Wendy Doniger's Vandalism @ http://sookta-sumana.blogspot.com/2010/02/wendy-donigers-cross-cultural-vandalism.html

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Online Petition by Dr. S. Kalyanraman, founder of the Sarasvati Research and Education Trust

http://www.petitiononline.com/dharma10/petition.html

Post-colonial Indology

2009-10-30T10:19:00.000-07:00

Post-colonial Indology was political at all levels
By Dr NS Rajaram
Organiser Weekly

In this academic and political conundrum it is important not to lose sight of the fact that the Aryan myth is a modern European creation. It has little to do with ancient India. The word Arya appears for the first time in the Rig Veda, India’s oldest text. Its meaning is obscure but it seems to refer to members of a settled agricultural community.

Ever since he moved to Harvard from Germany, Witzel has seen the fortunes of his department and his field, gradually sink into irrelevance. Problems at Harvard are part of a wider problem in Western academia in the field of Indo-European Studies. As previously noted, several ‘Indology’ departments-as they are sometimes called-are shutting down across Europe.

Max Müller’s career illustrates how Indology and Sanskrit studies in the West have always been associated with politics at all levels. He was by no means the only ‘diplomatist’ scholar gracing colonial Indology, only the most successful. It is remarkable that though his contributions are all but forgotten, his political legacy endures. His successors in Europe and America have been reduced to play politics at a much lower level, but in India, his theories have had unexpected fallout in the rise of Dravidian politics. It is entirely proper that while his scholarly works (save for translations) have been consigned to the dustbin of history, his legacy endures in politics. This may prove to be true of Indology as a whole as an academic discipline.

Post colonial scene: passing of the Aryan gods

The post colonial era may conveniently be dated to 1950. In 1947 India became free and the great Aryan ‘Thousand Year Reich’ lay in ashes. In Europe at least the word Aryan came to acquire an infamy comparable to the word Jehadi today. Europeans, Germans in particular, were anxious to dissociate themselves from it. But there remained a residue of pre-war Indology (and associated race theories) that in various guises succeeded in establishing itself in academic centers mainly in the United States. Its most visible spokesman in recent times has been one Michael Witzel, a German expatriate like Max Müller, teaching in the Sanskrit Department at Harvard University in the United States. In an extraordinary replay of Max Müller’s political flip-flops Witzel too is better known for his political and propaganda activities than any scholarly contributions. Witzel’s recent campaigns, from attempts to introduce Aryan theories in California schools to his ill-fated tour of India where his scholarly deficiencies were exposed in public highlight the dependence of Indology on politics.

While the field of Indo-European Studies has been struggling to survive on the fringes of academia, lately it has become the subject critical analysis by scholars in Europe and America. Unlike Indians who treat the field and its practitioners with a degree of respect, European scholars have not hesitated to call a spade a spade, treating it as a case of pathological scholarship with racist links to Nazi ideology. This may be attributed to the fact that Europeans have seen and experienced its horrors while Indians have only read about it.

In a remarkable article, "Aryan Mythology As Science And Ideology" (Journal of the American Academy of Religion 1999; 67: 327-354) the Swedish scholar Stefan Arvidsson raises the question: "Today it is disputed whether or not the downfall of the Third Reich brought about a sobering among scholars working with ‘Aryan’ religions." We may rephrase the question: "Did the end of the Nazi regime put an end to race based theories in academia?"

An examination of several humanities departments in the West suggests otherwise: following the end of Nazism, academic racism may have undergone a mutation but did not entirely disappear. Ideas central to the Aryan myth resurfaced in various guises under labels like Indology and Indo-European Studies. This is clear from recent political, social and academic episodes in places as far apart as Harvard University and the California State Board of Education. But there was an interregnum of sorts before Aryan theories again raised their heads in West.

Two decades after the end of the Nazi regime, racism underwent another mutation as a result of the American Civil Rights Movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King. Thanks to the Civil Rights Movement, Americans were made to feel guilty about their racist past and the indefensible treatment of African Americans. U.S. academia also changed accordingly and any discourse based on racial stereotyping became taboo. Soon this taboo came to be extended to Native Americans, Eskimos and other ethnic groups.

In this climate of seeming liberal enlightenment, one race theory continued to flourish as if nothing had changed. Theories based on the Aryan myth that formed the core of Nazi ideology continued in various guises, as previously noted, in Indology and Indo-European Studies. Though given a linguistic and sometimes a cultural veneer, these racially sourced ideas continue to enjoy academic respectability in such prestigious centers as Harvard and Chicago.

Being a European transplant, its historical trajectory was different from the one followed by American racism. Further, unlike the Civil Rights Movement, which had mass support, academic racism remained largely confined to academia. This allowed it to escape public scrutiny for several decades until it clashed with the growing Hindu presence in the United States. Indians, Hindus in particular saw Western Indology and Indo-European Studies as a perversion of their history and religion and a thinly disguised attempt to prejudice the American public, especially the youth, against India and Hinduism to serve their academic interests.

The fact that Americans of Indian origin are among the most educated group ensured that their objections could not be brushed away by ‘haughty dismissals’ as the late historian of science Abraham Seidenberg put it. Nonetheless, scholars tried to use academic prestige as a bludgeon in forestalling debate, by denouncing their adversaries as ignorant chauvinists and bigots unworthy of debate. But increasingly, hard evidence from archaeology, natural history and genetics made it impossible to ignore the objections of their opponents, many of whom (like this writer) were scientists. But in November 2005, there came a dramatic denouement, in, of all places, California schools. Academics suddenly found it necessary to leave their ivory towers and fight it out in the open, in full media glare- and under court scrutiny.

It is unnecessary to go into the details of the now discredited campaign by Michael Witzel and his associates trying to stop the removal of references to the Aryans and their invasion from California school books. What is remarkable is that a senior tenured professor at Harvard of German origin should concern himself with how Hinduism is taught to children in California. Witzel is a linguist, but he presumed to tell California schools how Hinduism should be taught to children. It turned out that Hinduism was only a cover, and his concern was saving the Aryan myth from being erased from books.

Ever since he moved to Harvard from Germany, Witzel has seen the fortunes of his department and his field, gradually sink into irrelevance. Problems at Harvard are part of a wider problem in Western academia in the field of Indo-European Studies. As previously noted, several ‘Indology’ departments-as they are sometimes called-are shutting down across Europe. One of the oldest and most prestigious, at Cambridge University in England, has just closed down. This was followed by the closure of the equally prestigious Berlin Institute of Indology founded way back in 1821. Positions like the one Witzel holds (Wales Professor of Sanskrit) were created during the colonial era to serve as interpreters of India. They have lost their relevance and are disappearing from academia. This was the real story, not teaching Hinduism to California children.

Witzel’s California misadventure appears to have been an attempt to somehow save his pet Aryan theories from oblivion by making it part of Indian history and civilization in the school curriculum. Otherwise, it is hard to see why a senior, tenured professor at Harvard should go to all this trouble, lobbying California school officials to have its Grade VI curriculum changed to reflect his views.

To follow this it is necessary to go beyond personalities and understand the importance of the Aryan myth to Indo-European Studies. The Aryan myth is a European creation. It has nothing to do with Hinduism. The campaign against Hinduism was a red herring to divert attention from the real agenda, which was and remains saving the Aryan myth. Collapse of the Aryan myth means the collapse of Indo-European studies. This is what Witzel and his colleagues are trying to avert. For them it is an existential struggle.

Americans and even Indians for the most part are unaware of the enormous influence of the Aryan myth on European history and imagination. Central to Indo-European Studies is the belief-it is no more than a belief-that Indian civilization was created by an invading race of ‘Aryans’ from an original homeland somewhere in Eurasia or Europe. This is the Aryan invasion theory dear to Witzel and his European colleagues, and essential for their survival. According to this theory there was no civilization in India before the Aryan invaders brought it- a view increasingly in conflict with hard evidence from archaeology and natural history.

In this academic and political conundrum it is important not to lose sight of the fact that the Aryan myth is a modern European creation. It has little to do with ancient India. The word Arya appears for the first time in the Rig Veda, India’s oldest text. Its meaning is obscure but it seems to refer to members of a settled agricultural community. It later became an honorific and a form of address, something like ‘Gentleman’ in English or ‘Monsieur’ in French. Also, it was nowhere as important in India as it came to be in Europe. In the whole the Rig Veda, in all of its ten books, the word Arya appears only about forty times. In contrast, Hitler’s Mein Kampf uses the term Arya and Aryan many times more. Hitler did not invent it. The idea of Aryans as a superior race was already in the air- in Europe, not India.

** An Aryan invader

2009-07-13T12:17:00.000-07:00

http://newstodaynet.com/printer.php?id=18010
An Aryan invader from America - I
V. Sundaram

Professor Dr.Michael Witzel, a racist scholar wedded to the cause of Evangelization of India and the world (if that is feasible) and total distortion of Indian History, divorced from all known principles of classical historiography is now in Chennai city delivering lectures on the languages and cultures revealed by the Rigveda.

Yesterday he delivered his lecture at Madras Sanskrit College in Mylapore. I understand that he is delivering two lectures at the University of Madras and Roja Muthiah Library tomorrow. It is understood that he will be going to New Delhi in the next few days to deliver some more talks.

In my article in these columns in News Today on 20 February 2009, I had commented on the dubious academic credentials of Professor Witzel: ‘There is an organized gang of evangelical anti-Hindu academic gangsters in United States led by one Professor Witzel. Any one can see that he is a man with a closed mind on all things relating to Hindu Religion, Hindu Civilization, and Hindu Culture. He seems to be very upset (not intellectually but religiously and culturally in the evangelical sense or nonsense!) over the great initiative taken by Dr Nalini Rao and Dr Christopher Key Chapple to organize an international conference on Vedic Sarasvati Hindu Civilization at Los Angeles in June 2009. He has said ‘Whenever the Harappan or Indus civilization is relabeled ‘SINDHU-SARASVATI CIVILIZATION’, everyone involved in the field, if not the public, recognizes that he or she has stumbled into extremists HINDUTVA (Hindu nationalist and/or fundamentalist) Territory…. This being said, why—besides all-too-familiar Hindutva apologists including Subhash Kak, Nicholas Kusanas, BB Lal etc.—are a handful of major Western archaeologists including most notably Mark Kenoyer, Maurizio Tosi and Carl Lamberg-Karlovsky, taking path in the Conference? Certainly not because any of them would personally endorse the absurd ‘SINDHU-SARASVATI CIVILIZATION’ label in print—since they wouldn’t. Instead, to put it frankly, it is due to (1) money and (2) in some cases earlier access to Harappan Archaeological sites on the Indian side of the Indian-Pakistan divide. It takes enormous funds to run these conferences, doled out freely for honoraria and expenses (the invitees are flown in at huge expense by the rich NRIs (non-resident Indians) who fund them from Europe, India and the United States’ Evangelical academics like Professor Witzel are known internationally for their simple and Spartan living and tortuously complicated anti-Hindu thinking!”

