Indus Valley Civilization

Curious George · Jan 9, 2017

Jainarayan said:
We don't know what language they spoke or what they called themselves because they left no decipherable records. They left only a few fragments of what may or may not be writing.

Yet Egyptians had written language, mesopotamia had written language, I would expect a civilization larger than both to have it as well. Unfortunately, we haven't found any that are big enough to translate. Unfortunately the climate doesn't seem to have been as preserving as Egypt and mesopotamia.

paarsurrey · Jan 9, 2017

Curious George said:
The 1500bce date which I used came from, I thought, the dating of the oldest sanskrit text of the rigveda. It does seem a little silly to suggest that the arrival of pie occurred and immediately wrote down the rigveda.

It will be interesting as more dna data is analyzed to use that to trace the flow of language.

It is essential that Veda/Yajurveda flora and fauna mentioned in its chapters should be analysed to verify which land they were written.
Regards

Kirran · Jan 9, 2017

paarsurrey said:
People have been writing in these forums that there were no Aryans that entered lands of Bharat from outside:

“The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India”

This idea totally foreign to the history of India, whether north or south has become almost an unquestioned truth in the interpretation of ancient history Today, after nearly all the reasons for its supposed validity have been refuted, even major Western scholars are at last beginning to call it in question
Veda Academy - The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India

Regards

This is a prominent view in certain areas of academia, based primarily in India. It is, nevertheless, not the mainstream view.

Spirit_Warrior · Jan 9, 2017

Curious George said:
The 1500bce date which I used came from, I thought, the dating of the oldest sanskrit text of the rigveda. It does seem a little silly to suggest that the arrival of pie occurred and immediately wrote down the rigveda.

It will be interesting as more dna data is analyzed to use that to trace the flow of language.

There seems to be a confusion of terms here .

1500BCE is the dating of the "arrival" of the Indo-Aryan branch of the IE family. Not the arrival of PIE people, the PIE according to Aryan invasion theory, originated in the Russian Steeps probably around 4000BCE, and then dispersed in all directions splitting up into tribes, one of those tribe the Indo-Aryans is actually the latest of the tribes emerging around 2200BCE and entered India around 1500BCE from Iran, and the completed the composition of the Rig Veda by 1200BCE.

It was originally thought that Indo-Aryan people brought in the Vedas and the Vedic religion from outside of India(including the caste system) Now, it is widely accepted the Rig Veda was composed in its entirety in India, because the Rig Veda describes the flora and fauna of India, including its geography even in the early books. In other words, there is no need to posit an outside origin for the Vedic religion. The Vedic religion developed in India.

Now, this poses a problem, because the old Vedic religion is similar to the other IE religions such as the Celtic, Iranian, Slavic, Hittie, Latin, Norse and Hellenic branches. They have the same gods, the same caste-system like organisation of society and the same myths in some form. e.g. Vedic(Dyus-Pitar - sky god) Greek(Zeus) Latin(Jupiter) Celtic(Deuos-duw) Norse(Tiwaz)

See more here: Proto-Indo-European religion - Wikipedia

So if the Vedic religion was developed in India, then this suggests the Vedic religion travelled outside of India with the IE tribes --- again pointing to India as the homeland of PIE.

It is also interesting to note the most developed version we find of the old PIE religion of the IE people is again, surprise surprise, in India. For some reason Indo-Aryans were the only branch that were able to preserve not just the PIE language the most, but also the PIE religion.

I think to an impartial, objective and rational researcher, all roads do seem to be leading back to India, So why this dogma that the Aryans were not from India but from the Russian Steeps? Again, it all based on the historical or comparative linguistics. If you want to get an idea what that is --- you basically sit down with all IE languages in front of you --- you then organise them into families (like Celtic, Latin, Hellenic, Slavic etc) and then you look at common sounds and you posit some immutable mathematical axioms of how sound shifts happen to show you which one emerged first, which one second etc so you can construct a history of how IE languages formed and split --- then somehow you also posit dates(how do you get dates from language data?) when it happened -- then it is taught as fact.

I have read several scholars within the field of linguistics itself who have seriously challenged the historical/comparative method in linguistics, even calling it a pseudoscience. I agree, because the historical method is not the scientific method, that actual sciences use like physics, chemistry and biology -- It is not based on hard repeated empirical facts, it is not tested against empirical data in the world, it is not falsifiable -- come on even Newton's laws have been falsified, so on what grounds can these historical linguists claim their science is more immutable than physics? It is as I told you earlier hubris. That has not been challenged adequately so far.

When we do actually look at the scientific data a completely different picture emerges: I will summarise some of that here, and if you want more details, I will elaborate:

1. Archaeology: There is no evidence of any invasion of the IVC -- zilch, nada. This is one of the core reasons AIT has been demoted to AMT. Now, they say the Aryans entered in small groups over several generations, but did not invade --- but still they managed to near completely supplant the IVC and turn it Aryan and even make the original Dravidian natives believe it was always Aryan for the last 10,000 years? Absurd if you ask me.

2. Geology: The Rig Veda and post-Vedic literature described a river called the 'Saraswati' which once was the mightiest river flowing from the Himalayas into the sea, it was deified as the main sustainer of the IVC civilisation and worshipped as a goddess(such as even today Hindus worship rivers as goddesses, like Ganges) There are dozens of verses in the early books of the Rig Veda describing it and eulogising it. Some of the most explicit are like 'O Saraswati, mighty river, all our settlements are on your banks' or 'O Saraswati, mighty river, may you never spurn us, or we will migrate to distant lands' In the later books of the Rig Veda the Saraswati river becomes less important and is replaced by Ganges-Yamuna(and that has remained ever since) and by the time of the Mahabharata the Saraswati river is described as starting to dry up, ending in the Thar desert.

