I suppose I'm just asking that you use less provocative language when discussing this topic.
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The Aryans in the Indus Valley
- Thread starter RedDragon94
- Start date
I suppose I'm just asking that you use less provocative language when discussing this topic.
And you will be contacting Archeology Today, Dr. David Frawley, and several others whose 'language' I quote to complain to them as well?
No, they aren't friends of mine!
I just think it becomes redundant after awhile to preface everything with 'I believe' which is the crux here. In this particular debate, or discussion, I tend to not do that because the other side is presented as fact as well, just as it was (and still might be) in the textbooks of yore. So I feel obliged to counter it each time it's stated as if it were fact. So I think harsh statements beget harsh statements in return. But you are correct, it is just what I believe to be true, from many years of following it from all sides. But as with all historical debates, like the existence of Christ, nobody knows for sure what happened, and we have all come to our opinions one way another. So when I say 'Jesus didn't exist' or 'AIT is a myth' it probably does come across as harsh, but in realty its just what I believe. Practically all statements on this forum are beliefs, and that is an ongoing discussion.
Spirit_Warrior
Active Member
My thoughts, fwiw... I can't find the post where I said this before.
Trickle, long term migration of clans, but no invasion. India has been populated by indigenous peoples and their cultures and societies since the time humans left Africa 100,000 to 50,000 years ago. It is likely that people migrated into India, just as they migrated across India into Austronesia. Why would they not decide to stop in India? Migrations came from every which way... from the north, from the northwest, possibly down the coast if they learned to make boats and hugged the coast.
People do not pop up from holes in the ground in any particular location; they come from somewhere. There are two distinct y-DNA (paternal) haplogroups in India that have co-existed for millennia, split along a north-south line, long before any so-called "invasion". Every continent except Antarctica has admixtures of y-DNA and mtDNA (maternal line). Today in India they are admixing heavily. What were "southern" haplogroups can be found all over the north, and vice versa.
I do not believe any group displaced or steamrolled any other. More likely they adopted each others' cultures and languages. Could a few Indo-Europeans have such an influence over language and culture? Sure, look at the US. In a mere 250 +/- years, look how many foreign cultures and languages have become part of US culture. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting an Italian or Chinese restaurant. How much of French, Italian, Spanish, even Hindi have made their way into American lexicon? People are fascinated by what is new, exciting and exotic. Everyone who makes coffee in a coffee shop now is a 'barrista'.By the way, barrista is female, barristo is male. So adopted words from another language become corrupted or used incorrectly. I suspect that's exactly how Sanskrit (Proto-Indo-Aryan -> Indo-Aryan -> Vedic Sanskrit -> Classical Sanskrit) got a foothold in India. If it's only taken 250 years for a semi-monolithic culture like the American colonies to become as diverse as it is now, imagine what can happen over 5,000 years. This doesn't take away from India, it's what makes India.
It is certainly plausible that there were migrations of people into India. In the timeframe we are talking about, there was no nation state called India anyway, India was just a land populated by people who lived in settlements along the rivers Sarwasati, Indus etc. So we are not talking here of an invasion of one country by another country.
However, trickling down tribes generation after generation, do not completely supplant the culture and language of the original people, unless it is imposed by force. Why would the original Dravidian people of India who already have a language, already have advanced cities, already have their own religion --- completely abandon it, adopt Sanskrit as their language, adopt the gods, religion of the migrating tribes and themselves be driven down to the South?
Another problem is, we can argue in the same vain, if migrations of clans into India can happen, then why can't migrations out of India happen? We have more reason for why migrations out of India can happen --- the main river Saraswati on which all their settlements were originally established, was drying up and changing course(ultimately ending in the Thar desert) There is even a verse in the Rig Veda saying "Saraswati, oh mighty river, if you were ever to spurn us, we would move away to distant lands" Certainly this creates a very plausible scenario for mass migrations from out of India towards the West. You already accepted Indian people migrated Eastwards into Austronesia, but why not West? Is there some unspoken commandment "Thou shalt not go West"
Also why do we ignore the records of Aryans themselves saying Mleccha tribes including Danavas(Celtic) and Yavanas(Ionians) that were originally in India, migrated from India into Europe.