Michael Witzel was born in 1943 at Schwiebus, Germany, now Poland. He studied Indology under Professors Paul Thieme, H. P. Schmidt, K. Hoffmann and J. Narten in Germany from 1965 to 1971. Later in 1972-73, he also studied under Mîmâmsaka Jununath Pundit in Nepal. From 1972 to 1978, he led the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project and the Nepal Research Centre at Kathamandu. Subsequently, he has taught at Tübingen (1972), Leiden (1978-1986), and at Harvard since 1986. He is Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University (USA).

Many well known Sanskrit scholars and responsible citizens in USA have told me that Witzel is a viciously brazen and brazenly vicious anti-Hindu evangelical racketeer. All this came to open public light in a Court of Law when an important Hindu Civil Rights case was fought in UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA. This case related to the textbook and educational material prepared by California State Board of Education (CBE) to teach Hindu civilization to 8th grade students. The legal complaint of Hindu Groups in California was that the school textbooks indoctrinate children with Abrahamic religions and teach biblical events as actual facts while treating Hinduism in a derogatory manner. It was also pointed out that the CBE failed to provide equal opportunities and equal representation to every religion and culture. CAPEEM (California Parents for the Equalisation of Education Materials) was formed to represent parents in California in a lawsuit against the State Board of Education.

It was clearly presented in the California court with irrefutable documentary evidence that this evangelical Professor Dr Witzel who was engaged as a consultant by CBE had worked with the Church in Colorado and even edited their Wikipedia entry to suppress the evangelical nature of the church. Asian Invasion Theory is Biblical and that is why Witzel and his anti-Hindu hate group cohorts support it. The intervention of Witzel and co. in California textbook content was part of a plan to induct Biblical beliefs into the curriculum. Witzel was a central figure in the motivated evangelical effort!

Harvard Donkey Trial pits Science against Creationism with Hindus on the side of Science and the Harvard professor Witzel, who has been some sort of a volunteer for a fanatical evangelical group in Colorado, on the side of Creationism. Witzel famously claimed that horses in India were donkeys in order to push the Biblical Japhetic Race Theory into textbooks.

CAPEEM (California Parents for the Equalisation of Education Materials) which is fighting the text book case, which I call Harvard Donkey Trial, served a number of subpoenas to various parties including textbook publishers, Hotmail, Dalit Freedom Network, Michael Witzel, Stanley Wolpert, Charles Munger, and Dalit Solidarity Forum operating out of St. Alban’s Church in New Jersey. The CAPEEM also sought documents from the officials of California Department of Education (CDE) and CBE. In the emerging discovery process, Witzel turned over some more documents including an email uncovering the fact that the CDE had conducted a secret meeting that was previously unheard of. This meeting with anti-Hindu groups was in addition to the secret meeting that CDE had conducted with Witzel and others.

CAPEEM also uncovered a link between Michael Witzel and Dalit Freedom Network (DFN), a group that operates out of a Church in Colorado. I have myself carefully scrutinized many of the e-mails sent by Witzel which are available on the internet. He coordinated his campaign with DFN and planned in advance the details of what would be spoken at meetings. Witzel also sent an email alerting DFN to the description of their organization on Wikipedia and stated that whenever he erased the description, it kept coming back. An office bearer of DFN followed up on this email by saying that she did not want to ‘start being identified as a missions organization’ and wanted to know if they could edit it themselves. (Source: http://capeem.org). All this goes to show that Professor Dr.Michael Witzel is an unabashed evangelist who endeavours to be singularly unscrupulous just in order to be magnificently successful in his underground evangelical mission!!

I asked Dr Kalyanaraman as to what he has to say about Professor Witzel’s views on Hindu Culture: ‘Michael Witzel is a controversial person for his association with Christian evangelical churches and his contribution to a journal started by Roger Pearson who is the founder of a Nazi group named Northern League. He is also a believer of the discredited Aryan Invasion Theory which has its origins in the Biblical belief that everyone on earth today is a descendant of one of the three sons of Noah and hence came from Central Asia. The most recent controversy he was embroiled in was at Harvard when he taught the Devanagari alphabet as one of his courses for doctoral candidates. Leading critics have even gone so far as to question his intellectual abilities if he believed that something fit for elementary schools should be part of the instructional material for doctoral candidates.’

Witzel has also attacked those who opposed Biblical indoctrination in California’s history textbooks. For example, the textbooks teach that the ‘Lord made the wheels fall off the chariots’ and this was the reason the Egyptians could not capture the Jews. When several parents opposed such indoctrination, Witzel attacked them and defended the textbooks. He also criticized those who opposed the textbooks for using ‘hard science,’ a stance that did not go well with scientists. A lawsuit followed in which Witzel’s connection to a church was uncovered. After many racist remarks by Witzel surfaced, including one stereotyping all the people of Uttar Pradesh as ‘proud and empty,’ the State of California decided not to fight out the lawsuit and instead paid the group of parents a massive sum of one lakh and seventy five thousand dollars.

I put this question to Dr.Kalyanaraman: What do you think of Dr.Witzel’s controversial and contentious scholarship? He replied:

‘What type of scholarship is this, even if it is said to be from Harvard? Lokahitam is the touchstone which determines true scholarship. Just as Satyam is truth that is pleasing, scholarship is transparent action which is loka-hitaaya ‘for the well-being of the society’. How should such action be performed or such responsibility be discharged? Scholarship should be governed by dharma, that is ethical conduct, a social ethic which respects the responsibilities being discharged by everyone in society. In Witzel, we have evidence of the very antithesis of such scholarship, motivated as he is by a Christian evangelical mission (as exposed during the Harvard Donkey Trial, also called the CAPEEM California textbook case), working for the Colorado church engaged in ‘Dalit Freedom Network’ to denigrate Hindusthan. Engaged in a motivated act of faith in the Japhetic Race theory of the Bible to be pushed into the textbooks, Witzel ends up arguing that horses in ancient Hindusthan were donkeys. India can do without such scholarship or emulation of such pseudo-scholarship by those researchers engaged in civilization studies, because such scholarship is a scourge on the academe, particularly when it is evangelical peddling promoted by self-proclaimed ‘well-known scientists’.

In my view Dr.Witzel today is a true representative of the Colonial, Imperialist, Racist and Evangelical anti-Hindu scholars like James Mill, Lord Macaulay, Max Mueller and many other English administrators of British India in the 19th century. He shamelessly clings to the Imperialist Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT), even after it has been overthrown, with assistance from sordid Missionary Agencies like the Colorado Church. The stern, grim and scorching story relating to this lurid drama will have to be told in the larger public interest of the gullible Hindus of India. vsundaram@newstodaynet.com

Also Read:

Motivated Indology

** 19th Century Paradigms

2009-02-23T11:09:00.000-08:00

http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/19th-century-paradigms.html
Let not the 19th century paradigms continue to haunt us!

Inaugural Address delivered at the 19th International Conference on South Asian Archaeology,held at University of Bologna, Ravenna, Italy on July 2-6, 2007.

Distinguished fellow delegates and other members of the audience, I am most grateful to the organizers of this conference, in particular to the President, Professor Maurizio Tosi, not only for inviting me to participate in this Conference but also for giving me the additional honour of delivering the Inaugural Address. Indeed, I have no words to thank them adequately for their kindness. Perhaps this is the first occasion when a South Asian is being given this privileged treatment by the European Association of South Asian Archaeologists.

The conference hall is full of scholars from all parts of the world – from the United States of America on the west to the Land of the Rising Sun, Japan, on the east. All these scholars have contributed in a number of ways to our understanding of the past of South Asia, and I salute them with all the humility that I can muster.

However, I hope I will not be misunderstood when I say that some amongst us have not yet been able to shake off the 19th-century biases that have blurred our vision of South Asia’s past.

As is well known, it was the renowned German scholar Max Muller who, in the 19th century, attempted for the first time to date the Vedas. Accepting that the Sutra literature was datable to the 6th century BCE, he gave a block-period of 200 years to the preceding three parts of the Vedic literature, namely the Aranyakas, Brahmanas and Vedas. Thus, he arrived at 1200 BCE as the date of the Vedas.

However, when his contemporaries, like Goldstucker, Whitney and Wilson, objected to his ad-hocism, he toned down, and finally surrendered by saying (Max Muller 1890, reprint 1979): “Whether the Vedic hymns were composed [in] 1000 or 1500 or 2000 or 3000 BC, no power on earth will ever determine.”

But the great pity is that, in spite of such a candid confession by the savant himself, many of his followers continue to swear by his initial dating, viz. 1200 BCE.The ultimate effect of this blind tenacity was that when in the 1920s the great civilization, now known variously as the Harappan, Indus or Indus-Sarasvati Civilization, was discovered in South Asia, and was dated to the 3rd millennium BCE, it was argued that since the Vedas were no earlier than 1200 BCE, the Harappan Civilization could not have been Vedic. Further, since the only other major linguistic group in the region was the Dravidian, it was held that the Harappans were a Dravidian-speaking people.

Then came the master stroke. In 1946, my revered guru Mortimer Wheeler (later knighted) discovered a fortification wall at Harappa and on learning that the Aryan god Indra had been referred to as puramdara (destroyer of forts) he readily pronounced his judgment (Wheeler 1947: 82): “On circumstantial evidence Indra [representing the Aryans] stands accused [of destroying the Harappan Civilization].” In further support of his thesis, he cited certain human skeletons at Mohenjo-daro, saying that these were the people massacred by the Aryan invaders. Thus was reached the peak of the ‘Aryan Invasion’ theory.And lo and behold! The very first one to fall in the trap of the ‘Aryan Invasion’ theory was none else but the guru’s disciple himself.

With all the enthusiasm inherited from the guru, I started looking for the remains of some culture that may be post-Harappan but anterior to the early historical times. In my exploration of the sites associated with the Mahabharata story I came across the Painted Grey Ware Culture which fitted the bill. It antedated the Northern Black Polished Ware whose beginning went back to the 6th-7th century BCE, and overlay, with a break in between, the Ochre Colour Ware of the early 2nd millennium BCE. In my report on the excavations at Hastinapura and in a few subsequent papers I expressed the view that the Painted Grey Ware Culture represented the early Aryans in India.

But the honeymoon was soon to be over. Excavations in the middle Ganga valley threw up in the pre-NBP strata a ceramic industry with the same shapes (viz. bowls and dishes) and painted designs as in the case of the PGW, the only difference being that in the former case the ware had a black or black-and-red surface-colour, which, however, was just the result of a particular method of firing. And even the associated cultural equipment was alike in the two cases.

All this similarity opened my eyes and I could no longer sustain the theory of the PGW having been a representative of the early Aryans in India. (The association of this Ware with the Mahabharata story was nevertheless sustainable since that event comes at a later stage in the sequence.) I had no qualms in abandoning my then-favourite theory.