Until only recent discoveries by space satellite imaging, this river was thought to be mythological because it could not be located. Now we know as a matter of fact this river is not mythological, it existed and it was thriving in 4000BCE, and had completely dried up by 1900BCE. This means the Aryans were already in India in 4000BCE which would make the Indo-Aryan branch by far the oldest. Hence India as the PIE homeland. There have been a few attempts to deny that this river that has been discovered is not the 'Saraswati' but the evidence is incontrovertible -- so AMT proponents have explained it away in their typical absurd ways 'The Indo-Aryans heard of the great legends and myths of the Sarwasti river from the Dravidian people, and decided to include in the Rig Veda as their main river goddess'

This is sort of like saying 'Yes we cannot detect any receivers on the dog Pluto, but that is because the receivers are invisible, but he's still plotting against us with the martians'

3. Astronomy. Not many know of the Hindu astronomical tables which have been preserved in Hindu observatories in cities like Kasi(modern day Benares) which found their way to Europe and were studied by European astronomers, including the likes of Kepler, Cassini, Newton, Brahe and Copernicus. The fact that barely anybody knows this today, is further evidence of what I said that India's role in shaping world civilisation, including up to the modern age has been marginalised in history books, and only recent research by brave scholars is starting to address the balance.

Anyway what is distinct about these Hindu tables they record the position of the planets during the Kaliyuga age at 3012BCE, which stood in direct opposition to the Mosaic calendar. At that time in Europe the Mosaic calendar was taken as religious truth, and challenging it could mean death. According to this calendar the world began in 4004BCE and it was taken as gospel truth across Europe, including with European astronomers like Newton. When they saw the Hindu tables they saw it as a huge threat to Christian civilisation because it challenged their chronology, so many European astronomers did not want to believe them. But because they were so accurate and precise they were saw as a serious challenge. There were others like Cassini who did believe them and was highly impressed with them. Bailey commented:

The motion of the stars calculated by the Hindus before some 4500 years vary not even a single minute from the tables of Cassine and Meyer (used in the 19-th century). The Indian tables give the same annual variation of the moon as the discovered by Tycho Brahe - a variation unknown to the school of Alexandria and also to the Arabs who followed the calculations of the school... "The Hindu systems of astronomy are by far the oldest and that from which the Egyptians, Greek, Romans and - even the Jews derived from the Hindus their knowledge.

The obvious implication of this the Indo-Aryans were already in India in 3012BCE at the start of the Kaliyuga era to record the position of the planets at that epoch. This tradition of recording positions of planets at auspicious occasions still continues in Hinduism today. Not only were they already in India, but they were there long enough to develop a highly sophisticated system of astronomy(which means even older origins)

So when we have such smoking gun type of evidence, why is it rejected? Again, because it was explained away by Christian scholars at the time to maintain the Mosaic calendar, the argument was "those devious Brahmins back-calculated the position of the planets in 3012BCE to hoax that they were so ancient" It actually took a real astronomer like Playfair to show that this was impossible, because back-calculation requires knowledge of modern calculus and knowledge of gravitational constants etc, the only reasonable explanation is that these really are naked eye observations at the time.

See more here: The Interest of European Scientists in Indian Calendar and Chronology

You see a lot of us who accept this(myth) of Aryan arrival into India in 1500BCE have no idea how this theory and date was arrived at. At the time when this theory was created India was a colonial subject and Hinduism was seen as heathen by the mainstream academia in Europe, particularly in England. Such that in older versions of Enyclopedia Brittanica, you would see "objective" descriptions like "Indian music is often rude, barbaric, inferior noise" The early indologists were all Christian missionaries(including Max Muller, William Jones) and they shared massive anxiety over the Hindu challenge to the Mosaic civilisation, which they saw as the origin of world civilisation. So they actually made it a point to revise Hindu history to make it it fit --- this is no conspiracy -- you can read their writings themselves where they first reject all Hindu dates, and then force them to fit the Mosaic account by shortening them, often by thousands of years.

I actually will submit to you there was never any "Arrival, invasion, migration" of Aryans into India. Aryans originated in India and developed this highly advanced civilisation we today call "IVC" which gave us the Dharmic religions. The IVC being the most largest and advanced civilisation in the world obviously had the power to colonise across Indo-Europe, and several tribes must have originated from India and travelled for trading, for colonisation, for tourism, cultural exchange etc This is why the oldest document we can find, other than the Vedas, is the Hittie-Mittani texts in old Semetic texts and in treaties, contain Indo-Aryan words -- indicating that there were colonies of Indo-Aryans as far as Mesopotamia (I also think there is evidence of Indo-Aryan-Semitic wars)

The Aryan arrival/invasion/migration has been maintained in history books by pure dogma. It will be gone this century, because Europe is no longer the superpower of the world. The resurgence of India and China in the 21st century as the two most dominant powers by the end of the century will redress the balance.

Curious George · Jan 9, 2017

Spirit_Warrior said:
There seems to be a confusion of terms here .

1500BCE is the dating of the "arrival" of the Indo-Aryan branch of the IE family. Not the arrival of PIE people, the PIE according to Aryan invasion theory, originated in the Russian Steeps probably around 4000BCE, and then dispersed in all directions splitting up into tribes, one of those tribe the Indo-Aryans is actually the latest of the tribes emerging around 2200CE and entered India around 1500BCE from Iran, and the completed the composition of the Rig Veda by 1200BCE.

It was originally thought that Indo-Aryan people brought in the Vedas and the Vedic religion from outside of India(including the caste system) Now, it is widely accepted the Rig Veda was composed in its entirety in India, because the Rig Veda describes the flora and fauna of India, including its geography even in the early books. In other words, there is no need to posit an outside origin for the Vedic religion. The Vedic religion developed in India.

Now, this poses a problem, because the old Vedic religion is similar to the other IE religions such as the Celtic, Iranian, Slavic, Hittie, Latin, Norse and Hellenic branches. They have the same gods, the same caste-system like organisation of society and the same myths in some form. e.g. Vedic(Dyus-Pitar - sky god) Greek(Zeus) Latin(Jupiter) Celtic(Deuos-duw) Norse(Tiwaz)

See more here: Proto-Indo-European religion - Wikipedia

So if the Vedic religion was developed in India, then this suggests the Vedic religion travelled outside of India with the IE tribes --- again pointing to India as the homeland of PIE.

It is also interesting to note the most developed version we find of the old PIE religion of the IE people is again, surprise surprise, in India. For some reason Indo-Aryans were the only branch that were able to preserve not just the PIE language the most, but also the PIE religion.

I think to an impartial, objective and rational researcher, all roads do seem to be leading back to India, So why this dogma that the Aryans were not from India but from the Russian Steeps? Again, it all based on the historical or comparative linguistics. If you want to get an idea what that is --- you basically sit down with all IE languages in front of you --- you then organise them into families (like Celtic, Latin, Hellenic, Slavic etc) and then you look at common sounds and you posit some immutable mathematical axioms of how sound shifts happen to show you which one emerged first, which one second etc so you can construct a history of how IE languages formed and split --- then somehow you also posit dates(how do you get dates from language data?) when it happened -- then it is taught as fact.

