A Review of "Rivers of Ṛgveda" by Jijith Nadumuri Ravi
Shrikant Talageri
I do not generally write reviews of books (Tony Joseph's book "Early Indians" was a necessary exception, and it finally became a full-fledged book rather than a review article), but it is necessary to write a review of this book "Rivers of Ṛgveda" by Jijith Nadumuri Ravi (Notion Press Medica Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, 2022) for various reasons:
Firstly, Jijith is a very important scholar in the field of Indian history: his site http://ancientvoice.wikidot.com is a veritable treasure house of data and knowledge on the Epics, Puranas and Vedic texts, and his knowledge of a great mass of primary data is reflected in this book. And he is not just a historian (known also for his active organization of a seminar on the Date of the Mahabharata), but a former space scientist with ISRO, who has been honored by a respected former President of India, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, for his various scientific achievements.
Secondly, he is well known to me since many years and we enjoy a friendly relationship (which I sincerely hope will continue after this review), and we have personally met along with his family when he was stationed in Mumbai, in my own house as well as in his house where he did me the personal honor of asking me to participate in a small traditional Kerala ceremony concerning his son (I am not sure, but I think it was what is called a vidyarambham ceremony). His valuable site has given prominent coverage to my books, power-point presentations and many of my articles. And I am particularly grateful and obliged to him for providing me with a scanned-file-converted-to-http of my first book (1993) of which I do not have a typed or digital copy (since there was no internet at the time and I did not have a computer or even know how to type when writing my first two books, which were both handwritten, published in 1993 and 2000), and it is only because of him that I was able (after due corrections and conversions) to upload my blog article "Does the Aryan Invasion Theory mean that Hindutva is not equivalent to Indian Nationalism?" consisting of the first three chapters of my 1993 book.
Thirdly, my name and my work are mentioned many times in the above book, and much of the Rigvedic data that I have correlated has been very well presented in a positive way.
After all this, it may seem strange and even ungrateful that, although I would urge the readers to go through his book (and more importantly, his site) as an important source of research into ancient Indian history, my review should seem to be a largely critical one. However the purpose of my review is not to show the many positive aspects of his book, since they will be clear to anyone who goes through it, and no-one will require me to point them out. It is to point out certain basic shortcomings in the paradigm presented in his book, which would not be obvious to a lay reader, which lead to a fundamental and gross misdirection for further research into ancient Indian history. Jijith's case does in fact coincide with mine in many respects, and for that very reason it is necessary for me point out those basic points where his analysis goes off sharply at a misleading tangent from the facts, so as to leave no room for confusion. I sincerely hope he takes my critique in the right sense, since I will mainly be pointing out factual and data errors. The OIT is my life's work, and while I always welcome corrections and development of the case, I cannot allow it to be hijacked in a wrong direction against the facts and data.
Jijith is generally a meticulous scholar when he examines data and comes to conclusions, but in respect of Vedic history, his attitude is governed by two preconceived prejudices which cloud his understanding:
1. He is committed to the Vedic-Harappan-centered idea of Indian history and civilization, where the Vedic-Harappan geographical area is considered as the core area from where the civilization of the whole of Classical or traditional India originated. In this respect, in spite of the fact that his paradigm is an OIT paradigm and not an AIT one, he (like P.L. Bhargava) treats the entire gamut of Puranic-Epic dynasties as having an ultimate origin on the banks of the Sarasvati, and tries to locate their origins in this area. Like Narahari Achar (see my blog article "A Reply To Prof. Narahari Achar's Critique of my article "The Rigveda and the Aryan Theory: A Rational Perspective THE FULL OUT-OF-INDIA CASE IN SHORT""), he particularly objects to the idea that the Ikṣvākus were not originally a part of the Vedic culture and geographical area (Afghanistan to Western Uttar Pradesh) but originally belonged to a separate non-Vedic Inner Indo-European culture of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar; and consequently much of his analysis of the Vedic-Puranic data is concentrated on force-fitting any data on the Ikṣvākus into a west-to-east-movement paradigm locating the earliest Ikṣvākus in the Vedic-Harappan area and making them migrate eastwards in the course of time into eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. It must be remembered that the Ikṣvākus are one of the three mega-tribes central to traditional North Indian history (the others being the Pūrus and Yadus). Therefore recognizing their original location in the east is important in understanding the all-India origins of ancient Hindu traditions.