But linguists are far ahead of archaeologists in pushing the poor Aryans through the Khyber / Bolan passes into India. In doing so, they would not mind even distorting the original Sanskrit texts.

A case in point is that of the well known Professor of Sanskrit at the Harvard University, Professor Witzel. He did not hesitate to mistranslate a part of the Baudhayana Srautasutra (Witzel 1995: 320-21). In 2003 I published a paper in the East and West (Vol. 53, Nos. 1-4), exposing his manipulation.

Witzel’s translation of the relevant Sanskrit text was as follows:"Aya went eastwards. His (people) are the Kuru-Pancalas and Kasi Videha. This is the Ayava(migration).(His other people)stayed at home in the west. His people are the Gandhari, Parasu and Aratta. This is the Amavasava (group).

Whereas the correct translation is:
Ayu migrated eastwards. His (people) are the Kuru-Pancalas and the Kasi-Videhas. This is the Ayava (migration). Amavasu migrated westwards. His (people) are the Ghandhari, Parsu and Aratta. This is the Amavasu (migration).

According to the correct translation, there was no movement of the Aryan people from anywhere in the north-west. On the other hand, the evidence indicates that it was from an intermediary point that some of the Aryan tribes went eastwards and other westwards. This would be clear from the map that follows(Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.(http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/19th-century-paradigms.html)

Professor Witzel and I happened to participate in a seminar organized by UMASS, Dartmouth in June 2006. When I referred, during the course of my presentation, to this wrong translation by the learned Professor, he, instead of providing evidence in support of his own stand, shot at me by saying that I did not know the difference between Vedic and Classical Sanskrit. Should that be the level of an academic debate? (Anyway, he had to be told that I had the privilege of obtaining in 1943 my Master’s Degree in Sanskrit (with the Vedas included), with a First Class First, from a first class university of India, namely Allahabad.)

Next Page
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** Indo-European Aryanism

2009-02-23T10:23:00.000-08:00

Revisiting the hoopla of Indo-European Aryanism
By Ratnadeep Banerji
Weekly Organiser

Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science; Stefan Arvidsson; The University of Chicago Press; Pp.354; Price not mentioned.

This book is a historiographic tour-de-force traipsing Indo-European grounds harping on a posteriority analysis of a contentious issue.

For the last two centuries religious historians, archaeologists and philologists have dealt upon the menagerie of Indo-Europeans. One faction of scholars has been upbeat about the uniqueness of the Indo-Europeans while the other faction has mingled them along with the mainstream human race.

The author, Stefan Arvidsson in his book ropes in Jacob Bryant and William Jones with their concepts of ‘Japhelites’ and ‘Hamites’ as precursors of myths and god figures of Greeks, Romans and Indians. Jones forged a linguistic similarity amidst the Indian and the European languages – ‘the cultural-heroic heathens came to be known as Indo-Europeans and Indo-Germans’. Stefan arraigns Frederick Max Müller of cleaving languages and religions into Semitic, Aryan and Turanian categories.

Max Müller and Father Schimdt hold that an ‘original monotheism had survived beneath the surface of the Indo-European mythologies’. Various scholars recreated a rift between the Aryans and Semitic lineage. Shem’s family line was attributed to monotheism, intolerance, irrational rituals coupled with a lack of feeling for art and culture.

The Indo-Europeans were hailed as spiritual, imaginative and philosophical. This dichotomy set anti-Semitic vigour during the second half of the nineteenth century.

The nineteenth century imperialism and its squalor skewed upon the scholars’ depiction of how the Indo-European colonizers in ancient times conquered a dark, primitive original population’.

The Indo-Europeans were portrayed as humanity’s cultural heroes who remained invincible throughout the annals of history ruling over lower people and spreading knowledge and thus should be ‘predestined to remain rulers even in the future’. This exalted solipsism created ‘the Aryan colony’ of India. This was an outcome of the scholars’ racist overture to cite evidences in the Vedic texts about the racial fetish Aryan immigrants and their ingrained apartheid system.

Max Müller was overzealous to ‘Indo-Europeanise’ the Indian society. He espoused to amalgamate Europeans and Indians to reform the Hindu culture and revamp its ‘medieval’ and ‘Turanian’ worship of idols with the old Aryan, Vedic religion.

Thus ‘Müller’s modernistic Protestantism also coloured his notions about Indo-European mythology’ that he held ‘irrational and immoral’. Most scholars have condoned the idea of ‘all people have a common origin….and as such, subject to the same material and cultural circumstances as all other peoples’.

And so the face-off between universalism and pluralism has been about sense-perception and predilection –‘whom one wants to include in “us” and where one chooses to draw the line between relevant and irrelevant ancestors’.

There have been deliberate insinuations to whittle apart the Indo-Europeans, Semites and Jews. The culturalistic and naturalistic attack perpetrated by Aryans upon the Jewish and Semitic religion is highly contentious. Though, one strand of Aryanism throughout the last two centuries ‘had liberal and universalistic overtones, and interpreted the Semitic tradition as the incarnation and antiquated pluralistic chauvinism’.

The flipside of cleaving humanity into ‘families’ and charting their characteristics backfires because then the families are construed upon as ’opposite and complementary parts of the whole human race’. The psychologist Andrew Samuels has exemplified the notoriety of this tradition in Carl Gustav Jung’s theories that tear asunder Jewish and Germanic. And the author is emphatic – ‘In any case, Indo-European scholarship has often been afflicted by the ethos of complementariness’.

If the Aryans are imaginative, then why should Semites lack imagination? Why should the Pelasgians be docile and submissive if the Aryans turn out a marshal race? Can farming by Aryans turn Turanians into nomads? The readers are to pit their jurisprudence against these oddities that intrigued history and misled minds.

Subtle ratiocination can envisage a figment of ‘Platonic idea of cosmos as a totality, of humanity and the world as being shaped by certain definite, almost geometrical ideals’.

Stefan invigorates the veracity of Indo-European genealogy of the Noachian triad. All the hoopla research conducted hitherto upon Indo-European religion and mythology has preconceived notion of a scion that bore the blueprint of ‘Indo-European’.

And thus the imprint it has bore throughout is flawed. History is not an absolute piece of fact. Scholars colour it with their own sense perception and thus vent it out as a relative projection that requires a review in different climes and locations by eggheads spread over a passage of time. Facts have been repudiated and concocted for stashed vendetta to flourish solipsism. History needs to be rewritten in its true colours.

This volume strives to steer clear of all obtrusions and parochialities that have so far occluded the clear stream of history. (The University of Chicago Press; )

RELATED ARTICLES:

Myth of Aryan Invasion @ http://www.gosai.com/chaitanya/saranagati/html/vedic-upanisads/aryan-invasion.html

19 th Century Paradigms @ http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/19th-century-paradigms.html

David Frawley on Aryan Invasion @ http://www.hindubooks.org/david_frawley/myth_aryan_invasion/index.htm

Motivated Indology @ http://indiaview.wordpress.com/2007/12/26/communal-clash-13-arrested/
Invading the Sacred @ http://worldmonitor.wordpress.com/2007/08/13/invading-the-sacred/

Europe’s Civilising Mission @ http://www.neurope.eu/articles/87642.php

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A search for India's true history

2009-01-23T07:02:00.000-08:00

A search for India's true history
By Pramod Kumar
Itihaas Bharati

International conference on Indian history, civilisation and geopolitics.

"Indians are being cheated of their true history. The time has come to write an authentic and unbiased history of India free from ideological or colonial biases,” said former Union Minister Dr Subramanian Swamy while giving a call to reorient the policy of the Indian state to purge from history books’ false chronology of ancient India and myths such as Aryan invasion and racial divide of north and south Indians.

Dr Swamy was addressing the valedictory session of a three-day international history conference in New Delhi on January 11. The conference was organised on Indian history, civilisation and geopolitics by the US-based Indic Studies Foundation and the Akhil Bharatiya Itihas Sankalan Yojana (ABISY) at Indian International Centre from January 9 to January 11. Apart from historical themes, the conference also discussed India’s modern geo-political landscape and strategic affairs.

More than 100 distinguished scholars and historians from India, Greece, Belarus, US, UK, France, Sri Lanka, Nepal, etc. participated in the conference. The scholars challenged many aspects of ancient Indian history as it is taught today and exposed various myths that have been presented as facts by the Raj historians of the 19th century. The Indic Studies Foundation seeks to propagate a more accurate approach based on reason and rationality for the study and dissemination of the Indian civilisational ethos in the world, particularly to the USA and India.

The ABISY is dedicated to researching and writing Indian history spanning the last 5000 years. Major projects undertaken by it include determining the exact date of the Mahabharata as the sheet anchor of ancient Indian history, researches into kaalaganana (time-reckoninig) in Hindu traditions and researches into the now-lost Saraswati river.

Dr Swamy further said willful distortions in writing Indian history have been occurring solely due to state support and patronage since the British times until today. “The British rulers wrote our history to divide and rule us. But what is the excuse of Indian governments after Independence to continue with the same policy?”, he asked.

He said myths spread by biased historians have overtaken Indian history while actual events and places in our history have been declared myths! “Not long ago, the Saraswati river, the submerged city of Dwarka and Ram Sethu were ridiculed as myths. But their reality has been proved by archaeology and satellite imagery,” he added.

Lashing out at colonial historians for creating a vicious myth that women were discriminated against in ancient India, noted scholar Dr S Ram Mohan said scriptures such as Manu Smriti accorded a very high status to women and deprived sections. Quoting dozens of slokas from the three major code books of Hindus to prove the exalted and enlightened status women enjoyed in ancient India, Dr Mohan, who is also Additional Member (Finance), Railway Board, said: “Women had no rights in ancient India is a vicious myth spread by colonial historians. The reality is that all the three ancient code books of Hindus—Manu Smriti, Narad Smriti and Yajnavalkya Smriti—have a common theme of social welfare and an egalitarian society, with a very high status assigned to women and the deprived sections.”

He said all three Smritis have recommended lenient penalties for women compared to men and have prescribed death penalty for rape of a woman under police custody. Such kind of enlightened status of women was not found anywhere else in the world during the ancient times,” he added.

Dr BB Lal, former Director General of Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), said in a paper presented at the conference on first day that there is absolutely no proof that the Vedas were written in around 1200 BC and that the invading Aryans massacred the people of the Indus Valley. Unfortunately, these malicious distortions are still being taught in our schools as facts, he said. Stating that new distortions in Indian history are being created even today, he said it is the duty of Indian historians to set these distortions right through cogent evidence and sustainable arguments.

Though the perception and mindset of historians play a dominant role in history writing, it is important for Indians to identify and challenge the distortions that have been deliberately introduced into their historical narrative over the centuries, he said.