I have read several scholars within the field of linguistics itself who have seriously challenged the historical/comparative method in linguistics, even calling it a pseudoscience. I agree, because the historical method is not the scientific method, that actual sciences use like physics, chemistry and biology -- It is not based on hard repeated empirical facts, it is not tested against empirical data in the world, it is not falsifiable -- come on even Newton's laws have been falsified, so on what grounds can these historical linguists claim their science is more immutable than physics? It is as I told you earlier hubris. That has not been challenged adequately so far.

When we do actually look at the scientific data a completely different picture emerges: I will summarise some of that here, and if you want more details, I will elaborate:

1. Archaeology: There is no evidence of any invasion of the IVC -- zilch, nada. This is one of the core reasons AIT has been demoted to AMT. Now, they say the Aryans entered in small groups over several generations, but did not invade --- but still they managed to near completely supplant the IVC and turn it Aryan and even make the original Dravidian natives believe it was always Aryan for the last 10,000 years? Absurd if you ask me.

2. Geology: The Rig Veda and post-Vedic literature described a river called the 'Saraswati' which once was the mightiest river flowing from the Himalayas into the sea, it was deified as the main sustainer of the IVC civilisation and worshipped as a goddess(such as even today Hindus worship rivers as goddesses, like Ganges) There are dozens of verses in the early books of the Rig Veda describing it and eulogising it. Some of the most explicit are like 'O Saraswati, mighty river, all our settlements are on your banks' or 'O Saraswati, mighty river, may you never spurn us, or we will migrate to distant lands' In the later books of the Rig Veda the Saraswati river becomes less important and is replaced by Ganges-Yamuna(and that has remained ever since) and by the time of the Mahabharata the Saraswati river is described as starting to dry up, ending in the Thar desert.

Until only recent discoveries by space satellite imaging, this river was thought to be mythological because it could not be located. Now we know as a matter of fact this river is not mythological, it existed and it was thriving in 4000BCE, and had completely dried up by 1900BCE. This means the Aryans were already in India in 4000BCE which would make the Indo-Aryan branch by far the oldest. Hence India as the PIE homeland. There have been a few attempts to deny that this river that has been discovered is not the 'Saraswati' but the evidence is incontrovertible -- so AMT proponents have explained it away in their typical absurd ways 'The Indo-Aryans heard of the great legends and myths of the Sarwasti river from the Dravidian people, and decided to include in the Rig Veda as their main river goddess'

This is sort of like saying 'Yes we cannot detect any receivers on the dog Pluto, but that is because the receivers are invisible, but he's still plotting against us with the martians'

3. Astronomy. Not many know of the Hindu astronomical tables which have been preserved in Hindu observatories in cities like Kasi(modern day Benares) which found their way to Europe and were studied by European astronomers, including the likes of Kepler, Cassini, Newton, Brahe, Newton and Copernicus. The fact that barely anybody knows this today, is further evidence of what I said that India's role in shaping world civilisation, including up to the modern age has been marginalised in history books, and only recent research by brave scholars is starting to address the balance.

Anyway what is distinct about these Hindu tables they record the position of the planets during the Kaliyuga age at 3012BCE, which stood in direct opposition to the Mosaic calendar. At that time in Europe the Mosaic calendar was taken as religious truth, and challenging it could mean death. According to this calendar the world began in 4004BCE and it was taken as gospel truth across Europe, including with European astronomers like Newton. When they saw the Hindu tables they saw it as a huge threat to Christian civilisation because it challenged their chronology, so many European astronomers did not want to believe them. But because they were so accurate and precise they were saw as a serious challenge. There were others like Cassini who did believe them and was highly impressed with them. Bailey commented:

The motion of the stars calculated by the Hindus before some 4500 years vary not even a single minute from the tables of Cassine and Meyer (used in the 19-th century). The Indian tables give the same annual variation of the moon as the discovered by Tycho Brahe - a variation unknown to the school of Alexandria and also to the Arabs who followed the calculations of the school... "The Hindu systems of astronomy are by far the oldest and that from which the Egyptians, Greek, Romans and - even the Jews derived from the Hindus their knowledge.

The obvious implication of this the Indo-Aryans were already in India in 3012BCE at the start of the Kaliyuga era to record the position of the planets at that epoch. This tradition of recording positions of planets at auspicious occasions still continues in Hinduism today. Not only were they already in India, but they were there long enough to develop a highly sophisticated system of astronomy(which means even older origins)

So when we have such smoking gun type of evidence. Why is it rejected? Again, because it was explained away by Christian scholars at the time to maintain the Mosaic calendar, the argument was "those devious Brahmins back-calculated the position of the planets in 3012BCE to hoax that they were so ancient" It actually took a real astronomer like Playfair to show that this was impossible, because back-calculation requires knowledge of modern calculus and knowledge of gravitational constants etc, the only reasonable explanation is that these really are naked eye observations at the time.

See more here: The Interest of European Scientists in Indian Calendar and Chronology

You see a lot of us who accept this(myth) of Aryan arrival into India in 1500BCE have no idea how this theory and date was arrived at. At the time when this theory was created India was a colonial subject and Hinduism was seen as heathen by the mainstream academia in Europe, particularly in England. Such that in older versions of Enyclopedia Brittanica, you would see "objective" descriptions like "Indian music is often rude, barbaric, inferior noise" The early indologists were all Christian missionaries(including Max Muller, William Jones) and they shared massive anxiety over the Hindu challenge to the Mosaic civilisation, which they saw as the origin of world civilisation. So they actually made it a point to revise Hindu history to make it it fit --- this is no conspiracy -- you can read their writings themselves where they first reject all Hindu dates, and then force them to fit the Mosaic account by shortening them, often by thousands of years.