2. Like most Hindu Indian (and some Indophile Western) writers studying ancient Indian history, he has invested a lot of study in analysis of the Epic-Puranic data, and this leads to an all-out effort to try and force-fit as much of the Epic-Puranic "data" as possible into his outline of Vedic history.
Unlike some other Hindu writers, he is rational in his dating of the different parts of the Rigveda (where his dates generally coincide with my own) and is not concerned with transporting the Epic-Puranic events back into extremely remote times. In fact, in respect of the Ramayana events he even goes to the other extreme in this matter, and concludes that Rāma is "is a contemporary of Śaṁtanu" (p.319), and is "dated towards the end of Ṛgvedic 10th Maṇḍala (2000-1900 BCE)" (p.299). Apart from that, his force-fitting is generally in respect of the geography rather than the chronology of ancient Indian historical events. And this is based on the mistaken assumption that the earliest Puranic historical events can only have taken place in areas sanctified by developed urban archaeological sites such as the Vedic-Harappan areas of the northwest, and that the origin of any Puranic dynasty cannot be located outside this area (for example in eastern areas not similarly sanctified by urban archaeological sites), since areas not sanctified by urban archaeological sites cannot be the source of rich historical and cultural traditions.
It genuinely pains me to have to critically dissect the book of a friendly writer, which also gives so much importance to my own work, and even seems to be an extension of it. But it is in fact for this very reason that this kind of writing is lethal to the OIT paradigm presented by me, which is based on data and logic, and not on wishful thinking and preconceived prejudices. It seems to come close to the paradigm and then subtly leads away at a sharp tangent, without anyone becoming aware of it, and can cause more confusion and distortion than a paradigm (such as that of the Nilesh Oak school of writers who like to take giant leaps into the past) which is very obviously a different one.
And I think in the field of historical studies (especially Indian historical studies which have suffered much distortion), it is necessary to be frank and open and to point out flaws in interpretation, and not let diplomacy and personal relationships interfere in the correct interpretation of the data. In the process, if my way of putting things sometimes seems somewhat tactless or even rude, I apologize in advance, but it has to be done. It is not possible to please everyone, and it is not right to try to avoid displeasing anyone by remaining silent.
Jijith's book represents three fundamental diversions from (or should I say three fundamental assaults on) a logical OIT case:
1. Firstly, he converts the all-North-India OIT paradigm (where the early history of the original "Solar-Lunar" tribal conglomerates mentioned in ancient literature was spread out over most of North India, and only the Bharata Pūru Rigvedic culture was located on the banks of the Sarasvati) — a paradigm based on the evidence of the data from both the Rigveda as well as the Puranas — into an ambiguous Sarasvati-centered AIT/OIT-neutral paradigm (where the early history of all these Solar-Lunar tribal conglomerates was restricted to the banks of the Sarasvati river) — a paradigm based only on wishful imagination, and going against the evidence of the data from both the Rigveda as well as the Puranas.
This is dealt with in two sections: section A and section B.
2. Secondly, he converts the Rigveda — going against the evidence of the data in the Rigveda — from the book of a single Bharata Pūru sub-tribe into the joint book of two mutually conflicting Bharata sub-tribes whom he names as the "Tṛtsu Bharatas" and the "Samvaraṇa Bharatas".
This is dealt with in the third section C.
3. Thirdly, he, perhaps unwittingly (in the process of trying to achieve the above aims), introduces an element of sabotage into the clear division of the Rigveda into an Old Rigveda and a New Rigveda, representing two distinct chronological eras, which, as I have repeatedly pointed out is the most fundamentally important factor in any logical analysis of Rigvedic (and Indo-Iranian and even Indo-European) history.
This, along with any other minor points in the book, will be dealt with in the fourth section D.
[The fifth section is a short appendix, rather than a part of my review of the book].
This article is divided into five sections:
A. The Sarayu and the Ikṣvākus.
B. A Sarasvati-based Paradigm.
C. The "Samvaraṇa Bharatas".
D. Chronological and some other minor problems in the book.
E. The date of Rāma.
A. The Sarayu and the Ikṣvākus
This (his identification of the Sarayu in the Rigveda) is the central aspect of Jijith's book — in my own opinion as well as in his own, as he clearly states in a recent tweet (26-1-2022) that it is "the main topic of the book" — which, as we will see, leads to a complete distortion of the historical perspective.