Prof. Shivaji Singh, former Head of Department, Ancient History, Gorakhpur University, and president of ABISY, rejected the oft-repeated charge that Indians have no sense of history. “Ancient Indians had a robust historical tradition that originated in the Rig Vedic times and continued to develop and proliferate till the end of the medieval period. This tradition has created a rich and huge mass of historical literature that is unparalleled in the world,” he said. He explained that the indigenous Indian sense of history is unique because its main purpose is man’s self-fulfillment and self-realisation instead of vague objective such as furtherance of freedom, rationalism and individualism that are prevalent in the West. “You have to understand that the Indian sense of history is grounded in Indian culture and it should not be judged by the yardstick of how the Westerners write their history,” he added.

According to Kosla Vepa, executive director of Indic Studies Foundation, the objective of the conference was to decolonise various aspects of ancient Indian history and its chronology which were deliberately distorted and misdated during the British Raj with a view to causing confusion and a sense of inferiority among Indians.

The conference aimed to contribute towards correcting this mangled historical narrative of the Indian civilisation. “Much of the ancient Indian history taught to our youth today has absolutely no basis in fact and is not supported by modern research. This is causing terrible cultural damage to our society and has to be set right urgently by taking a more rational view of the past,” he added.

He also spoke about the demeaning condescension that many Western historians have bestowed upon India. “Books on Indian history sold abroad deliberately neglect our ancient history so as to minimise and sideline its contributions. At the same time, they try to whitewash the horrors that the British rule inflicted on India, such as the large-scale famines triggered by colonial policies. Changing the content of the textbooks worldwide and especially in the West to correct these distortions should be our goal,” he added.

Speaking at the conference on second day, Prof. Narahari Achar said most of the previous attempts at astronomical dating of the famous epic made the critical error of equating the Sanskrit word graha with a planet. “However, graha actually meant not only a planet but an heavenly object moving through the sky that can ‘grasp’ such as a comet or asteroid. Once we understand this, all apparent confusion and contradiction in the planetary positions given in the Mahabharata disappears. Though the epic has been variously dated from 5000 BC to 1000 BC by historians, this is for the first time that a scholar has taken into account the movement of planets excluding the comets to reproduce by simulation the astronomical references given in the Mahabharata. The year 3067 BCE arrived at by this method is consistent with the Hindu tradition and correlates perfectly with the time references given in Rigveda and Puranas for the epic,” he added.

Internationally acclaimed mathematician and philosopher Prof. CK Raju revealed that calculus was an Indian invention that was transmitted by Jesuit priests to Europe from Cochin in the second half of 16th century. “Indian infinite series has been known to British scholars since at least 1832, but no scholar tried to establish the connection with the calculus attributed to Newton and Leibnitz. When the Europeans received the Indian calculus, they couldn’t understand it properly because the Indian philosophy of mathematics is different from the Western philosophy of mathematics. It took them about 300 years to fully comprehend its working. The calculus was used by Newton to develop his laws of physics,” he added.
http://sites.google.com/site/itihasabharati/distortions
http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=274&page=36
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Defalsification of Indian history
By Dr. Subramanian Swamy
January 25, 2009

In this falsified history, it is made out that Hindus capitulated to Islamic invaders. But on the contrary,unlike Iran, Iraq and Egypt where within decades the country capitulated to become 100 per cent Muslims. India despite 800 years of brutal Islamic rule, remained 80 per cent Hindu.

The fabrication of our History begins with the falsification of our chronology. The accepted history of no country can be structured on foreign accounts of it. But Nehru and his Leftist cronies did just that, and thus generations of Indians have been brainwashed by this falsified history of India.

The UPA has succeeded in persuading more state governments to accept the NCERT texts. A report on Monday (January 5, 2009) said 12 more state governments have accepted to teach NCERT texts in their schools. For the last two weeks the Organiser is carrying a series of articles on the NCERT textbooks prescribed for students at the primary, secondary and higher secondary schools. We have found these books written with a peculiar mindset, to denationalise and deculturise the young Indian. These books fail to make the children aware of their true heritage. These books seem to distort even India's freedom struggle, Mahatma Gandhi's role and try to divide the society into different caste and class segments. Their idea is to convince the children that India as a nation came to exist only after August 15, 1947.

We request the parents, teachers, students and scholars to join this academic exercise to expose the shenanigans behind promotion of these books in Indian schools. —Editor The identity of India is Hindustan, i.e., a nation of Hindus and those others who acknowledge with pride that their ancestors were Hindus. Hindustan represents the continuing history of culture of Hindus. One’s religion may change, but culture does not. Thus, on the agenda for a national renaissance should be the dissemination of the correct perception of what we are. This perception has to be derived from a defalsified history.

However, the present history taught in our schools and colleges is the British imperialist-sponsored one, with the intent to destroy our identity. India as a State is treated as a British-created entity and of only recent origin. The Indian people are portrayed as a heterogeneous lot who are hopelessly divided against themselves.

Such a “history” has been deliberately created by the British as a policy. Sir George Hamilton, Secretary of State for India, wrote to the Home Office on March 26, 1888 that “I think the real danger to our rule is not now but say 50 years hence….. We shall (therefore) break Indians into two sections holding widely different views….. We should so plan the educational text books that the differences between community and community are further strengthened”.

After achieving Independence, under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru and the implementing authority of the anglicized ICS, revision of our history was never done, in fact the very idea was condemned as “obscurantist” and Hindu chauvinist by Nehru and his ilk. The Imperialist History of India What is the gist of this British imperialist-tailored Indian history? In this history, India is portrayed as the land “conquered” first by the ‘Dravidians’, then by the ‘Aryans’, later by Muslims, and finally by the British. Otherwise, everything else is mythical. Our history books today exhibit this obsession with foreign rule.

For example, even though the Mughal rule from Akbar to Aurangzeb is about 150 years, which is much shorter than the 350 year rule of the Vijayanagaram empire, the history books of today hardly take notice of the latter. In fact the territory under Krishna Devaraya’s rule was much larger than Akbar’s, and yet it is the latter who is called “the Great”.

Such a version suited the British rules who had sought to create a legitimacy for their presence in India. Furthermore, we were also made to see advantages accruing from British rule, the primary one being that India was united by this colonialism, and that but for the British, India would never have been one country. Thus, the concept of India itself is owed to the plunder of colonialists. In this falsified history, it is made out that Hindus capitulated to Islamic invaders.

But on the contrary, unlike Iran, Iraq and Egypt where within decades the country capitulated to become 100 per cent Muslims. India despite 800 years of brutal Islamic rule, remained 80 per cent Hindu.

These totally false and pernicious ideas have however permeated deep into our educational system. They have poisoned the minds of our younger generations who have not had the benefit of the Freedom Struggle to awaken their pride and nationalism.

It has thus to be an essential part of the renaissance agenda that these ideas of British-sponsored history of India, namely,
(1) that India as a State was a gift of the British and
(2) that there is no such thing as a native Indian, and what we are today is a by-product of the rape of the land by visiting conquerors and their hordes and
(3) that India is a land that submitted meekly to invading hordes from Aryan to the English, are discarded.

Falsification of Chronology in India’s History The fabrication of our History begins with the falsification of our chronology. The customary dates quoted for composition of the Rig Veda (circa 1300 B.C.), Mahabharat (600 B.C.), Buddha’s Nirvana (483 B.C.), Maurya Chandragupta’s coronation (324 B.C.), and Asoka (c.268 B.C.) are entirely wrong.

Those dates are directly or indirectly based on a selected reading of Megasthenes’ account of India. In fact, so much so that eminent historians have called if the “sheet anchor of Indian chronology”. The account of Megasthenes and the derived chronology of Indian history have also an important bearing on related derivations such as the two-race (Aryan-Dravidian) theory, and on the pre-Vedic character of the so called Indus Valley Civilization.

Megasthenes was the Greek ambassador sent by Seleucus Nicator in c. 302 B.C. to the court of the Indian king whom he and the Greek called “Sandrocottus”. He was stationed in “Palimbothra”, the capital city of the kingdom. It is not clear how many years Megasthenes stayed in India, but he did write an account of his stay, titled Indika. The manuscript Indika is lost, and there is no copy of it available. However, during the time it was available, many other Greek writers quoted passages from it in their own works. These quotations were meticulously collected by Dr. Schwanbeck in the nineteenth century, and this compilation is also available to us in English (J.M. McCrindle: Ancient India as Described by Megasthenes and Arrian).

The founder of the Mauryas, however, is not the only Chandragupta in Indian history, who was a king of Magadh and founder of a dynasty. In particular, there is Gupta Chandragupta, a Magadh king and founder of the Gupta dynasty at Patliputra. Chandragupta Gupta was also not of “noble” birth and, in fact, came to power by deposing the Andhra king Chandrasri. That is, Megasthenes’ Sandrocottus may well be Gupta Chandragupta instead of Maurya Chandgragupta (and Xandremes the same as Chandrasri, and Sandrocryptus as Samudragupta). In order to determine which Chandragupta it is, we need to look further. It is, of course, a trifle silly to build one’s history on this kind of tongue-gymnastics, but I am afraid we have no choice but to pursue the Megasthenes evidence to its end, since the currently acceptable history is based on it. In order to determine at which Chandragupta’s court Megasthenes was ambassador, we have to look further into his account of India. We find he was at Pataliputra (i.e. Palimbothra in Megasthenes’ account).

We know from the Puranas (which are unanimous on this point) that all the Chandravamsa king of Magadh (including the Mauryas) prior to the Guptas, had their capital at Girivraja (or equivalently Rajgrha) and not at Pataliputra. Gupta Chandragupta was the first king to have his capital in Patliputra. This alone should identify Sandrocottos with Gupta Chandragupta. However some 6-11th century A.D. sources call Pataliputra the Maurya capital, e.g., Vishakdatta in Mudrarakshasa, but these are based on secondary sources and not on the Puranas. Pursuing Megasthenes’ account further, we find most of it impossible to believe. He appears to be quite vague about details and is obviously given to the Greek writers’ weakness in letting his imagination get out of control. For example, “Near a mountain which is called Nulo there live men whose fee are turned back-wards and have eight toes on each foot.” (Solinus 52.36-30 XXX.B.) “Megasthenes says a race of men (exist in India) who neither eat or drink, and in fact have not even mouths, set on fire and burn like incense in order to sustain their existence with odorous fumes…..” (Plutarch, Frag. XXXI).

However, Megasthenes appears to have made one precise statement of possible application which was picked up later by Pliny, Solinus, and Arrian. As summarized by Professor K.D. Sethna of Pondicherry, it reads: “Dionysus was the first who invaded India and was the first of all who triumphed over the vanished Indians. From the days of Dionysus to Alexander the Great, 6451 years reckoned with 3 months additional. From the time of Dionysus to Sandrocottus the Indians reckoned 6452 years, the calculation being made by counting the kings who reigned in the intermediate period to number 153 or 154 years. But among these a republic was thrice established, one extending…..years, another to 300 and another to 120. The Indians also tell us that Dionysus was earlier than Heracles by fifteen generations, and that except for him no one made a hostile invasion of India but that Alexander indeed came and overthrew in war all whom he attacked.”