I actually will submit to you there was never any "Arrival, invasion, migration" of Aryans into India. Aryans originated in India and developed this highly advanced civilisation we today call "IVC" which gave us the Dharmic religions. The IVC being the most largest and advanced civilisation in the world obviously had the power to colonise across Indo-Europe, and several tribes must have originated from India and travelled for trading, for colonisation, for tourism, cultural exchange etc This is why the oldest document we can find, other than the Vedas, is the Hittie-Mittani texts in old Semetic texts and in treaties, contain Indo-Aryan words -- indicating that there were colonies of Indo-Aryans as far as Mesopotamia (I also think there is evidence of Indo-Aryan-Semitic wars)

The Aryan arrival/invasion/migration has been maintained in history books by pure dogma. It will be gone this century, because Europe is no longer the the superpower of the world. The resurgence of India and China in the 21st century as the two most dominant powers by the end of the century will redress the balance.

Well worded. But again, I was under the impression that the oldest dated text of sanskrit that we have discovered dates to 1500bce. That this date also marks the arrival of indo-aryan or pie language into India is suspicious. Am I mistaken about the dating of the text?

Spirit_Warrior · Jan 9, 2017

I would finally like to provide my last bit of evidence the archaeological evidence based on the excavations of the IVC. This evidence is not entirely scientific, because it is based on on interpretation(the archaeological method is not exactly the same as the scientific method) As we have not successfully deciphered the Indus script we don't really know anything about the civilisation beyond our interpretations of artefacts. However, whatever we have found at the IVC is entirely consistent with Vedic descriptions of it. This has provoked a current scholar David Frawley(who gets accused of being a Hindu nationalist, like everyone else does that challenges AIT/AMT) to coin something called 'Frawleys paradox' --- which basically goes like this: One one hand we have masses of archaeological evidence with no texts to go alongside it and the other volumes of Vedic texts, without archaeological evidence to go with it, but why don't we put them together?

If you put them together you can match up every artefact found at IVC with the Vedic texts. Here goes:

1. The standard systems of weights and measures, including the standard ratio for bricks is described in Kautaliya Arthashastra. Wiki:

These chert weights were in a ratio of 5:2:1 with weights of 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 500 units, with each unit weighing approximately 28 grams, similar to the English Imperial ounce or Greek uncia, and smaller objects were weighed in similar ratios with the units of 0.871. However, as in other cultures, actual weights were not uniform throughout the area. The weights and measures later used in Kautilya's Arthashastra (4th century BCE) are the same as those used in Lothal.[71]

2. The precise city planning into grid-patterns, the division of upper and lower citadel, including the use of certain auspicious ratios is described in the massive corpus of Vaastu shastra texts(literally means science of architecture and engineering)

3. The use of seals for trading purposes to mark goods for supply and export are described again in the Arthashastra. There is even a superintendent/minister of seals described:

CHAPTER VI. THE BUSINESS OF COLLECTION OF REVENUE BY THE COLLECTOR-GENERAL.

THE Collector-General shall attend to (the collection of revenue from) forts (durga), country-parts (ráshtra), mines (khani), buildings and gardens (setu), forests (vana), herds of cattle (vraja), and roads of traffic (vanikpatha).

Tolls, fines, weights and measures, the town-clerk (nágaraka), the superintendent of coinage (lakshanádhyakshah), the superintendent of seals and pass-ports, liquor, slaughter of animals, threads, oils,. ghee, sugar (kshára), the state-goldsmith (sauvarnika), the warehouse of merchandise, the prostitute, gambling, building sites (vástuka), the corporation of artisans and handicrafts-men (kárusilpiganah), the superintendent of gods, and taxes collected at the gates and from the people (known as) Báhirikas come under the head of forts.

4. The sophisticated system of civic administration and municipality evident in the IVC is entirely consistent with the sophisticated administration described in the Arthshastra

5. The sophisticated maritime engineering seen in the dockyards and the sophisticated knowledge of navigation of the IVC is described in the Arthashastra, the Manusmriti, the Mahabharata and there are even references to ocean(samundra) going boats and ships in the Rig Veda

6. The discovery of proto-dentistry in the IVC, as early as the Megarh period(7000BCE) showing skulls with drilled teeth is described in the Ayurvedic texts Susrutha and Charaka Samhita, of which dentistry is one sub-branch.

7. The high standards of sanitation and hygiene in the IVC in which waste is collected underground below the town and there are also manhole covers, the waste is carefully deposited outside the town in the river estuary and drinking water is collected separately by harvesting rain through reservoirs and water tanks is consistent with the high standards of hygiene described in the Ayurvedic texts which even describe good sites for building town based on purity of water, soil and air and describe bad polluted water as causes for disease. Ritual purity and daily bathing is also a daily practice in Hinduism

8. The use of large waters baths for daily bathing, a practice that still continues in Hinduism today, often the water baths are joined with temples(and also in gudwaras in Sikhism) This is related to point (7)

9. The discovery of toys, old marble games and dices are described in the Mahabharata and epic literature. The game of dice is in fact very popular in the Mahabharata and is even played by royalty.

10. The discovery of ritual fire altars along with the fossils of animals that were sacrificed is an old Brahmanical practice

11. The discovery of the priest king statue of man with a shaven head, carrying a draped robe over his shoulder is still how Brahmin priests dress today

12. The sacred symbols of Hinduism, which are sacred even today are found in the Indus seals and statues, this includes the Banyan tree, the Swastika, the namaste hand gesture(found in a statue with its hand pressed in namaste) A figurine of woman with red-sindhur parting her hair(continues today with Hindu married women)

13. Although based largely on interpretation, we have some idea of the religion the Indus people practised. Marshall who was the first to excavate it gave a few distinguishing features

1. They have both a supreme male God and female goddess (like Hinduism)
2. Deification or veneration of animals and plants(like Hinduism)
3. Symbolic representation of the phallus (linga) and vulva (yoni)(like Hinduism)
4. and, use of baths and water in religious practice.(like Hinduism

The most controversial feature was identifying the Pasupati seal which shows a horned god in lotus posture surrounded by animals, similar to the far later motif also found on the Gundestrup cauldron, as Lord Shiva. This has been interpreted to show that Yoga, Tantra have their origins in the IVC. Again, because there is really nothing to confirm or disconfirm this, it is based on contesting interpretations. However, if true, it shows yet another feature that already a part of the IVC and is consistent with Hinduism.

If you look at every point I have just outlined we can see a near 100% match between what we find in the IVC and what we find in the Vedic literature. So what exactly did the "arrival" of the Aryans bring which was not already a fully developed feature of Hinduism? The fact that so much of what is considered Hinduism is already found in the IVC has forced modern scholars to agree Hinduism did not begin in 1500BCE with the arrival of Aryans, but its beginning can be traced as far back as 7000BCE to the Megarh period. Hence, justifying the often repeated claim that Hinduism is almost 10,000 years old.