There are only two prominent historical rivers which are known to any historical records by the name Sarayu (or its later variant forms): the Epic-Puranic Sarayu (Ghaghara) in Uttar Pradesh, and the Avestan Haroyu (Harirud) in Afghanistan. The two questions that arise from this are:
1. Which of these two rivers is the Sarayu mentioned in the Rigveda?
2. Which of these two rivers originally bore the name Sarayu, which was later transferred to the other of the two?
It must be noted that both these rivers fall outside the core historical area of the Vedic Aryans (which is westernmost U.P.-and-Haryana in the east expanding to the western tributaries of the Indus in the west: Afghanistan was never linguistically part of the core Vedic historic area, and its languages belong even today to the Iranian branch), one well to its east and the other well to its west.
According to supporters of the AIT, the Rigveda refers to the river Harirud of Afghanistan, and shows that the Indo-Aryans, as they marched eastwards into India, carried the name of this river with them and gave it to the river of Uttar Pradesh. According to most supporters of the OIT (or at least opponents of the AIT), it refers to the Ghaghara of Uttar Pradesh, and the ancestors of the Iranians, as they marched out westwards from India, carried the name of this river with them and gave it to the river of Afghanistan.
But as we will see, the data shows that the two questions have different answers.
1. All the relevant data in the Rigveda shows that the Sarayu that it refers to could not possibly be the river Ghaghara of Uttar Pradesh, as all the accompanying geographical data in the Rigveda locates this river to the west of the Sarasvati rather than to its east. So the logical answer to the first question is that it refers to the Haroyu of Afghanistan.
However, since this is interpreted by AIT scholars as a sign of a west-to-east movement of the Vedic Aryans from the heart of Afghanistan, many Hindu scholars feel it necessary to invent another Sarayu to the west of the Sarasvati but within the core area of the Rigveda. P.L. Bhargava, for example, in the later version of his book, identified it with the Siritoi river, a western tributary of the Indus. The Sarayu, as per the data in the Rigveda, was a new river encountered by the Vedic Aryans (the Pūrus) only after they had migrated westwards across the rivers of the Punjab, and therefore it was irrelevant to my OIT case whether it was the Siritoi or the Harirud (both of which are to the west), and, in my second book (in 2000) I (admittedly because I liked it) summarily accepted Bhargava's identification without special examination, and was only jolted out of my somnolence when a comment in a blog of mine made a pointed inquiry about the specific identification of the Rigvedic Sarayu, after which I gave special attention to this point and accepted the natural identification with the Harirud of Afghanistan. See my blog:
https://talageri.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-logic-of-rigvedic-geography_6.html
2. However, the question of which of the two rivers bore the original name first is a different matter altogether. Names of places and rivers do not go flying through the air from one place to another: they are carried by migrants from one place to another, or are spread by cultural diffusion (like the name Ayodhya has been carried by diffusion to many places: even Thailand has an Ayudhya/Ayutthaya). And neither of the two above (AIT and OIT) alternatives mentioned above logically accounts for the transfer of the name Sarayu (and also the name Gomati) either from the west to the east or from the east to the west:
a) Afghanistan was never a part of the core area of the Rigvedic Aryans (Pūrus), and the Sarayu of Afghanistan appears in the Rigveda only in the context of a final battle between westward-expanding Bharata Pūru Indo-Aryans (under Sahadeva and Somaka) and the pre-Avestan Anu proto-Iranians which took place in Afghanistan, in an area which had by then become proto-Iranian, and still remains linguistically Iranian territory and not Vedic Indo-Aryan territory. Therefore there is no logical explanation (quite apart from the fact that no such migration is attested in any records) for how or why migrating Indo-Aryans (Pūrus) should or could have transferred river names from a western non-Pūru (specifically Iranian) territory (Afghanistan) into an eastern non-Pūru (specifically Ikṣvāku) territory (eastern Uttar Pradesh), and that too in a post-Rigvedic period. And certainly there is no explanation as to how or why any section of Iranians should or could have done so either.
b) Equally, there can be no logical explanation (again quite apart from the fact that no such migration is attested in any records either) as to how or why migrating Pūrus should or could have transferred river names from an eastern non-Pūru (specifically Ikṣvāku) territory (eastern Uttar Pradesh) into a western non-Pūru territory (Afghanistan), and that too during the period of composition of the Rigveda. And certainly there is no explanation as to how or why any section of Iranians should or could have done so either.