While there a number of issues raised by this statement including the concoction that Alexander was victorious in battle across the Indus, the exactness with which he states his numbers should lead us to believe that Megasthenes could have received his chronological matters from none else than the Puranic pundits of his time. To be conclusive, we need to determine who are the “Dionysus” and “Heracles” of Megasthenes’ account. Traditionally, Dionysus (or Father Bachhus) was a Greek God of wine who was created from Zeus’s thigh. Dionysus was also a great king, and was recognised as the first among all kings, a conqueror and constructive leader. Could there be an Indian equivalent of Dionysus whom Megasthenes quickly equated with his God of wine?

Looking through the Puranas, one does indeed find such a person. His name is Prithu. Prithu was the son of King Vena. The latter was considered a wicked man whom the great sages could not tolerate, especially after he told them that the elixir soma should be offered to him in prayer and not to the gods (Bhagavata Purana IV.14.28). The great sages thereafter performed certain rites and killed Vena. But since this could lead immediately to lawlessness and chaos, the rshis decided to rectify it by coronating a strong and honest person. The rshis therefore churned the right arm (or thigh; descriptions vary) of the dead body (of Vena) to give birth to a fully grown Prithu. It was Prithu, under counsel from rshi Atri (father of Soma), who reconstructed society and brought about economic prosperity. Since he became such a great ruler, the Puranas have called him adi-raja (first king) of the world. So did the Satpatha Brahmana (v.3.5 4.). In the absence of a cult of soma in India, it is perhaps inevitable that Megasthenes and the other Greeks, in translating Indian experiences for Greek audiences, should pick on adi-raja Prithu who is “tinged with Soma” in a number of ways and bears such a close resemblance to Dionysus in the circumstances of his birth, and identify him as Dionysus. If we accept identifying Dionysus with Prithu, then indeed by a calculation based on the Puranas (done by DR Mankad, Koti Venkatachelam, KD Sethna, and others), it can be conclusively shown that indeed 6,451 years had elapsed between Prithu and a famous Chandragupta. This calculation exactly identifies Sandrocottus with Gupta Chandragupta and not with Maurya Chandragupta. The calculation also identifies Heracles with Hari Krishna (Srikrishna) of Dwarka.

This calculation must be necessarily long and tedious to counter the uninformed general feeling first sponsored by Western scholars, that the Puranas spin only fair tales and are therefore quite unreliable. However, most of these people do not realise that most Puranas have six parts, and the Vamsanucharita sections (especially of Vishnu, Matsya, and Vagu) are a systematic presentation of Indian history especially of the Chandravansa kings of Magadha.

In order to establish these dates, I would have to discuss in detail the cycle of lunar asterisms, the concept of time according to Aryabhatta, and various other systems, and also the reconciliation of various minor discrepancies that occur in the Puranas. Constraints of space and time however, prevent me from presenting these calculations here.

However, on the basis of these calculations we can say that Gupta Chandragupta was “Sandrocottus” c.327 B.C. His son, Samudragupta, was the great king who established a unified kingdom all over India, and obtained from the Cholas, Pandyas, and Cheras their recognition of him. He also had defeated Seleucus Nicator, while his father Chandragupta was king. On this calculation we can also place Prithu at 6777 B.C. and Lord Rama before that.

Derivation of other dates without discussion may also be briefly mentioned here: Buddha’s Nirvana 1807 BC, Maurya Chandragupta c. 1534 BC, Harsha Vikramaditya (Parmar) c. 82 BC.

The European scholars have thus constructed an enormous edifice of contemporary foreign dates to suit their dating. A number of them are based on misidentification. For instance, the Rock Edict XIII, the famous Kalinga edict, is identified as Asoka’s. It was, however, Samudragupta’s (Samudragupta was a great conqueror and a devout admirer of Asoka. He imitated Asoka in many ways and also took the name Asokaditya. In his later life, he became a sanyasi). Some other facts, which directly contradict their theories, they have rather flippantly cast aside.

We state here only a few examples – such facts as (1) Fa-hsien was in India and at Patliputra c. 410 AD. He mentions a number of kings, but makes not even a fleeting reference to the Gupta, even though according to European scholars he came during the height of their reign. He also dates Buddha at 1100 BC. (2) A number of Tibetan documents place Buddha at 2100 BC. (3) The Ceylonese Pali traditions leave out the Cholas, Pandyas, and Cheras from the list of Asoka’s kingdoms, whereas Rock Edict XIII includes them. In fact, as many scholars have noted, the character of Asoka from Ceylonese and other traditions is precisely (as RK Mukherjee has said) what does not appear in the principal edicts.

The accepted history of no country can be structured on foreign accounts of it. But Nehru and his Leftist cronies did just that, and thus generations of Indians have been brainwashed by this falsified history of India. The time has come for us to take seriously our Puranic sources and to re-construct a realistic well-founded history of ancient India, a history written by Indians about Indians. Such a history should bring out the amazing continuity of a Hindu nation which asserts its identity again and again.

It should focus on the fact that at the centre of our political thought is the concept of the Chakravartian ideal – to defend the nation from external aggression while giving maximum internal autonomy to the janapadas. A correct, defalsified history would record that Hindustan was one nation in the art of governance, in the style of royal courts, in the methods of warfare, in the maintenance of its agrarian base, and in the dissemination of information. Sanskrit was the language of national communication and discourse.

An accurate history should not only record the periods of glory but the moments of degeneration, of the missed opportunities, and of the failure to forge national unity at crucial junctures in time. It should draw lessons for the future generations from costly errors in the past.

In particular, it was not Hindu submission as alleged by JNU historians that was responsible for our subjugation but lack of unity and effective military strategy. Without an accurate history, Hindustan cannot develop on its correct identity. And without a clearly defined identity, Indians will continue to flounder.

Defalsification of Indian history is the first step for our renaissance.

Invading the Sacred @ http://worldmonitor.wordpress.com/2007/08/13/invading-the-sacred/

http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=274&page=6

** Planned death of history

2008-11-08T21:35:00.000-08:00

http://www.ivarta.com/columns/OL_060616.htm
ASI and planned death of history
V. Sundaram

Bijamandal Temple at Vidisha is one of massive dimensions comparable with Konarak in Orissa. It was desecrated again and again since the days of Sultan Shamsuddeen Iltutmish who first indulged in his iconoclasm at this site. Then followed Allaudin Kilji. His record was bettered by Bahadur Shah of Gujarat. Finally came Aurangazeb Alamgir a renowned champion of human compassion and deathless humanity.

During one night in the monsoon of 1991, there was heavy rain at a small town called Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh, 40 kilometers from Bopal. The downpour was so heavy that it washed away the wall that was concealing the frontage of the Bijamandal Mosque established by Aurangazeb in 1682. This Masjid is a centre of attraction for the Muslims. The Muslim clerics called it Alamgir Masjid. But for the common people of the area it was known as Bijamandal Mosque.

The broken and capsized wall following heavy rains in 1991, completely exposed and brought to public light so many Hindu idols that the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) was left with no pseudo-secular choice for further concealment and consignment into oblivion.

The fact to be noted is that for more than 300 years, these Hindu idols were buried under the platform on the northern side, which was used as the Hall of Prayer conducted especially on days of Eid.

The District Collector having control over this town in 1991, came forward to offer protection to the Surveyors of the ASI, who were always exposed to the ever present risk of violent wrath of bigots.

Exquisitely beautiful treasures of sculpture were retrieved by the ASI. Many of the statues were particularly splendid, with some of them being as high as eight feet. But the patent fact which must be noted by all enlightened citizens in India today is that the ASI within a month received instructions to stop further work. The officer of the ASI working on the excavations as well as the Collector were transferred. There was widespread public belief in all the villages around Vidisa that this was done at the behest of the then Human Resource Development Minister at the Centre Arjun Singh, a deathless champion of "secularism".

Is he not trying vigorously to re-write Indian History in order to hide well-known facts relating to Islamic terrorism in India after 1000 AD?

As a lover of history, I was reading a report of inspection of this site by Sir Alexander Cunningham who was the first Director of the Archaeological Survey of India established by Lord Canning, the Viceroy, in 1862. He visited this site in 1874 and 1876. This is what he wrote in Volume X of the ASI Report: “Inside the town there is a stone Masjid called Bijay Mandir, or the temple of Bijay. This Hindu name is said to have been derived from the original temple Bijay Rani. The temple was thrown down by the order of Aurangazeb and the present Masjid erected in its place; but the Hindus still frequent it at the time of the annual fair. By the Musalmans it is called "The Alamgiri Masjid", while Bhilsa (earlier name of Vidisha) itself is called Alamgirpur. The building is 781/2 feet long by 261/2 feet broad and the roof is supported on four rows of plain square pillars with 13 openings on front”.

So much by way of non-saffron, non-communal documentary evidence in favor of the Hindu origins of this famous Mosque in Vidisha. It was Aurangazeb who destroyed the temple known as Bijay Mandir and converted it into a Mosque called Bijay Mandal Mosque in 1682. Royal celebrations were held at the site to commemorate the visit of Aurangazeb to the area and he took the opportunity of renaming Vidisha as Alamgirpur.

Though it had been known for a long time that Bijamandal was originally a temple, namaz at Eid time continued right up to 1965. In 1965, Dr. Dwaraka Prasad Misra was the Congress Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh. It was his government which banned Muslim worship in what was a protected ASI monument. It is not surprising that Dr Dwaraka Prasad Misra earned the gratitude of most Vidishans and others in Madhya Pradesh. It was Dr D P Misra who displayed the requisite moral courage of halting namaz in the edifice. The Madhya Pradesh government gave a grant of Rs 40,000 for the construction of a separate Idgaah nearby.

About 150 years before Aurangazeb's wanton act of destruction of the Bijamandal Temple at Vidisha, Sultan Bahadur Shah of Gujarat, captured the town of Vidisha in 1526-27. The first thing he did after capturing the town was to desecrate the Bijay Mandir, proclaiming that the conquest of Bhilsa (Vidisha) was in the service of Islam. This fact is recorded in Mirat-I-Sikandri. About 200 years before him, another great humanist called Sultan Allaudin Kilji in 1293 had also enjoyed the "devout" and "dedicated" pleasure of damaging the Bijay Mandir. But the supreme credit of being the Columbus of destruction of this temple in 1234 goes to Sultan Shamsuddeen Iltutmish.

Much of the factual information in this article is based on a brilliant article called Four Vandals, one Temple by Gargi. To quote Gargi in this context: “Few temples have had the misfortune of getting desecrated four times. Being a huge structure, built in solid stones, it was able to survive and be restituted as a Mandir, three times. The ASI is still to undo the damage perpetrated finally by Aurangazeb in 1682. Excavation work by ASI which was stopped by Government of India in 1993-94 is yet to be resumed. It is no doubt difficult to redeem the pristine glory of Bijay Mandir, whose scale and dimensions are reminiscent of the Konarak Temple, but it would be a shame if independent India allows its architectural treasures remain in a state of desecration and buried without an attempt even to redeem them. It is all the more unfortunate that the ASI is not being allowed to work on the site despite pressure from local citizens”.