Here is perhaps another factoid that people may not know. Before the IVC was discovered in the early 20th century, the scholarship dominated by Christians, was convinced that all of India's Puranic records of civilisation going back in India back to 10,000 years was myth. They had officially decided that India's history does not go back any further than 1500BCE, i.e. it began with Aryan invasion. Also to make it fall in line with the Mosaic calendar. Then imagine the rude surprise when they did in fact discover exactly what the Indian texts recorded, a vast sophisticated IVC going back 10,000 years.

--- but instead of taking this as confirmation of the Hindu records, they explained it away by saying it was some pre-Vedic/Aryan lost civilisation

Hence, creating a false dichotomy which we all now read in history books of pre-Vedic age and Vedic age.

Spirit_Warrior · Jan 9, 2017

Curious George said:
Well worded. But again, I was under the impression that the oldest dated text of sanskrit that we have discovered dates to 1500bce. That this date also marks the arrival of indo-aryan or pie language into India is suspicious. Am I mistaken about the dating of the text?

Sorry it has taken me a while to respond to this, I was composing my previous post.

The oldest text of Sanskrit literature is the Rig Veda, which is not dated to 1500BCE, but rather 1200BCE. 1500BCE just marks the arrival of Aryans into India and then by 1200BCE they have composed the Rig Veda in India. As I said, it was earlier believed the Aryans brought the early parts of the Rig Veda into India, but the fact that Rig Veda describes the flora, fauna and geography of India, has now forced the consensus that the entirety of the Rig Veda was composed in India.

I will correct you again on the term "PIE language" PIE means Proto-Indo-European. It is the source or mother language from which all the IE languages originated. It is not an actual attested language, it has been hypothetically constructed by linguists. That does not mean it does not exist, because linguists have also constructed hypothetical languages before which were later attested. According to them, PIE originated about 4000BCE in the Russian steeps, so the IE tribe that was entering India in 1500BCE was not to bring the original PIE, but the Indo-Aryan branch of Sanskrit into India. Sanskrit itself, again according to them, split up from the Indo-Iranian branch, the Iranian branch is Avestan and the Indian branch is Sanskrit. They are considered to be among the latest of IE languages:

See: Indo-European languages - Wikipedia

Now, I have not yet mentioned genetic evidence, because genetic evidence based on a science which is still in tis infancy, often leads to conflicting interpretations. However, one thing seems to be clear all of Caucasians, including Europeans have ancestry in India according to mDNA studies. This means that the original people that left from Africa, migrated into India, and from India migrated through Central Asia and into Europe. However, this is not a recent migration, but a migration that happened some 50,000 years ago.

Now, as I asked earlier it provokes some questions --- were the original people that left from India language speaking? And if so was that language PIE? This would significantly revise our ideas of human history, for it would mean a highly developed civilisation existed in the Indian subcontinent even up to 50,000 years ago. That is problematic because the only developed civilisation we can find is only the IVC and nothing before that.

von bek · Jan 9, 2017

paarsurrey said:
Thanks for one's response.
It is very certain that Hindu and or Hinduism is a name assigned by foreigners (in the 17th Century). It is very odd that the Indus Valley people who had a definite civilization, they had no indigenous name and waited till such time that foreigners allotted them one.
Regards

Not that odd that the people of the Indus Valley may not have had a specific name for their religion. Shinto did not receive a name in Japan until there was seen to be a need to differentiate the native Japanese religious traditions from Buddhism.

Curious George · Jan 9, 2017

Spirit_Warrior said:
Sorry it has taken me a while to respond to this, I was composing my previous post.

The oldest text of Sanskrit literature is the Rig Veda, which is not dated to 1500BCE, but rather 1200BCE. 1500BCE just marks the arrival of Aryans into India and then by 1200BCE they have composed the Rig Veda in India. As I said, it was earlier believed the Aryans brought the early parts of the Rig Veda into India, but the fact that Rig Veda describes the flora, fauna and geography of India, has now forced the consensus that the entirety of the Rig Veda was composed in India.

I will correct you again on the term "PIE language" PIE means Proto-Indo-European. It is the source or mother language from which all the IE languages originated. It is not an actual attested language, it has been hypothetically constructed by linguists. That does not mean it does not exist, because linguists have also constructed hypothetical languages before which were later attested. According to them, PIE originated about 4000BCE in the Russian steeps, so the IE tribe that was entering India in 1500BCE was not to bring the original PIE, but the Indo-Aryan branch of Sanskrit into India. Sanskrit itself, again according to them, split up from the Indo-Iranian branch, the Iranian branch is Avestan and the Indian branch is Sanskrit. They are considered to be among the latest of IE languages:

See: Indo-European languages - Wikipedia

Now, I have not yet mentioned genetic evidence, because genetic evidence based on a science which is still in tis infancy, often leads to conflicting interpretations. However, one thing seems to be clear all of Caucasians, including Europeans have ancestry in India according to mDNA studies. This means that the original people that left from Africa, migrated into India, and from India migrated through Central Asia and into Europe. However, this is not a recent migration, but a migration that happened some 50,000 years ago.

Now, as I asked earlier it provokes some questions --- were the original people that left from India language speaking? And if so was that language PIE? This would significantly revise our ideas of human history, for it would mean a highly developed civilisation existed in the Indian subcontinent even up to 50,000 years ago. That is problematic because the only developed civilisation we can find is only the IVC and nothing before that.

No worries. I use pie here because the other language in India are from different families. I was using it to distinguish it in this manner. I imagined that even if the original language came from India we would still call it PIE. It would just have a different point of origin. But, it is completely possible for language to have developed in such a way that it would be very different from that which is referenced by the name PIE.

Spirit_Warrior · Jan 10, 2017

Curious George said:
No worries. I use pie here because the other language in India are from different families. I was using it to distinguish it in this manner. I imagined that even if the original language came from India we would still call it PIE. It would just have a different point of origin. But, it is completely possible for language to have developed in such a way that it would be very different from that which is referenced by the name PIE.