The only problem is what is the evidence these migrations into India took place at all? The only evidence for it is based on linguistic assumptions, there is nothing else. There are no records in any of Indo-European culture of migrating into India over several generations -- but ironically there are records from the Indo-Aryans themselves of migrating into Europe and of always calling India their motherland.
But they didn't, not entirely. It's not that cut and dried, it's not black and white. Dravidian languages are alive and well. It's not displacement, but mixture. See the 2nd link, especially.
Genetics and archaeogenetics of South Asia - Wikipedia
Genetics Proves Indian Population Mixture | HMS
Genetic Evidence for Recent Population Mixture in India
Genetic Evidence on the Origins of Indian Caste Populations
What makes you think they didn't? Genetics and archaeogenetics of South Asia - Wikipedia
The Y-DNA haplogroup that (probably) originated in what is now India, and has its highest concentrations there is also found outside India in lower concentrations. That tells me that some of it found its way out of India. Sanskrit - Wikipedia Sanskrit had to have gotten out of India somehow. People move around.
Not everything was written down. There are human languages that are lost forever because they were not written down. Not everyone kept a journal or diary. And there may very well have been groups that migrated out of India, for any number of reasons. Why do people move, yet pine for the "old country"?
Spirit_Warrior
Active Member
Thank you for references to these genetic studies. I will look at them more closely and in relation to other genetic studies I have read about which lead to opposite conclusions. If the Aryans did indeed come from Central Asia and were not always home to India, does in no way cause me problems as an Indian(I was not even born in India) or my subscription to Hinduism. I actually see it as a good thing, that Indian and Western people are historically, culturally and even genetically related -- seeing as I live in a Western country myself.
However, truth is also important and if it is not true that the Aryans came from Central Asia/Europe, then it does bother me that it is being taught as fact. In reading the genetic studies you posted, it mentions two genetic groups ANI and ASI. So can it also be possible if the ANI and ASI groups both existed in India, and the ANI group is the group that moved west into Central/Asia Europe, around the time frame it talks about around 4000 years ago. How is the directionality of the migration established through these studies?
The study mentions a time-frame of 1900-4000 years in which the ANI gene pool entered and mixed with the ASI, but this could also refer to invasions of the Persians and the Greeks around 500BCE?
I cannot see any reason yet to rule out that the direction of travel East to West.
I wanted to bring it back to your point that the Aryans mixed with the Dravidians and trickled down into India over several generations. It was mixture not displacement. It certainly does not seem like a peaceful mixing with the Dravidian people, because the Dravidian people and their languages were marginalised to only 5% of the population and they were driven down south(originally, they were in the north, if we accept they were the original natives of IVC) They were so marginalised that even the words they used to describe brothers and sisters were replaced by Sanskrit. Then for the rest of history Sanskrit replaced Dravidian all over India as lingua franca, and even today Dravidian languages account for only 10% of the spoken languages in India. This does not at all suggest mixture, but domination.
It does not seem possible to do this without these small number of trickling down migrations imposing their religion, language and culture on the Dravidian people. This is why "Invasion" makes more sense than "migration" but there is no evidence for any such invasion.
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Consider the western hemisphere... except for the Norman conquest of England in 1066, there was no major invasion or sudden domination of Norman French/Latinate culture on the Germanic peoples. In fact, the native Anglo-Saxons of England readily integrated Norman French into their language because they wanted to be with the "in crowd". They could still go about their Anglo-Saxon lives. It was insidious, if that's not too strong a word. English is a West Germanic language in structure, but 60% Latin (via Norman French) vocabulary. That took only 100-200 years.
Dravidian languages may be spoken at a low percentage, but it doesn't mean they were stamped out. People like to adopt the speech and customs of "newcomers". People like what is new and exotic. See my comments about Americans adopting French and Italian phrases, fashion, style, customs. For some reason they are seen as "better". No idea why.