So the obvious explanation is that it was sections of the non-Pūru (i.e. non-Vedic) IE-speaking Ikṣvākus from the east who must have transferred the name of the Sarayu (as well as the name of the Gomati) from their own areas in the east to the areas in the northwest and beyond, during the period of composition (by the Pūrus) of the Rigveda. And this is not speculation: there is plentiful data recorded in our texts. For this, we do not have to invent unrecorded and fictitious "Sarayu" rivers within the core territory of the Rigveda, nor do we have to invent fictitious migrations. The details are given in my above article on "The Logic of Rigvedic Geography" and more in detail in my article "The Ikṣvākus in the Rigveda" (I will not repeat the details here: the interested reader can read or reread those articles, and challenge them if they think it is possible):
https://talageri.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-iksvakus-in-rigveda.html
Unfortunately, a Veda-centric attitude towards Indian history, culture and religion requires a Veda-centric explanation for this transfer of names. It then requires the invention of an unrecorded and fictitious "Sarayu" river within the core area of the Rigveda and unrecorded and fictitious migrations from that area. P.L.Bhargava identified the Rigvedic Sarayu with the Siritoi: a small, insignificant minor tributary (and in fact so minor that it will be difficult to locate it on a map). It is in the south, in northern Baluchistan, and it is a western tributary of the Zhob, which is a southern tributary of the Gomal, which is itself a western tributary of the Indus. That it is close to the Gomal (the western Gomati of the Rigveda) is his only redeeming excuse.
In this book, however, Jijith identifies three distinct rivers within the core Rigvedic area with the name Sarayu, totally unsupported by any actual data either in the Vedic or in the Epic-Puranic texts, or even by the speculations of any earlier Indologists:
Sarayu-1 = The Sarasvatī:
"The Tṛkṣis….migrated westwards from the Ancestral Sarayu (alternate name of Sarasvatī in its southern course)" (p.42).
"They migrated from what I posit as the 'Ancestral Sarayu' (which I identify as none other than Sarasvatī)" (p.203).
"As per my analysis, this Ancestral Sarayu is none other than the river Sarasvatī herself" (p.208).
"The Ikṣvākus referred to the river (Ghaggar-Hakra) as Sarayu and the Aiḷas called it Sarasvatī" (p.209).
"We designate the Ancestral Sarayu as the dried-up Sarasvatī channel between fort Derawar and Anupgarh" (p.216).
Sarayu-2 = The Sutlej:
"Since Sutlej is the nearest river for the southern-Ikṣvākus, they migrated to Sutlej before any other river. Thus, the name Sarayu got applied to Sutlej (to be precise, the name Sarayu got applied to a Sutlej-distributary joining Sarasvatī). This old name Sarayu, applied to Sutlej got captured in the 10th Maṇḍala verse 10.64.9 (sarasvatī sarayuḥ sindhur)" (p.209).
Sarayu-3 = The Haro:
"to the Western Sarayu (Haro river, tributary of Indus)" (p.42).
"I identify the Ṛgvedic Sarayu with the Haro river" (p.77-78).
"Northwest upto Sarayu (Haro)" (p.80).
"The region between Sindhu (Indus) and Sarayu (Haro)" (p.91).
"The eastern tributary of Indus that can be identified with Sarayu is the Haro River" (p.202).
"They migrated… to the Śaryaṇāvat region and named the main river (Haro) in the region as Sarayu" (p.203).
The two rivers which actually do bear the name Sarayu are then accounted for by postulating unrecorded and fictitious migrations of the Ikṣvākus from an original Ikṣvāku Homeland within the core Rigvedic area into both the eastern and western directions:
Sarayu-4 = The Ghaghara in U.P. (a tributary of the Gaṅgā):
"The ancient settlements of the Ikṣvākus were distributed along Sarasvatī from Bhirrana in the north to Derawar Fort in the south. This is the region of the pre-Harappan Hakra-Ware culture [….] We call it the Ikṣvāku Homeland, equal in status to the Vara Pṛthivyā, the Aiḷa Homeland" (p.209).
"The Ikṣvākus were the earliest civilization on the banks of Sarasvatī. Their settlements existed along Sarasvatī many centuries earlier than the Ṛgvedic civilization of the Ailas, Pūrus and the Bharatas" (p.217).