Well just for the point of clarity, so that people understand the same thing, in this case you would say IE languages. That is the name of the family to which Sanskrit and Sanskritic languages. like Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Assamese etc belong. The other major family is Dravidian, to which Tamil, Telugu, Kananda and Malayalam etc belong. Together they account for respectively 75% and 20% of the languages in India. The remaining 5% is made up of Austroasiatic(Munda etc) and Sino-Tibetan with a very negligible minority of Tai-Kadai.

See: Languages of India - Wikipedia

Curious George · Jan 10, 2017

Spirit_Warrior said:
Well just for the point of clarity, so that people understand the same thing, in this case you would say IE languages. That is the name of the family to which Sanskrit and Sanskritic languages. like Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Assamese etc belong. The other major family is Dravidian, to which Tamil, Telugu, Kananda and Malayalam etc belong. Together they account for respectively 75% and 20% of the languages in India. The remaining 5% is made up of Austroasiatic(Munda etc) and Sino-Tibetan with a very negligible minority of Tai-Kadai.

See: Languages of India - Wikipedia

Which brings up another point. There seems to have been a mass migration from Laos yet the impact on the language was much less than a supposed migration of IE speakers. I am not saying that it is impossible for a small migration to greatly affect language, but does it happen often?

Spirit_Warrior · Jan 10, 2017

Curious George said:
Which brings up another point. There seems to have been a mass migration from Laos yet the impact on the language was much less than a supposed migration of IE speakers. I am not saying that it is impossible for a small migration to greatly affect language, but does it happen often?

No, it doesn't happen. How could it be that a just a few generations of small migrations of Aryans into 100% Dravidian India, with a highly advanced civilisation, with an already highly developed economy and an already developed religion, is marginalised to just 20% in a few generations and driven down South and then accepts that India is Aryavarta or land of the Aryans and has been land of the Aryans for the last 10,000 years, and even the Aryans that arrived forget they arrived from outside.

Then consider the linguistic complexity of the language itself -- what makes more sense the IVC the largest and most advanced civilisation at the time would develop a language as advanced as Sanskrit, or a nomadic horse riding pastoral tribe would develop Sanskrit?

The consider the other absurdities the Aryan tribes would make this long journey from Central Asia into India, and remember absolutely nothing about this long journey, no mention of the flora or fauna of Central Asia? Then by the time they get into India they would start worshipping a dead river of their people and say things like 'O Saraswati, might river, all our settlements are besides you' ' O Saraswati mighty river, do not spurn us, or we will migrate to distant lands"

Not only is this 'Arrival' of Aryans invisible in the archaeological record, it is invisible as I showed earlier in Hinduism, already everything that we consider Hinduism is a part of IVC society. It is invisible in the genetic record too, based on Mtdna studies there is no influx of any Central Asian DNA into India.

--- It is surprising this nonsense theory has been accepted for so long. I guess nobody really cared in the past because it was India, a third world mostly isolated country. But that is no longer the case. India is now the 5th largest economy in the world, the fourth most powerful, a nuclear, space and naval power, with its own Moon and Mars mission and a market of soon 500 million middle class consumers. By 2050 it will be the first or second most powerful. The world will have to listen to India. And of course many Indian people do not appreciate the wrong colonial fabricated history that is being taught about us and will set the record right.

Spirit_Warrior · Jan 10, 2017

As for the origins of Dravidian languages in India. I am putting on speculation hat. However, as the genetic studies show the first humans entering from Africa into India, the early settlers in India were probably Dravidian and then over time as humans became fairer(how exactly this happens I don' think is understood, mutations or climate or a combination) possibly to adapt to the colder climate of the northern regions, it would explain why there would be two major physiologically different "races" in India with two different language families.

As I indicated earlier, mDNA studies are showing that Caucasians too have their origins in India and travelled from out of India some 50,000 years ago through Central Asia and into Europe. So at that point both the earlier race that migrated out of India and the newer fairer race(I use race very loosely) would have both been in India. Just as even today you find Indians who are fair and dark.

Curious George · Jan 10, 2017

Spirit_Warrior said:
No, it doesn't happen. How could it be that a just a few generations of small migrations of Aryans into 100% Dravidian India, with a highly advanced civilisation, with an already highly developed economy and an already developed religion, is marginalised to just 20% in a few generations and driven down South and then accepts that India is Aryavarta or land of the Aryans and has been land of the Aryans for the last 10,000 years, and even the Aryans that arrived forget they arrived from outside.

Then consider the linguistic complexity of the language itself -- what makes more sense the IVC the largest and most advanced civilisation at the time would develop a language as advanced as Sanskrit, or a nomadic horse riding pastoral tribe would develop Sanskrit?

The consider the other absurdities the Aryan tribes would make this long journey from Central Asia into India, and remember absolutely nothing about this long journey, no mention of the flora or fauna of Central Asia? Then by the time they get into India they would start worshipping a dead river of their people and say things like 'O Saraswati, might river, all our settlements are besides you' ' O Saraswati mighty river, do not spurn us, or we will migrate to distant lands"

Not only is this 'Arrival' of Aryans invisible in the archaeological record, it is invisible as I showed earlier in Hinduism, already everything that we consider Hinduism is a part of IVC society. It is invisible in the genetic record too, based on Mtdna studies there is no influx of any Central Asian DNA into India.

--- It is surprising this nonsense theory has been accepted for so long. I guess nobody really cared in the past because it was India, a third world mostly isolated country. But that is no longer the case. India is now the 5th largest economy in the world, the fourth most powerful, a nuclear, space and naval power, with its own Moon and Mars mission and a market of soon 500 million middle class consumers. By 2050 it will be the first or second most powerful. The world will have to listen to India. And of course many Indian people do not appreciate the wrong colonial fabricated history that is being taught about us and will set the record right.

I would point out that it wasn't 100% dravidian. India seems to have been the first melting pot. The laoation migration would likely not have been dravidian.

But well argued post.

Spirit_Warrior · Jan 10, 2017

Curious George said:
I would point out that it wasn't 100% dravidian. India seems to have been the first melting pot. The laoation migration would likely not have been dravidian.

But well argued post.

I agree India was a probably a melting point. In genetic studies I have read and referenced for India is divided into two distinct groups ASI and ANI, Ancestral South Indian and Ancestral South Indian. Genetically, ASI is not connected with the rest of Caucasians, but ANI is. The migrations of ANI from ASI happened around 50,000 years ago. Hence, why I was speculating that ASI is probably closer to the early humans arriving from Africa, hence why physiologically they still resemble Africans and ANI are the later fairer humans who emerged in the northern colder climates, and from there migrated out into Central Asia and Europe.