The credit of having converted a neutral public service organization like the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) into a slave of Congress-sponsored historical negationism and anti-Hindu pseudo secularism goes wholly to the Congress Party in India after independence.

Let me contrast the shameful record of the Congress Party in India after independence in the matter of preservation of our cultural heritage and ancient monuments with that of Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India during 1899 to 1905. He took special interest in the Archaeological Department. It was he who was responsible for the passing of the Ancient Monuments Preservation Act in 1904.

Lord Curzon is remembered for the care he gave to India's great monuments, not only to the new ones celebrating the British Raj, but also India's ancient heritage, many of which were in desperate need of conservation. He showed great sensitivity and refinement in his appreciation of Hindu and Muslim art.

He was determined to ensure that the beauty of the past should be preserved and those monuments of historical interest and aesthetic value in India be restored and preserved. He brushed aside the specious argument that it was not the duty of a Christian Government to preserve the monuments of pagan art or the sanctuaries of an alien faith. He believed that art and beauty and the reverence that was owing to all that had evoked human genius or had inspired human faith, were independent of particular creeds and insofar as it touched religion, were embraced and united by the common religion of all mankind.

Lord Curzon wrote emphatically in this context: “There is no principle of artistic discrimination between the Mausoleum of the Muslim despot and the Sepulchre of the Christian or Muslim Saint or a Hindu monument or temple. Whatever is beautiful, whatever is historic and whatever that tears the mask off the face of the past and helps mankind to read its riddles and not the dogmas of a primitively combative theology these are the criteria by which a responsible Government in India must be guided in its approach to preservation of monuments. I cannot conceive of any obligation more strictly appertaining to a supreme government than the conservation of the most beautiful and perfect collection of monuments in the world, or one more likely to be scamped and ignored by a delegation of authority to provincial administrations.”

The conservation work done by the dedicated Officers and men of the Archaeological Survey of India from 1862 to 1947 was indeed remarkable and glorious. It could well be described as the golden age of Archaeology in India. The British Officers and men of the ASI conducted their work with complete objectivity. Regardless of whether it was a Hindu or a Muslim or a Christian monument, their efforts to preserve were the same and their description was always impartial.

All these great traditions in the field of preservation and conservation of ancient and timeless monuments were destroyed by pseudo-secular men like Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao with consummate skill and organized pseudo-secular unscrupulousness. Today this great responsibility of destruction of our cultural and spiritual heritage is being jointly shouldered by a Catholic Christian & a Pseudo-secular Pagan—I mean the immortal and indispensable Sonia Gandhi and mortal and dispensable Arjun Singh!!

To conclude in the beautiful words of Gargi: “A visit to Vidisha would enable any enlightened visitor to emotionally understand and appreciate that there is a lingering below the surface resentment against the Government treatment of what they believe to be their dearest treasure, architectural as well as sentimental. The moral of a pilgrimage to Vidisha is that no purpose would be served by hushing up what is a naked history.”

Related stories:

1) Never Forget History @ http://indiaview.wordpress.com/2008/01/25/forgive-but-never-forget-%e2%80%93-history/

2) Censoring History?? @ http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=238&page=28

3) Negationism in India: Concealing the Record of Islam @ http://koenraadelst.voiceofdharma.org/books/negaind/index.htm

4) Whitewashing History @ http://www.blogs.ivarta.com/india-usa-blog-column43.htm

5) Don't play with History @ http://www.ivarta.com/columns/OL_050405.htm

** Word as Weapon

2008-10-19T11:57:00.000-07:00

The Misuse of Terminology in the study of Hinduism
Word as Weapon- Dr. Frank Morales

The inherent power of the word is a phenomenon that has been both omnipresent and essential throughout the long histories of literature, philosophy, religion and politics. The power of words has always been recognized for both its potentially constructive, as well as its devastatingly destructive, force.

In the Vedic era, the potency of shabda (or the Divine Word) was lauded for its soteriological, liberating properties, as well as for its role as a means of epistemic insight into the nature of the Absolute. The word both liberated and revealed - and both of these functions were accomplished via mantra, sound frequencies precisely sequenced in such patterns as to most optimally utilize the inherent shakti - or potency - of sound resonance.

The Divine Word in the form of mantra could heal illness, relieve suffering and deliver freedom. Many millennia later, borrowing from the much earlier Hindu concept of shabda, we find somewhat similar parallels duplicated in the Biblical literature, in which the Word is seen as being ontologically non-differentiated from the natura esse, or essential nature, of God. "In the beginning was the Word", the Gospel of John assures us, "and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Thus the power of the word has been attested to in the history of India, as well as the West.

The converse side of the positive power of words is seen in the destructive employment of words used, not to convey truth or to heal, but to obscure and deconstruct reality. Whether we speak of the sinister slogans of the Nazi leader Joseph Goebbles or the rabidly dishonest propaganda ministries of now defunct Marxist states, words have been repeatedly used with pointed polemic accuracy throughout the long history of human discourse. Words have always been employed by one group of individuals to control and de-legitimize the political, social, religious, and philosophical freedoms of other groups.

Academia has, unfortunately, been far from free of the use of such ideologically charged - even if infinitely more subtle - polemic terminology. For the last hundred years, if not arguably longer, the hallowed pronouncements of ideologically-driven professors and scholars have led to widespread bigotry and stereotyping of minority groups in America.

Such biased and politically motivated scholarship has led in the last few decades to the necessary creation of such fields as African-American Studies, Women’s Studies, Holocaust Studies, and now Anti-Hindu Defamation Studies, as new academic movements designed to balance previously perpetrated intellectual injustices.

In the following, I will explore only a few of the more insidious terms used specifically throughout the history of South Asian Studies and Hindu Studies that have been traditionally used to denote various phenomena and features of the Hindu religion. Such words have been used in the past to obscure the factual meaning of many philosophical, theological, social and ritual phenomena found within the Hindu context.

I will proceed by outlining 1) the commonly used terms for these phenomena, 2) the proper Hindu view of the actual nature of these phenomena, and 3) I will offer several alternative terminological devices that will hopefully be more accurate indicators of the full nature and extent of these Hindu religious phenomena.

Sanatana Dharma: Reclaiming Our Religion’s True Name

The first two terms that we will examine are the terms usually used to indicate the overarching spiritual/cultural matrix of traditional, indigenous South Asian religion itself. These are the very terms "Hindu/Hinduism" themselves. Used often as a matter of convenience even by followers of the religion itself (including by this author), the term "Hindu" is not a term that is inherent to the religion itself. Rather, the term is known to have been first coined by the ancient Persians, who were culturally, religiously, and prospectively extrinsic to the culture. The term was first used by these ancient Persians in order to conveniently designate the ancient Vedic spiritual culture, and was mistakenly used to refer to the Vedic religion as primarily a geographic and ethnic phenomenon, more than as a religio-philosophical world-view.

To the ancient Persians, the word “Hindu” simply referred to the culture, people, religion and practices of the peoples who lived on the other side of the Sindhu River. In the ancient Avestan Persian language ‘s’ grammatically became ‘h’. Thus, the Persians pronounced the name of this river “Hindhu”, rather than “Sindhu”. Thus, ironically, the currently used word “Hindu” is itself a corruption of the Persian word “Hindhu”, which is in turn a corruption of the term “Sindhu”, which is itself only referring to a river, and not a religion! Thus when the word “Hindu” is used today to refer to the ancient religion of India, the term is in actuality a corruption of a corruption of a word whose meaning is irrelevant to begin with.

The terms "Hindu/Hinduism" are not self-referential terms that the practitioners of the Vedic world-view chose for themselves or called themselves. These words are not attested to in any of the ancient Vedic or Classical Sanskrit literatures, or even in any of the many local dialects of ancient India until the medieval era. One will not find the term “Hindu” used to describe the Vedic religion in the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Puranas, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, or anywhere else in the Vedic scriptures. The word “Hindu” is not intrinsic to the religion of the Vedas at all. It was not, in fact, until as late as the 19th century, under the colonial rule of the British Raj, that these dual terms even acquired any legal significance on a national scale in India.

The actual term that the Vedic tradition uses to refer to itself is “Dharma”. The word Dharma is found repeatedly throughout the entire corpus of the Vedic scriptures, from the Rg Veda to the Bhagavad Gita. There is almost no scripture in the entirety of Hinduism where one will not come across the word Dharma as the preeminent name of the religion in question. Sometimes the word Dharma is used by itself; at other times it is used in conjunction with other qualifying words, such as “Vaidika Dharma” (Vedic Dharma), “Vishva Dharma” (Global Dharma), or "Sanatana Dharma" (the Eternal Dharma). The diversity of adjectival emphasis will vary in accordance with the precise context in which the word is used. Of these terms, the name “Sanatana Dharma” has been the most widely used name of this ancient religion, and is used as far back at the Rg Veda, the very earliest scripture of Hinduism, and the earliest written text known to humanity. It is also the most philosophically profound and conceptually beautiful name for our religion.

While many reading this work have no doubt encountered the term “Sanatana Dharma” before, not every follower of Sanatana Dharma is necessarily as familiar with the full philosophical implications of the term’s meaning. Thus it is necessary to explicate the term’s full meaning in depth. The Sanskrit word "sanatana" is the easier of the words to translate into non-Sanskrit languages. It denotes that which always is, that which has neither beginning nor end, that which is eternal in its very essence.

The concept of eternality that the word “sanatana” is trying to convey is a radically different concept than is ordinarily understood in the Western Abrahamic religions. When the religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam employ the concept of eternality, it usually means that x thing, having come into being, will never come to an end. In other words, “eternal” for the Abrahamic religions, usually refers only to the future. A more accurate term for this Abrahamic concept is thus “everlasting”, rather than “eternal” proper.

In Sanatana Dharma, however, the concept of eternality denotes something quite different from the standard Western notion. In this more expansive and bi-directional model, the concept of sanatana extends not only into the infinite recesses of the future, but into the past as well. By referring to something as “sanatana”, the idea is that not only will it never come to an end, but it has always had necessary existence. Thus, God (Brahman), the individual self (atman), prime materiality (jagat or prakriti), Truth (satya), the Veda (Truth rendered into literary form), and Dharma itself all have necessary existence. They always have been - and they shall always be.

The Metaphysics of Dharma

Unlike the word “sanatana”, the term ''dharma" is a term that can be properly rendered into the English language only with the greatest of difficulty. This is the case because there is no one corresponding English term that fully renders both the denotative and the connotative meanings of the term with maximal sufficiency. Rather than merely communicating a nominal subject for which there can be an easy word for word equivalency, dharma is communicating a metaphysical concept. The denotative meaning of "dharma" straightforwardly designates an essential attribute of x object - an attribute whose absence renders the object devoid of either rational meaning or existential significance. A thing’s dharma is what constitutes the thing’s very essence, without which, the very concept of the thing would be rendered meaningless.