"The Aitihāsic river Sarayū (Ghaghara) mentioned prominently in the Rāmāyaṇa is a major tributary of Gaṅgā" (p.197).
"His son Bhagīratha migrated further eastwards into Gaṅgā. The descendants of Bhagīratha went further eastwards and finally settled on its major tributary (Ghaghara) and named it Sarayū in memory of their Ancestral Sarayu river" p.215).
Sarayu-5 = The Herat or Harirud (Avestan Haroyu) in Afghanistan:
"Some of these Ikṣvākus too migrated with their Ānava allies into Afghanistan and Iran. This explains why the name Sarayu is applied to a river (Harirud) in Afghanistan as Harôyû" (p.220).
Occam's razor is a principle of formulating and evaluating theories which says that "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity". The theory outlined in Jijith's book creates five distinct Sarayu rivers, three of them totally fictitious and unrecorded ones unsupported by any genuine data in either the Vedic or Puranic literature, or even in earlier Indological speculations. And then follows it up by inventing fictitious migrations from a fictitious Ikṣvāku homeland on the "Ancestral Sarayu", again totally unrecorded and unsupported by data or even by speculative Indological precedent.
Of the three Sarayus invented in this book, two (the Sarasvati and Sutlej) do not even merit any analysis, and in fact they seem to be inserted only in order to link a fictitious Homeland through a chain of fictitious migrations. The third one, Haro, which Jijith gratuitously calls the "Rigvedic Sarayu", though such an identification is equally unrecorded and fictitious, requires some attention, and we will examine it presently.
Jijith starts off by placing the earliest Ikṣvākus in an "Ikṣvāku Homeland" on the first Sarayu (=Sarasvati), and connects up the Sarayu mentioned thrice in the Rigveda with these earliest Ikṣvākus as follows: "The Ṛgvedic river Sarayu is mentioned three times in Ṛgveda. The first mention of Sarayu is in the 4th Maṇḍala by Vāmadeva Gautama. The 2nd Mention is in the 5th Maṇḍala by Śyāvāśva Ātreya, the same Ṛṣi who mentions the Gomatī for the first time. The 3rd mention of Sarayu is in the 10th Maṇḍala by Gaya Plāta. In Rāmāyaṇa, Vāmadeva is mentioned as a priest of Daśaratha along with Vasiṣṭha (VRM 1.7.3) consistently in its 1st, 2nd, 6th, and 7th Kāṇḍas. Atri (VRM 2.109.5) is mentioned as a prominent sage who interacted with Rāma during his exile from Ayodhyā to the southern regions. Hence, Sarayu, both in Ṛgveda and in the Itihāsas, is primarily a river of the Ikṣvākus" (p.197).
The logic is incomprehensible. Sarayu is indeed a primary river of the Ikṣvākus, but this is the river of the east, the Ghaghara. But the mentions of the Sarayu in the Rigveda do not connect up the Rigvedic river with any Ikṣvāku. The fact that the poets in the Rigveda who mention the Sarayu are also associated with Rama in the Valmiki Ramayana (by which period even Jijith accepts that Rama was located since generations on the banks of the eastern Sarayu, see p.211 onwards) also does not connect up the earliest Ikṣvākus with the Rigvedic Sarayu. All the Epic-Puranic texts locate all the Rigvedic ṛṣis in all parts of India in later times, and even Jijith recognizes this (p.212). Hence the connections drawn up above make no sense: how can the fact that Rama from the East meets a descendant of Atri in the South, in a much later period, show that the earliest Ikṣvākus were located in the area of northwestern Sarayu, simply because the northwestern Sarayu is mentioned in the Rigveda by an ancestral Atri?
Jijith then has the Ikṣvākus migrating from the "Ikṣvāku Homeland" on the first Sarayu (=Sarasvati) through a series of migrations, first westwards to the second Sarayu (=Sutlej), thence to the third Sarayu (=Haro), and finally to the fourth Sarayu (=Harirud). In the opposite direction, they migrate eastwards to the Awadh region of Uttar Pradesh where they give the name to the fifth Sarayu (=Ghaghara). He also backs this by connecting the names of rivers or tribes on the migration path with the names of kings given in the Epic-Puranic lists of Ikṣvāku kings: thus he derives the name Aṁśumati (an alternate name of the Yamunā) from the name of the Epic-Puranic Ikṣvāku king Aṁśumān whom he has migrating to the Yamunā (pp. 169, 215-216, 265-267, 308, 318, 321) from the Sarasvati, and he makes an Iranian tribe, the Sagartians, "descendants" of the Epic-Puranic Ikṣvāku king Sagara (p.220). Neither of these migrations, geographical connections, or associations with the rivers or kings (who are simply picked up from the Puranic lists) is suggested anywhere in any Vedic or Epic-Puranic text.