Yet nowadays English (with its 60% Latin vocabulary) is probably the predominant lingua franca, of several. The US and GB didn't invade every country. But there are certain benefits to going with what's new. Trade? Protection? New technology? I think there is no evidence for an invasion because there was no invasion. I think it's pretty much accepted that the collapse of the IVC was climate change, with the inhabitants, an ancient indigenous group (if they are the ANI) moving east along the Gangetic Plain, to a wetter location. Or south and mixing with the Dravidians (ASI). Why did an IE language and some centrtal Asians come into south Asia? Maybe filling a vacuum. Maybe they had to flee their homeland. I know this is all speculation and may be pulling it out of my, you know. But hypotheses and theories often grow out of the most outrageous ideas. And “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
Fireside_Hindu
Jai Lakshmi Maa
Maybe this has been answered already, but in all this discussion for some reason one question keeps bugging me.
If the Aryan Migration Theory is true, why isn't Sanskrit spoken outside of the Indian subcontinent? One would think that if Sanskrit came from outside in, there would be remnants of the language in Europe. Maybe there is and I'm ignorant, but I have never heard of it.
If the Aryan Migration Theory is true, why isn't Sanskrit spoken outside of the Indian subcontinent? One would think that if Sanskrit came from outside in, there would be remnants of the language in Europe. Maybe there is and I'm ignorant, but I have never heard of it.
It's more that an ancestral language to Sanskrit and the co-existing colloquial dialects (Prakrits) originated outside India and diverged as it spread, developing into Avestan (very similar to Sanskrit) from a common ancestry in Afghanistan, and into the ancestors of Germanic, Slavic, Celtic and Italic languages elsewhere, from a common ancestry in the Pontic or Central Asian steppes.
That's the current consensus, anyway.
Spirit_Warrior
Active Member
Dravidian languages may be spoken at a low percentage, but it doesn't mean they were stamped out. People like to adopt the speech and customs of "newcomers". People like what is new and exotic. See my comments about Americans adopting French and Italian phrases, fashion, style, customs. For some reason they are seen as "better". No idea why.
I see what you are saying of how we can adopt new cultural practices, phrases, styles and fashions of new people, but what you are suggesting here is not that, but total abandonment of your own languages, culture, religion and way of life for these small tribes of migrating newcomers over generations. Just because England has adopted tandoori chicken as its national dish in favour of fish and chips, does not mean that now England is all speaking Hindi, converted to Hinduism. You can say that Hindi migrants have enrichened the culture, but not replaced it, or marginalise it to the point of total doimination. If what you say is true then at one Dravidian language were spoken by 100% of Indians, Dravidian gods were worshipped by 100% of Indians, Dravidian culture and customs was practised by 100% of Indians --- and then circa 4000 years ago these pastoral nomadic Aryans arrived bringing Sanskrit and just within generations Dravidian dropped to 5%, to the event even Aryan words to describe your own family relationships replaced Dravidian words, Aryan gods replaced their all their gods, Aryan customs replaced all their customs and India became "Aryavarta" --- this sounds like total and absolute domination.
Also according to this theory the incoming Aryans were pastoral people, and the Dravidians were urban, sophisticated and technological people --- and still they abandoned everything for Aryans? This is migration makes no sense and probably why even earlier scholars called it "invasion" Only an invasion can explain the near total domination of the original Dravidian people. But seeing as there is absolutely no evidence for an invasion both invasion and migration become equally absurd.
I think there is no evidence for an invasion because there was no invasion. I think it's pretty much accepted that the collapse of the IVC was climate change, with the inhabitants, an ancient indigenous group (if they are the ANI) moving east along the Gangetic Plain, to a wetter location. Or south and mixing with the Dravidians (ASI). Why did an IE language and some centrtal Asians come into south Asia? Maybe filling a vacuum. Maybe they had to flee their homeland. I know this is all speculation and may be pulling it out of my, you know. But hypotheses and theories often grow out of the most outrageous ideas. And “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
I would like you to read this article on the genetic studies, it mentions almost a dozen both Mtdna and Y halogroup studies that have reached very different conclusions on when ASI and ANI mixed: Genetics and the Aryan Debate
. The overall picture emerging from these studies is, first, an unequivocal rejection of a 3500-BP arrival of a “Caucasoid” or Central Asian gene pool. Just as the imaginary Aryan invasion / migration left no trace in Indian literature, in the archaeological and the anthropological record, it is invisible at the genetic level. The agreement between these different fields is remarkable by any standard, and offers hope for a grand synthesis in the near future, which will also integrate agriculture and linguistics.