To illustrate the full meaning of this term, we can use the following examples: It is the dharma of water to be wet. Without the essential attribute (dharma) of wetness, the concept and existential fact of water loses all meaning. Likewise, it is the dharma of fire to be hot, the dharma of space to be expansive, etc. The denotative meaning of dharma is easy enough to comprehend. It is, however, when we come to the connotative meaning of the term "dharma" that we then leave the more microcosmic concerns of Vaisesika categoriology behind, and then enter the realm of the overtly philosophical.

For, according to the Vedic tradition itself, the very empirical cosmos in which we find ourselves currently situated also has its own inherent dharma, its essential attributive nature, without which the universe becomes meaningless. In this more macro-cosmological sense, the term dharma is designed to communicate the view that there is an underlying structure of natural law that is inherent in the very intrinsic constitution of Being itself. The Vedic world-view sees the universe as a place that has inherent meaning, purpose and an intelligent design underlying its physical principles and laws. The world is here for a purpose – God’s purpose. The word Dharma, in this more important philosophical sense, refers to those underlying natural principles that are inherent in the very structure of reality, and that have their origin in God. Dharma is Natural Law. Thus, if we needed to render the entire term “Sanatana Dharma” into English, we can cautiously translate it as "The Eternal Natural Way". Sanatana Dharma is the true name of our religion.

The term “Sanatana Dharma” more accurately communicates the axiomatic metaphysical nature of this concept than do the less meaningful and concocted terms “Hindu/Hinduism”. Thus, when the terms "Hindu/Hinduism" are repeatedly used by both Euro-American and Indian scholars, as well as by actual followers of this eternal spiritual tradition, we fall very far short from fully communicating the metaphysical, ethical and ontological components of the world-view of Sanatana Dharma. The former term – i.e., “Hinduism” - is a word mistakenly created to describe a culture in a purely ethnic, national and social context. The latter – “Sanatana Dharma” - is describing an illustrious science of Being in a purely philosophical - and therefore highly rational, and inherently beautiful - sense.

It is understandable that the terms “Hindu/Hinduism” will continue to be used periodically as a matter of convenience. After all, it takes time, coupled with continuous education, for people to break themselves of a two hundred year old habit. For the sake of accuracy, as well as to uphold the dignity, beauty and grandeur of our ancient and sacred religion, however, we must always do our utmost to use the much more meaningful, linguistically correct and beautiful name Sanatana Dharma when referring to our religion. Our religion is Sanatana Dharma.

Euro-American Idol

Having examined the problematic issues of a very broad term that has been misapplied in the discussion of Vedic religion, I will now briefly examine several more specific terms that have been misemployed in the history of the study of Sanatana Dharma. The first of these more specialized polemically charged words is the term “idol”. This word has been repeatedly used by purported scholars of Sanatana Dharma (both Euro-American, as well as Indian scholars) in their study of our religion.

Even more disturbing, however, is the fact that the derogatory term “idol” has been continuously and unthinkingly used by even religious Hindus, as well as by supposedly intelligent Hindu leaders, to this very day. At least once a month, for example, I get notices from various Hindu temples inviting me to “idol” installations, pujas to the “idol”, etc.

Unbeknownst to the vast majority of Hindus, the term “idol” is not an innocently neutral term meant only to signify the objective reality of a religious statue or some other focal point used as a means of meditation upon the Divine. In actuality, it is a term that is historically and theologically devoid of any positive connotations. It is a word that is purely negative in meaning. First arising from a purely Christian/Islamic religious and cultural context, the theologically derived terms “Idol/Idolatry” were quite clearly designed by the creators of the Abrahamic religions to signify the misguided worship of the graven images of fictitious gods. By its very definition, the word “idol” means an image of a false god.

In the Old Testament, idol worshippers are repeatedly condemned to death. In the Koran, the worshipers of idols are relegated to the category of the demonic. This theological baggage attendant upon the word “idol” was later naturally imported into the nascent field of indology by the 18th and 19th century European founders of modern Vedic studies.

Thus, over time, what originated as a purely religious term, specifically meant to designate a false practice and erroneous theological view, progressed to being accepted as an academic term meant to describe the practices and views of a “foreign” religion. In turn, tragically, the greater Hindu community has itself now unknowingly embraced this term as a legitimate word meant to convey one of the most sacred and integral mechanisms of Hindu worship.

Unfortunately, when a Christian theologian, a Muslim cleric, or a colonialist-tempered scholar is using the term “idol”, they are interpreting the specific religious phenomenon of murti-puja in a radically different manner than is the typical Hindu worshipper. For the Christian and Muslim, murti-puja is nothing more than the demonic worship of abominable graven images. For the atheist academician, it is merely an instance of primitive superstition, worthy of no more consideration than any other intriguing object of anthropological study.

Consequently, each and every time we foolishly call our sacred images “idols”, we are actually insulting the divinities we are claiming to worship, and proclaiming to the world that we are worshipping false gods.

For those scholars who have allowed themselves to develop a more sophisticated and objective understanding of the phenomenon of murti-puja – that is one that arises from a Hindu, and thus an insider, perspective – it becomes rather apparent that the practice that is occurring via the process of murti-puja (or what is sometimes called archa-puja) is something radically distinct from the stereotyped image of idol worship that is dishonestly painted by rabidly iconoclastic ideologies. Followers of Sanatana Dharma are not blindly worshipping false idols, but are using divine images whose forms have been revealed via the non-mediated intuitive perception of the Absolute experienced by the rishis (the enlightened saints and sages of Sanatana Dharma). Moreover, such images are used primarily as focal points designed as aids to meditative awareness. Archa-puja is not a superstition, a form of primitive magical fetishism, or a concocted form of worship, but rather a tried and tested soteriological and meditative device.

This being the case, I urge both scholars of Hindu Studies, as well as everyday practitioners of Sanatana Dharma, to refrain from using the derogatory term “idol” and to instead use one of the more culturally sensitive, and more academically accurate terms that are used by the tradition itself. Such terms include: murti, archa, etc. Take your pick.

Is Sanatana Dharma Predicated upon Lies?

The next term that we will examine is the word “myth” as used to describe the sacred stories of Sanatana Dharma. The related terms "myth", "mythology", "mythological", etc., have had an interesting history and a very pointed polemic use in Euro-American discourse on Sanatana Dharma. That the terms are rife with very negative connotations is doubted by very few. The way the terms are used today both within academia, as well as by the general public, is to denote something that is untrue, false, a lie, "primitive" (i.e., not Euro-American).

Several months ago, during a visit to the dentist's office, I saw a pamphlet on the table called "The Myths About Sexually Transmitted Diseases". The ultimate question that all Hindus need to ask ourselves is: is it really of any intellectual necessity that such a powerfully negative term as “myth” also be associated with the sacred stories, teachings and history of Sanatana Dharma?

Polemically speaking, one culture's "myth" is another culture's sacred history...and visa versa. The academic field of the study of "mythological" literature was founded by 18th century European Classicists who took their simplistic misconceptions about their own Greco-Roman, pre-Christian religious and cultural heritage, and attempted to then graft these misconceptions onto all contemporary non-Christian cultures - including that of India.

These founders of "mythology" studies - including such individuals as Sir George Grey, Rudolph Otto and Karl Kerenyi - were convinced, as is unarguably evident in their writings, that the entire realm of religious story could be clearly demarcated into two radically distinct camps: Myth and History.

The first category is "Myth" proper, that is: the “primitive” stories about gods, goddesses, spirits, demons, magic and mysticism, etc. found throughout all of the indigenous, pre-Christian, and non-Biblical cultures of the world. Such stories are all considered to be certainly no more than the ignorant "pre-scientific" attempts of primitive peoples (their words, not mine) to come to terms with and explain such frightening mysteries as natural weather phenomena (the stereotypical scenario offered by these atheistic scholars is that the inexplicable spectacle of lightning and thunder left our ancestors trembling in worshipful fear!). The study of such woefully mythologically ridden cultures was then relegated by these supposed mythology authorities to the nascent fields of anthropology, folk-lore studies, ethnic studies, and art history studies. The “myths” of all non-Judeo-Christian cultures were thus falsely portrayed as being archaic, primitive, and not worthy of serious scholarly study.

The second category that religious stories were placed in was termed "History", that is: Biblical literature and all supposedly factual accounts of events proceeding such literature to be found throughout the history of Europe and the post-Columbian Americas. Whereas stories about Rama as the Dharma-raja (Dharmic King) of Ayodhya were considered quaint heroic myths, for example, stories of Moses parting the Red Sea were accepted as being thoroughly historical – this, though there is more archeological and textual evidence for the former than for the latter being actual historical facts. In order to study these supposed historical facts about Judeo-Christian culture, Euro-American scholars employed a very different battery of academic disciplines entirely, including philosophical, ethical, literary, psychological, etc.

The only overlapping exception to this biased division of study is the field of philology, which was employed to research both the glorious history of Europe, as well as the primitive utterings of the Rg Veda. Apparently, only the “history” of Western man is a worthy enough subject for liberal arts study, philosophical consideration, and serious intellectual analysis.

There is the wonderful saying that we have all encountered that assures us that "history" is written by the victors. Consequently, the mostly improvable stories of the Garden of Eden, Noah's Ark, Abraham, Moses, the Judges, David, etc. are unquestioningly accepted by most European historians - and tragically by many Indian historians! - as being incontrovertible and established fact. This, even though the evidence for these supposed historical facts are in many cases no stronger, or even less so, than the evidence supporting the historicity of the ancient stories of Sanatana Dharma.

What these Western scholars and their Westernized Indian counterparts called the "mythical" Sarasvati River, for example, was later discovered to be a concrete geological fact in our century by no less empirical evidence than satellite photography. Krishna's "mythological" city of Dvaraka was, likewise, impertinently discovered off the coast of Gujarat about three decades ago (anyone out there have a crane?). The supposed myths of the Shastras seem to have the incorrigible habit of consistently allowing themselves to be proven factual.

Despite these hard geological and archeological facts, the histories of the Puranas and Itihasas are - unlike the stories of the Bible – summarily relegated by modern Euro-American scholars to the misty realm of myth. Or more bluntly: to the realm of primitive fables. If we would venture to speculate that what has brought this stark double standard about has been nothing less than European xenophobia and intellectual colonialism, coupled with a very strong element of Hindu inferiority complex, we would not be far from the mark. The terms "myth", "mythology", "mythological", etc., have been used as a powerful weapon for decades in order to delegitimizing the world-view of Sanatana Dharma, as well as the Hindu and Indian way of life.