The identification of the Haro, a river in the northwest, as the Rigvedic Sarayu (purely on the ground that the name Haro seems similar to the Avestan name Haroyu) is also totally without basis. There is no doubt whatsoever about the identity of the Haro river: it is identified clearly by scholars with the Rigvedic Ārjīkīyā (and what is more, Jijith, by a Freudian slip, himself identifies the Haro with the Ārjīkīyā on p.99).
Elsewhere, Jijith consciously and determinedly tries to negate this by identifying the Ārjīkīyā river with the Sil river (even when there is no connection between the two names, or record or tradition of any kind to this effect), but again, it is obvious that he arbitrarily picks up this identification because the Rigveda regularly couples the Ārjīkīyā with the sister river Suṣomā, both identified by the scholars with the Haro and Sohan, and the Sil ("a tributary of Sohan river", p.307) is the geographically closest candidate to which the name Ārjīkīyā can be shifted so that the Haro becomes free to be identified with the Sarayu!
However, the data gives the lie to his identification: The Sarayu is mentioned only three times in the Rigveda: IV.30.18; V.53.9; X.64.9. Nowhere is it mentioned in any context with the Śaryaṇāvat or Suṣomā, or with the Soma found in these areas, with all of which Jijith very regularly tries to connect it throughout his "analysis" in his book, but the Ārjīka/Ārjīkīyā is very regularly mentioned along with these names, all of which appear only in the non-family Books (while two of the three references to Sarayu are in the Family Books 4 and 5):
The Śaryaṇāvat region, with which Jijith tries throughout the book to associate the Rigvedic Sarayu, is mentioned in I.84.14; VIII.6.39; 7.29; 64.11; IX.65.22; 113.1; X.35.2. In two of these, VIII.6.39; 7.29, both the Ārjīka/Ārjīkīyā and Suṣomā are mentioned along with it, and these two sister rivers are again mentioned together in the Nadī Sūkta, in X.75.5, while the Rigvedic Sarayu (being in Afghanistan and out of the area of the Rigvedic people) is missing altogether in this crucial hymn. Again, Ārjīka/Ārjīkīyā is mentioned by itself in association with the Śaryaṇāvat region in IX.65.23; 113.2. The Rigvedic Sarayu is nowhere in the picture anywhere in all this.
So it is clear that the Rigvedic Sarayu is definitely not the Haro river and is definitely not a part of the Śaryaṇāvat region, but is the Harirud of Afghanistan, and the attempt to create an "Ikṣvāku Homeland" within the geographical area of the Rigveda is a totally misplaced enterprise. The Rigvedic Sarayu appears in contexts which clearly identify it with the Afghan river:
1. It appears first in the Rigveda in IV.30.18 only in the context of the Vārṣāgira battle fought by Sahadeva and Somaka at the westernmost extreme of their west-expanding conflict with the proto-Iranians, and this matches with the geographical descriptions in the Iranian records, where the river is definitely the Harirud.. See my article below (apart from the two articles cited earlier):
https://talageri.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-varsagira-battle-in-rigveda.html
2. Being in non-Vedic (Iranian) territory, the Sarayu is not included in the very important Nadī Sūkta (X.75) which enumerates all the important rivers within the Vedic area.
3. The second reference to the Sarayu in the Rigveda is in V.53,9. Here the poet Śyāvāśva Ātreya (about whom Witzel writes: "all these geographical notes belonging to diverse hymns are attributed to one and the same poet, Śyāvāśva, which is indicative of the poet’s travels" (WITZEL 1995b:317), in one hymn refers to the rivers of the East and Punjab (V.52.17, the eastern river Yamunā; and V.52.9, the Punjab river Paruṣṇī), and in the other hymn refers to the rivers of the northwest and Afghanistan (V.53.9, first line, the tributaries of the Indus, the Rasā, Anitabhā , Kubhā , Krumu, alongwith the Indus=Sindhu itself; and in V.53.9, second line, Sarayu all alone by itself). Clearly, here Sarayu is detached from the Indus and its tributaries as a separate entity.