Now at the time of the IVC which is much more recently history of 5000 years, ANI and ASI had mixed considerably, that now genetic studies shows no difference between them. Therefore the IVC would have been most likely, just like modern India, a combination of both Aryan and Dravidian people.

paarsurrey · Jan 12, 2017

Spirit_Warrior said:
I agree India was a probably a melting point. In genetic studies I have read and referenced for India is divided into two distinct groups ASI and ANI, Ancestral South Indian and Ancestral South Indian. Genetically, ASI is not connected with the rest of Caucasians, but ANI is. The migrations of ANI from ASI happened around 50,000 years ago. Hence, why I was speculating that ASI is probably closer to the early humans arriving from Africa, hence why physiologically they still resemble Africans and ANI are the later fairer humans who emerged in the northern colder climates, and from there migrated out into Central Asia and Europe.

Now at the time of the IVC which is much more recently history of 5000 years, ANI and ASI had mixed considerably, that now genetic studies shows no difference between them. Therefore the IVC would have been most likely, just like modern India, a combination of both Aryan and Dravidian people.

Which one the Veda/Yajurveda supports, it is religious debate forum.
Regards

paarsurrey · Jan 12, 2017

Spirit_Warrior said:
As for the origins of Dravidian languages in India. I am putting on speculation hat. However, as the genetic studies show the first humans entering from Africa into India, the early settlers in India were probably Dravidian and then over time as humans became fairer(how exactly this happens I don' think is understood, mutations or climate or a combination) possibly to adapt to the colder climate of the northern regions, it would explain why there would be two major physiologically different "races" in India with two different language families.

As I indicated earlier, mDNA studies are showing that Caucasians too have their origins in India and travelled from out of India some 50,000 years ago through Central Asia and into Europe. So at that point both the earlier race that migrated out of India and the newer fairer race(I use race very loosely) would have both been in India. Just as even today you find Indians who are fair and dark.

Where does the concept stand that Aupmanyav and Tilak hold that Aryans lived in the North Pole and from there they came to Bharat? Please
Regards

paarsurrey · Jan 12, 2017

Spirit_Warrior said:
No, it doesn't happen. How could it be that a just a few generations of small migrations of Aryans into 100% Dravidian India, with a highly advanced civilisation, with an already highly developed economy and an already developed religion, is marginalised to just 20% in a few generations and driven down South and then accepts that India is Aryavarta or land of the Aryans and has been land of the Aryans for the last 10,000 years, and even the Aryans that arrived forget they arrived from outside.

Then consider the linguistic complexity of the language itself -- what makes more sense the IVC the largest and most advanced civilisation at the time would develop a language as advanced as Sanskrit, or a nomadic horse riding pastoral tribe would develop Sanskrit?

The consider the other absurdities the Aryan tribes would make this long journey from Central Asia into India, and remember absolutely nothing about this long journey, no mention of the flora or fauna of Central Asia? Then by the time they get into India they would start worshipping a dead river of their people and say things like 'O Saraswati, might river, all our settlements are besides you' ' O Saraswati mighty river, do not spurn us, or we will migrate to distant lands"

Not only is this 'Arrival' of Aryans invisible in the archaeological record, it is invisible as I showed earlier in Hinduism, already everything that we consider Hinduism is a part of IVC society. It is invisible in the genetic record too, based on Mtdna studies there is no influx of any Central Asian DNA into India.

--- It is surprising this nonsense theory has been accepted for so long. I guess nobody really cared in the past because it was India, a third world mostly isolated country. But that is no longer the case. India is now the 5th largest economy in the world, the fourth most powerful, a nuclear, space and naval power, with its own Moon and Mars mission and a market of soon 500 million middle class consumers. By 2050 it will be the first or second most powerful. The world will have to listen to India. And of course many Indian people do not appreciate the wrong colonial fabricated history that is being taught about us and will set the record right.

"no mention of the flora or fauna of Central Asia?'
'Arrival' of Aryans invisible in the archaeological record, it is invisible as I showed earlier in Hinduism"
"there is no influx of any Central Asian DNA into India."
Good points.
Now let us see, what @Aupmanyav have to say about it.

Regards

paarsurrey · Jan 12, 2017

Spirit_Warrior said:
I would finally like to provide my last bit of evidence the archaeological evidence based on the excavations of the IVC. This evidence is not entirely scientific, because it is based on on interpretation(the archaeological method is not exactly the same as the scientific method) As we have not successfully deciphered the Indus script we don't really know anything about the civilisation beyond our interpretations of artefacts. However, whatever we have found at the IVC is entirely consistent with Vedic descriptions of it. This has provoked a current scholar David Frawley(who gets accused of being a Hindu nationalist, like everyone else does that challenges AIT/AMT) to coin something called 'Frawleys paradox' --- which basically goes like this: One one hand we have masses of archaeological evidence with no texts to go alongside it and the other volumes of Vedic texts, without archaeological evidence to go with it, but why don't we put them together?

If you put them together you can match up every artefact found at IVC with the Vedic texts. Here goes:

1. The standard systems of weights and measures, including the standard ratio for bricks is described in Kautaliya Arthashastra. Wiki:

These chert weights were in a ratio of 5:2:1 with weights of 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 500 units, with each unit weighing approximately 28 grams, similar to the English Imperial ounce or Greek uncia, and smaller objects were weighed in similar ratios with the units of 0.871. However, as in other cultures, actual weights were not uniform throughout the area. The weights and measures later used in Kautilya's Arthashastra (4th century BCE) are the same as those used in Lothal.[71]

2. The precise city planning into grid-patterns, the division of upper and lower citadel, including the use of certain auspicious ratios is described in the massive corpus of Vaastu shastra texts(literally means science of architecture and engineering)

3. The use of seals for trading purposes to mark goods for supply and export are described again in the Arthashastra. There is even a superintendent/minister of seals described:

CHAPTER VI. THE BUSINESS OF COLLECTION OF REVENUE BY THE COLLECTOR-GENERAL.

THE Collector-General shall attend to (the collection of revenue from) forts (durga), country-parts (ráshtra), mines (khani), buildings and gardens (setu), forests (vana), herds of cattle (vraja), and roads of traffic (vanikpatha).