Whether such unscholarly use of these otherwise legitimate terms will be allowed to continue as a weapon against the sacred stories of Vedic culture, or whether the use of such terms will be relegated to the same dust-bin of other such derogatory terms, is up to the will of the global Hindu community. We ourselves, as Hindus, need to stop using derogatory terms to describe the beliefs and elements of our religion. Such terms as “myth” should be absolutely anathema to every sincere and self-respecting Hindu when speaking about the sacred stories of Sanatana Dharma. If we ourselves don’t have the determination to describe our own religion in legitimate and positive terms, how can we expect anyone else to?

As a more positive alternative to these terms, I propose that scholars who study the religions of South Asia approach their purported object of research in a similar manner as do scholars who study many other formally oppressed non-Christian cultures (such as those who study Native American tribes). In these fields the religious stories of the subjects under study are often referred to by the more culturally sensitive term "Sacred Stories". I propose that we scholars of Hindu Studies owe the Hindu world no less respect. We need to begin referring to the stories of the Hindu scriptures as Sacred Stories, or divya katha in Sanskrit. We can later, as informed persons, debate over the actual meaning of these stories - whether they are literal history - which in many cases they very clearly are - or are meant to be taken allegorically or metaphorically. Let us all, in any case be in agreement that these Sacred Stories of Sanatana Dharma must never again be degraded by terming them "myth".

Reclaiming the Power of Our Words

The perennial use of politically surcharged words to stifle the aspirations of a people, to deflect the actual meaning of an action or concept, and to otherwise keep a people subservient to the dominant cultural mainstream is nothing new. Additionally, it is not new that the very people who have been the direct victims of such propangandistic terminology will inevitably come to adopt such terms in self-referential ways. We have the case of the Ethiopian Jews, for example, who for hundreds of years were termed “Falashas” – an incredibly derogatory term in the Ethiopian language– by those who persecuted them.

After hundreds of years of such persistent persecution, sadly, the Jews of Ethiopia even began to refer to themselves as the “Falasha” community. If a people are called inferior for long enough a period of time, eventually that population group will start to call themselves inferior as well. Such instances of the victims adopting the polemic terminology of their oppressors has been witnessed repeatedly over the long course of human history – among the Jews, Native Americans, European Pagans, and Gypsies (Romani). Now the Hindu community has joined their ranks.

Consequently, the use of inaccurate, and often consciously and maliciously distorted, terminology has been a double-edged source of oppressive discourse. The use of such terms has been made use of by an intellectually lethargic tradition of South Asian scholars who view the religion of Sanatana Dharma, not as the noble living tradition that it is, but as their personal academic plaything.

On the other hand, Hindus themselves have then blindly accepted these non-indigenous and inaccurate terms, and unknowingly adopted them as their own. Thus, while the bulk of the blame must be placed squarely on the shoulders of the oppressors, the victims too need to free themselves of a colonialist-induced mentality of inferiority and acceptance of their oppression. It is my fervent hope that we followers of Sanatana Dharma will stop using the terminology of our antagonists to describe our religion.

We must begin to call our religion by its true name: Sanatana Dharma. We must never use the words “idol” and “mythology” to describe our murtis and sacred stories again. We must reclaim our heritage. Such positive change might come about slowly, one person at a time. Every revolution, however, begins with thoroughly grasping the power of the word.

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About the AuthorDr. Frank Gaetano Morales, Ph.D. earned both a doctorate and a Masters degree in Languages and Cultures of Asia from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Previously, Dr. Morales earned a B.A. in Philosophy and Theology from Loyola University Chicago. His fields of expertise include Philosophy of Religion, Hindu Studies, Sanskrit, History of Religion, Comparative Theology, Contemporary South Asian Politics, and the interface between Hinduism and modernity. Dr. Morales is currently recognized as one of the nation’s leading authorities on Hindu philosophy and religion, as well as South Asian studies. In addition to directing his own institute, Dr. Morales works in conjunction with several educational institutes and think tanks globally. Dr. Morales maintains a very demanding schedule consisting of lecturing, consulting and writing. Dr. Morales has been a guest lecturer at over two-dozen major universities throughout the USA, including Cornell, Northwestern, Illinois Institute of Technology, and University of Virginia. In addition, Dr. Morales has served as a South Asian affairs consultant for such corporations as Ford Motor Company, Lucent Technologies, Goodwin Procter Law Firm, and the Global Health Corporation. His first book, “Experiencing Truth: The Vedic Way of Knowing God”, is scheduled for publication in 2006. In addition to his academic duties, Dr. Morales has been a practicing orthodox Hindu for 30 years, and is an ordained Hindu priest. The practice of Yoga, meditation and puja are of central importance in his life. His website is http://www.dharmacentral.com/. http://boloji.com/hinduism/102.htm

** 19th century paradigms

2008-10-19T08:48:00.000-07:00

http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/19th-century-paradigms.html
Let not the 19th century paradigms continue to haunt us!

Inaugural Address delivered at the 19th International Conference on South Asian Archaeology,held at University of Bologna, Ravenna, Italy on July 2-6, 2007.

Distinguished fellow delegates and other members of the audience,

I am most grateful to the organizers of this conference, in particular to the President, Professor Maurizio Tosi, not only for inviting me to participate in this Conference but also for giving me the additional honour of delivering the Inaugural Address. Indeed, I have no words to thank them adequately for their kindness. Perhaps this is the first occasion when a South Asian is being given this privileged treatment by the European Association of South Asian Archaeologists.

The conference hall is full of scholars from all parts of the world – from the United States of America on the west to the Land of the Rising Sun, Japan, on the east. All these scholars have contributed in a number of ways to our understanding of the past of South Asia, and I salute them with all the humility that I can muster. However, I hope I will not be misunderstood when I say that some amongst us have not yet been able to shake off the 19th-century biases that have blurred our vision of South Asia’s past.

As is well known, it was the renowned German scholar Max Muller who, in the 19th century, attempted for the first time to date the Vedas. Accepting that the Sutra literature was datable to the 6th century BCE, he gave a block-period of 200 years to the preceding three parts of the Vedic literature, namely the Aranyakas, Brahmanas and Vedas. Thus, he arrived at 1200 BCE as the date of the Vedas.

However, when his contemporaries, like Goldstucker, Whitney and Wilson, objected to his ad-hocism, he toned down, and finally surrendered by saying (Max Muller 1890, reprint 1979): “Whether the Vedic hymns were composed [in] 1000 or 1500 or 2000 or 3000 BC, no power on earth will ever determine.” But the great pity is that, in spite of such a candid confession by the savant himself, many of his followers continue to swear by his initial dating, viz. 1200 BCE.

The ultimate effect of this blind tenacity was that when in the 1920s the great civilization, now known variously as the Harappan, Indus or Indus-Sarasvati Civilization, was discovered in South Asia, and was dated to the 3rd millennium BCE, it was argued that since the Vedas were no earlier than 1200 BCE, the Harappan Civilization could not have been Vedic. Further, since the only other major linguistic group in the region was the Dravidian, it was held that the Harappans were a Dravidian-speaking people.

Then came the master stroke. In 1946, my revered guru Mortimer Wheeler (later knighted) discovered a fortification wall at Harappa and on learning that the Aryan god Indra had been referred to as puramdara (destroyer of forts) he readily pronounced his judgment (Wheeler 1947: 82): “On circumstantial evidence Indra [representing the Aryans] stands accused [of destroying the Harappan Civilization].” In further support of his thesis, he cited certain human skeletons at Mohenjo-daro, saying that these were the people massacred by the Aryan invaders. Thus was reached the peak of the ‘Aryan Invasion’ theory.

And lo and behold! The very first one to fall in the trap of the ‘Aryan Invasion’ theory was none else but the guru’s disciple himself. With all the enthusiasm inherited from the guru, I started looking for the remains of some culture that may be post-Harappan but anterior to the early historical times. In my exploration of the sites associated with the Mahabharata story I came across the Painted Grey Ware Culture which fitted the bill. It antedated the Northern Black Polished Ware whose beginning went back to the 6th-7th century BCE, and overlay, with a break in between, the Ochre Colour Ware of the early 2nd millennium BCE. In my report on the excavations at Hastinapura and in a few subsequent papers I expressed the view that the Painted Grey Ware Culture represented the early Aryans in India. But the honeymoon was soon to be over.

Excavations in the middle Ganga valley threw up in the pre-NBP strata a ceramic industry with the same shapes (viz. bowls and dishes) and painted designs as in the case of the PGW, the only difference being that in the former case the ware had a black or black-and-red surface-colour, which, however, was just the result of a particular method of firing. And even the associated cultural equipment was alike in the two cases. All this similarity opened my eyes and I could no longer sustain the theory of the PGW having been a representative of the early Aryans in India. (The association of this Ware with the Mahabharata story was nevertheless sustainable since that event comes at a later stage in the sequence.) I had no qualms in abandoning my then-favourite theory.

But linguists are far ahead of archaeologists in pushing the poor Aryans through the Khyber / Bolan passes into India. In doing so, they would not mind even distorting the original Sanskrit texts. A case in point is that of the well known Professor of Sanskrit at the Harvard University, Professor Witzel. He did not hesitate to mistranslate a part of the Baudhayana Srautasutra (Witzel 1995: 320-21). In 2003 I published a paper in the East and West (Vol. 53, Nos. 1-4), exposing his manipulation.

Witzel’s translation of the relevant Sanskrit text was as follows:

"Aya went eastwards. His (people) are the Kuru-Pancalas and Kasi Videha. This is the Ayava(migration).(His other people)stayed at home in the west. His people are the Gandhari, Parasu and Aratta. This is the Amavasava (group).

Whereas the correct translation is:

Ayu migrated eastwards. His (people) are the Kuru-Pancalas and the Kasi-Videhas. This is the Ayava (migration). Amavasu migrated westwards. His (people) are the Ghandhari, Parsu and Aratta. This is the Amavasu (migration).

(Fig. 1)

According to the correct translation, there was no movement of the Aryan people from anywhere in the north-west. On the other hand, the evidence indicates that it was from an intermediary point that some of the Aryan tribes went eastwards and other westwards.

This would be clear from the map that follows(Fig. 1).

Professor Witzel and I happened to participate in a seminar organized by UMASS, Dartmouth in June 2006. When I referred, during the course of my presentation, to this wrong translation by the learned Professor, he, instead of providing evidence in support of his own stand, shot at me by saying that I did not know the difference between Vedic and Classical Sanskrit.

Should that be the level of an academic debate? (Anyway, he had to be told that I had the privilege of obtaining in 1943 my Master’s Degree in Sanskrit (with the Vedas included), with a First Class First, from a first class university of India, Allahabad.)
Next Page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Related stories:

Invading the Sacred @ http://worldmonitor.wordpress.com/2007/08/13/invading-the-sacred/

Motivated Indology @ http://indiaview.wordpress.com/2007/12/26/communal-clash-13-arrested/

Evangelist's Interview @ http://indiasecular.wordpress.com/2007/10/07/interview-of-anevangelist/

British Caste System @ http://indiaview.wordpress.com/2007/08/01/the-british-caste-system-vs-the-indian/