However, Jijith misrepresents the verse and clubs the two distinct lines together as one line, and then describes the sequence as follows: "The rivers Rasā-Anitabhā, Kubhā and Krumu are mentioned as a group while Sarayu is mentioned alone after Sindhu (Indus)" and proceeds to conclude that "In the River Hymn (10.75) one set of rivers grouped together are the right side of Sindhu and the other set of rivers are on the left side of Sindhu. If we apply this pattern to the rivers mentioned in this hymn then Rasā-Anitabhā, Kubhā and Krumu are on the one side of Sindhu and Sarayu alone is on the other side of Sindhu. We know that the rivers Rasā-Anitabhā, Kubhā and Krumu are on the western side of Sindhu. This implies that Sarayu is a tributary of Sindhu on the east side of Sindhu" (p.201).
This slippery logic again constitutes a misrepresentation of X.75: In the Nadī Sūkta, the Indus alone is described in verses 1-4 and 7-9. And verse 5 refers to all the independent eastern rivers and the eastern tributaries of the Indus, while verse 6 refers to the western tributaries of the Indus clubbed together along with the Indus itself, which is again named in this verse, since all these western tributaries became known to the Vedic people only after they had crossed the Indus and are therefore part and parcel of the Indus itself to them, unlike its eastern tributaries which (like the independent eastern rivers) were or had become known to them before they came across the actual Indus river itself.
Note that (using the kind of logic Jijith himself advocates in his identifications) the earlier verse in the Nadī Sūkta refers to the eastern rivers and tributaries while the later verse refers to the western tributaries. By that logic, the earlier line in V.53.9 refers to the Indus and its tributaries clubbed together as an eastern bloc, while the later line refers to the Sarayu alone as a separate western bloc: well to the west of the Indus and its tributaries i.e. in Afghanistan.
For this same reference in V.53.9, Jijith adds another piece of logic: "The fact that the discovery of Kubhā (Kabul River) happened only in the 5th Maṇḍala invalidates the identification of Sarayu in Afghanistan. In the 6th Maṇḍala, Gaṅgā and Sarasvatī are mentioned, in the 3rd Vipāś and Śutudrī, in the 7th Paruṣṇī and Asiknī. The westernmost river mentioned in the Early Maṇḍalas (6,3 and 7) as per my analysis is Asiknī. A Sarayu placed in Afghanistan cannot be reached without crossing Sindhu and moving westward along Kubhā. But we find no mention of the river Kubhā in the 4th Maṇḍala. Instead, in the 4th Maṇḍala we find the first mention of Sarayu. After the 4th Maṇḍala comes to the 2nd Maṇḍala and then the 5th Maṇḍala. It is only in the 5th Maṇḍala we get the first mention of Kubhā. The discovery of Sarayu thus precedes the discovery of Kubhā. This means, Sarayu cannot be placed to the west of Kubhā, but only to its east" (p.200).
Again, a piece of slippery logic: Sarayu is not mentioned in Book 4 just for fun, but because it is the scene of momentous historical events (exactly like the earlier Rigvedic references to "in the 3rd Vipāś and Śutudrī, in the 7th Paruṣṇī and Asiknī"), and, moreover, in this case, historical events so momentous that they find their echo in the texts on both sides of ancient Indo-Iranian history. When referring to the Sarayu in this context, it is hardly logical to suggest that the poet should have first mentioned every other uneventful river between the Asiknī and the Sarayu, not yet named in the Rigveda by earlier composers, before acquiring the right to mention the Sarayu!
After the conflict on the Asiknī, the conflict on the Sarayu is the next recorded stage in the Bharata-vs.-Anu conflict, and no other important battles are recorded on any other river between these two, so naturally the Sarayu is the next western river to be referred to in Book 4 after the reference to the Asiknī in Book 7, since all the rivers to the west of the Sarasvati named before this are only connected with historical battles and expansions and are not casual descriptive mentions.
By Jijith's logic, the river Aṁśumati, in VIII.96.13, long after Book 4, should also be declared to be a river to the west of the Rigvedic Sarayu, since "the discovery of Sarayu thus precedes the discovery of Aṁśumati. This means, Sarayu cannot be placed to the west of Aṁśumati, but only to its east". But Jijith (correctly in this case, but inconsistent with his above logic) identifies Aṁśumati as a name for the Yamunā in the east!