Secondly, they account for India’s considerable genetic diversity by using a time- scale not of a few millennia, but of 40,000 or 50,000 years. In fact, several experts, such as Lluís Quintana-Murci,20 Vincent Macaulay,21 Stephen Oppenheimer,22 Michael Petraglia,23 and their associates, have in the last few years proposed that when Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa, he first reached South-West Asia around 75,000 BP, and from here, went on to other parts of the world. In simple terms, except for Africans, all humans have ancestors in the North-West of the Indian peninsula. In particular, one migration started around 50,000 BP towards the Middle East and Western Europe:
“indeed, nearly all Europeans — and by extension, many Americans — can trace their ancestors to only four mtDNA lines, which appeared between 10,000 and 50,000 years ago and originated from South Asia.” 24
Oppenheimer, a leading advocate of this scenario, summarizes it in these words:
“For me and for Toomas Kivisild, South Asia is logically the ultimate origin of M17 and his ancestors; and sure enough we find the highest rates and greatest diversity of the M17 line in Pakistan, India, and eastern Iran, and low rates in the Caucasus. M17 is not only more diverse in South Asia than in Central Asia, but diversity characterizes its presence in isolated tribal groups in the south, thus undermining any theory of M17 as a marker of a ‘male Aryan invasion’ of India. One average estimate for the origin of this line in India is as much as 51,000 years. All this suggests that M17 could have found his way initially from India or Pakistan, through Kashmir, then via Central Asia and Russia, before finally coming into Europe.”25
Spirit_Warrior
Active Member
This is a good point.
To this I would like to add if the Aryans really did bring their Vedic religion into India, why do you only find the oldest and most voluminous literature inside India of the Vedic religion, and not outside of India? Why would the other Aryan groups not compose these scriptures anywhere else and start Vedic traditions everywhere else?
Why would it take for the Western scholars to first arrive in India to learn that a race/people called the Aryans even existed?
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It's likely similar to how the UK became Germanic. Genetically, the influence of Angles, Saxons and Jutes is very minor, but nevertheless the culture became predominant, albeit with mixture with the pre-existing Celtic culture. This had happened before when Celtic culture had spread across Europe too. Actually these two waves replaced their preceding cultures far more completely than would have occurred during the Aryan migrations into India.
Think of it this way if we accept that there was an ancestral language called Proto-Indo-European, it spread out from the Black Sea area west, east, south, north. As people grew further apart their dialects would become mutually unintelligible. After a while those dialects would become new languages.
In the area around Germany it would become Proto-Germanic, in Italy it would become Proto-Italic then turning into Latin, going north it became Proto-Balto-Slavic, then Russian, Lithuanian, Polish. In south Asia it became Proto Indo-Iranian, then diverged into Old Persian and Sanskrit.
So while Sanskrit in a historical context was not spoken outside India, Farsi (Persian) was also not spoken outside what is now Iran. It developed as Farsi in Iran, Pashto in Afghanistan. Those languages developed where they were primarily spoken, and became the languages we know.
The beginning of this movement and break up of PIE is believed to have occurred between 6,000 - 4,000 BCE. How long would it take an American pioneer family or wagon train of families (a tribe!) in the 1800s to relocate from Virginia to California? A year? How long did it take for all of North America to be populated from the first settlements to the American Revolution to the Civil War, 200 years? Remember, people were making babies, increasing the poulation in any given area.
Compare what can be accomplished in 4,000 years v. 200 years vis-á-vis travel. And I daresay that with the exception of firearms, the technologies of the migrating Indo-Europeans and American settlers were not much different... beasts of burden and wooden wagons.
I don't think that's the case. I think migrating PIE people brought their proto-language(s) and proto-religion(s) into India, which became Vedic culture, religion and language, developing in India after they were already there.
Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
Would you kindly read the bio-data of David Frawley at David Frawley - Wikipedia They do not even mention his secular educational qualifications. I hope he at least has a bachelor's degree.
SVYASA Yoga University - Bangalore, Karnataka, South India, "Yoga courses at our S-VYASA Yoga University are recognised by the University Grants Commission of the Government of India. We now have 50 PhDs, 100 MScs, and over 350 students in various branches".
I think S-VYASA has the highest percentage of Ph.D.s and MScs vis-a-vis the number of students in the world. The game in India is to get financial aid from University Grants Commission in India, the Ministries of Education at Center or the State. These universities are established either by Godmen or politicians.
Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
- Maritime trade around 2000 BC requires just a few people. To think that it involved mass transfer of populations is not correct.
- So, how does it prove that they were from India and not originally from places from where even the Indian Aryans came - Eurasian steppes and Central Asia. Sanskrit came to India with Aryans.
- Indian history and scriptures record attacks from and coming of foreign (mlechha) tribes in India. I have asked you earlier also, you may give a few example of people going out. Children of Danube, where did you get this expression from?
- It is "shown disproven" only to the chauvinist Hindus, not to the history scholars all over the world.
Why don't you join me in Dharmic Religions DIR, rather than here?
Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
There are ways by which we can find quite precisely which DNA is older and which is newer. I would suggest you read this to begin with: Archaeogenetics - Wikipedia, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090604124023.htm
Yes, there were Greek, Persian and Scythian invasions. But even before that, the Indian DNA mixed with people from Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia. After all, they were our neighbors. At one time there were no boundaries when villages were the social units and later the political boundaries kept on changing all the time.
"Languages spoken in India belong to several language families, the major ones being the Indo-Aryan languages spoken by 75% of Indians and the Dravidian languages spoken by 20% of Indians. Other languages belong to the Austroasiatic, Sino-Tibetan, Tai-Kadai, and a few other minor language families and isolates."
Languages of India - Wikipedia
So, your estimate is wrong by huge margins. Tamils, Telugus, Kannadas and Malayalis make 20% of Indians population. There was no mass movement of Dravidian people from North to South, thanks to the assimilation. People in regions where Indo-Aryan languages are spoken adopted Sanskrit based mixed languages like Pali or Prakrit, just as when Arabic and Persian came, people started speaking a mixed language like Urdu. Why should you assume that forefathers of speakers of the Dravidian languages today lived in the Indus or Saraswati River valleys?
Invasion makes sense only if it happened within a short period. But when it spanned a few millenniums, admixture too can do the job very well.
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Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
Read the Zoroastrian Gatha. The language, the mythology, the ideas are like a twin sister to Sanskrit language, Vedic mythology and ideas.
http://www.avesta.org/kanga/kanga_gathas.pdf
Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
Did they? They were worshiping Ram, Krishna, Shiva and Mother Goddess, the continued to do so. They do so even now. It is the Aryan Gods who were rejected though not completely. Indra, Prajapati, Agni, Soma, Ashwinis and various others. Vishnu escaped demolition by associating with Rama and Krishna and Rudra by associating with Shiva. Is there a temple of Indra, Agni, Soma or Ashwinis. Even Prajapati who later associated with Brahma was denied worship. We invoke them on occasions and even there, we worship the indigenous Gods and Goddesses. Mahachandi Yajna - it is Mahachandi who is worshiped and not Indra or Soma.
India was a sink, India still is a sink. Whoever comes here remains here, be it the Jews, Christians and Muslims in Kerala; Zoroastrians in Gujarat and Mumbai; Aryans, Greeks, Parthians and Pahlavis, Sakas, Kushanas, Hunas, in North-West; Tibetans in Himalayas; and Thai-Burman people in the East. Even now, people from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Syria have come and settled in India. The life is leisurely and the land provides for all.
The desertification happened later and is recorded in Bhagavat Purana. People were going to West through a different route.
You are saying this all the time (Danavas going West) but you have not provided even a single proof for that. And why do you make Celts into Danavas? Do you even know where the Celtic tribes lived and how the word is pronounced?
If there are records of Indo-Aryans moving West, please indicate where? I have been asking you this question for a long time.