Tolls, fines, weights and measures, the town-clerk (nágaraka), the superintendent of coinage (lakshanádhyakshah), the superintendent of seals and pass-ports, liquor, slaughter of animals, threads, oils,. ghee, sugar (kshára), the state-goldsmith (sauvarnika), the warehouse of merchandise, the prostitute, gambling, building sites (vástuka), the corporation of artisans and handicrafts-men (kárusilpiganah), the superintendent of gods, and taxes collected at the gates and from the people (known as) Báhirikas come under the head of forts.

4. The sophisticated system of civic administration and municipality evident in the IVC is entirely consistent with the sophisticated administration described in the Arthshastra

5. The sophisticated maritime engineering seen in the dockyards and the sophisticated knowledge of navigation of the IVC is described in the Arthashastra, the Manusmriti, the Mahabharata and there are even references to ocean(samundra) going boats and ships in the Rig Veda

6. The discovery of proto-dentistry in the IVC, as early as the Megarh period(7000BCE) showing skulls with drilled teeth is described in the Ayurvedic texts Susrutha and Charaka Samhita, of which dentistry is one sub-branch.

7. The high standards of sanitation and hygiene in the IVC in which waste is collected underground below the town and there are also manhole covers, the waste is carefully deposited outside the town in the river estuary and drinking water is collected separately by harvesting rain through reservoirs and water tanks is consistent with the high standards of hygiene described in the Ayurvedic texts which even describe good sites for building town based on purity of water, soil and air and describe bad polluted water as causes for disease. Ritual purity and daily bathing is also a daily practice in Hinduism

8. The use of large waters baths for daily bathing, a practice that still continues in Hinduism today, often the water baths are joined with temples(and also in gudwaras in Sikhism) This is related to point (7)

9. The discovery of toys, old marble games and dices are described in the Mahabharata and epic literature. The game of dice is in fact very popular in the Mahabharata and is even played by royalty.

10. The discovery of ritual fire altars along with the fossils of animals that were sacrificed is an old Brahmanical practice

11. The discovery of the priest king statue of man with a shaven head, carrying a draped robe over his shoulder is still how Brahmin priests dress today

12. The sacred symbols of Hinduism, which are sacred even today are found in the Indus seals and statues, this includes the Banyan tree, the Swastika, the namaste hand gesture(found in a statue with its hand pressed in namaste) A figurine of woman with red-sindhur parting her hair(continues today with Hindu married women)

13. Although based largely on interpretation, we have some idea of the religion the Indus people practised. Marshall who was the first to excavate it gave a few distinguishing features

1. They have both a supreme male God and female goddess (like Hinduism)
2. Deification or veneration of animals and plants(like Hinduism)
3. Symbolic representation of the phallus (linga) and vulva (yoni)(like Hinduism)
4. and, use of baths and water in religious practice.(like Hinduism

The most controversial feature was identifying the Pasupati seal which shows a horned god in lotus posture surrounded by animals, similar to the far later motif also found on the Gundestrup cauldron, as Lord Shiva. This has been interpreted to show that Yoga, Tantra have their origins in the IVC. Again, because there is really nothing to confirm or disconfirm this, it is based on contesting interpretations. However, if true, it shows yet another feature that already a part of the IVC and is consistent with Hinduism.

If you look at every point I have just outlined we can see a near 100% match between what we find in the IVC and what we find in the Vedic literature. So what exactly did the "arrival" of the Aryans bring which was not already a fully developed feature of Hinduism? The fact that so much of what is considered Hinduism is already found in the IVC has forced modern scholars to agree Hinduism did not begin in 1500BCE with the arrival of Aryans, but its beginning can be traced as far back as 7000BCE to the Megarh period. Hence, justifying the often repeated claim that Hinduism is almost 10,000 years old.

Here is perhaps another factoid that people may not know. Before the IVC was discovered in the early 20th century, the scholarship dominated by Christians, was convinced that all of India's Puranic records of civilisation going back in India back to 10,000 years was myth. They had officially decided that India's history does not go back any further than 1500BCE, i.e. it began with Aryan invasion. Also to make it fall in line with the Mosaic calendar. Then imagine the rude surprise when they did in fact discover exactly what the Indian texts recorded, a vast sophisticated IVC going back 10,000 years.

--- but instead of taking this as confirmation of the Hindu records, they explained it away by saying it was some pre-Vedic/Aryan lost civilisation Hence, creating a false dichotomy which we all now read in history books of pre-Vedic age and Vedic age.

"a near 100% match between what we find in the IVC and what we find in the Vedic literature"

It has been strongly contested by others:

There is no reference in Rigveda to the big cities or important places of the IVC.
There is no evidence in Rigveda about the Indus peoples’ architectural skills.
There is no evidence in Rigveda about the tubed drainages found in the Indus valley.
There is no evidence in Rigveda about water reservoirs or ponds found in Indus valley.
There is no evidence in Rigveda about water urn burials found in Indus valley.

Why the Rig Vedas Cannot Overlap with the Indus Valley Civilization
There are many other points mentioned in the above article. One may like to visit that site to reconcile the issue.
Regards

Aupmanyav · Jan 12, 2017

paarsurrey said:
"no mention of the flora or fauna of Central Asia?'
'Arrival' of Aryans invisible in the archaeological record, it is invisible as I showed earlier in Hinduism"
"there is no influx of any Central Asian DNA into India."
Good points. Now let us see, what @Aupmanyav have to say about it.

No rice or wheat mentioned in RigVeda. It is always barley (yava, jau). Ashwattha is mentioned, but what it may refer to is debatable. Peepal, Banyan belong to the fig family. It is possible that the Ashwattha of RigVeda is 'common fig' tree (Ficus carica) which is found all over. The RigVedics knew of leopard, jackal, wolf, etc. (I have not researched into it)
The Painted Grey Ware, successor to IVC.
DNA all over India and Pakistan - R1a, normally taken as indicating Indo-Europeans..

Indus Valley Civilization

Veteran Member

Veteran Member

ॐ

Active Member

Veteran Member

Active Member

Active Member

Well-Known Member

Veteran Member

Active Member

Veteran Member

Active Member

Active Member

Veteran Member

Active Member

Veteran Member

Veteran Member

Veteran Member

Veteran Member

Be your own guru