4. Finally, the third reference to the Sarayu in X.64.9 produces another similar piece of logic: "Gaya Plāta lists the rivers Sarasvatī, Sarayu and Sindhu in that order in 10th Maṇḍala. 10.64.9: sarasvatī sarayuḥ sindhur ūrmibhir maho mahīr avasā yantu vakṣaṇīḥ. Here the sequence of the rivers is Sarasvatī, Sarayu and Sindhu. This hints that Sarayu has to be located between Sarasvatī and Sindhu. We have clearly identified the Ṛgvedic Sarasvati as the Ghaggar-Hakra river flowing through Haryana. Hence as per verse 10.64.9 Sarayu has to be located to the west of Ghaggar-Hakra and to the east of Indus. Sarasvatī-Sarayu-Sindhu in the verse 10.64.9 is an east to west river sequence like found in the 10.75.5 of the Nadī Sūkta." (p.200-201).
Does mere sequence in the reference "prove" the area of the river? It could well be a matter of metrical convenience since no "movement" is sought to be conveyed in the verse which merely names the three rivers. Is the Sarayu (if it is to be identified, as Jijith does, with the Haro, a small eastern tributary of the Indus) considered to be so important that it is clubbed along with the two greatest rivers of the Rigveda, the Sarasvatī and the Indus itself, as their equal?
Surprisingly, Jijith himself does not consider this to be so, since he explains the absence of any reference to the same river Sarayu in the Nadī Sūkta in the same 10th Maṇḍala as follows: "During the 10th Maṇḍala period, Sarayu lost its tributaries Ārjīkīyā and Suṣomā. The river Sarayu was thus reduced to a small river. Hence, Sarayu is not mentioned in the Nadī Sūkta (10.75) as a tributary of Sindhu" (p.203)! Incidentally, Ārjīkīyā and Suṣomā are mentioned in the Nadī Sūkta. Isn't this a contradiction between X.75 and X.64 in the same Book 10 if the Rigvedic Sarayu is indeed a tributary of the Indus, the Haro?
Perhaps Jijith himself realizes this, and elsewhere he seems to suggest that the Sarayu in X.64 is the Sutlej: "This old name Sarayu, applied to Sutlej got captured in the 10th Maṇḍala verse 10.64.9 (sarasvatī sarayuḥ sindhur)" (p.209)! But this was a name (as per the fictitious migration described in the book) given by the Ikṣvākus to the Sutlej long before they moved towards the Haro further west, and Book 3 already calls this river Śutudrī: so why is this late hymn in Book 10 supposed to refer to the Sutlej by an ancient name already extinct in the Old Book 3? The answer: because the poet "seems to be a river-expert who knows both the old and new names of the rivers" (p.209)!
This verse X.64.9, in a very late Rigvedic period, clearly names three distinct, important and independent rivers of the time, and the only rivers of the same independent status as the Sarasvati and the Indus known at the time to the Rigvedic composers are the Ganga in the east and the Harirud in the west: obviously the reference cannot be to the Ganga and must be to the Harirud. Even today, they represent the three main Rigvedic-period rivers found in three distinct present-day countries: India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Significantly, the hymn X.64 refers to the dog-star Tiṣya (Avestan Tištrya, Greek Sirius) known to the Rigveda elsewhere only in one other reference: in V.54.13, a hymn of the same much-travelled composer Śyāvāśva Ātreya who refers to the Sarayu in V.53.9 above. Also, X.64 is one of the few hymns which refers to Aramati (a deity found also in the Avesta as Aramaiti). It also refers to Yama, so important in the Avesta, and Kṛśānu, found in both the Rigveda and the Avesta: so the western Iranian connection in this late reference is obvious.
In short: the Sarayu in the Rigveda is the Harirud river in Afghanistan, into which the major proto-Iranian (Anu) tribes had expanded in the oldest Rigvedic period, and which was, in Rigvedic times, and remains to this day, an area of Iranian-language (i.e. languages belonging to the Iranian branch of IE languages) speakers. The Vedic Indo-Aryans, the Bharata Pūrus, became acquainted with this major river only after the Bharata Pūrus (under Sahadeva, Somaka and others) had their famous battle on its banks with the Iranians.
B. A Sarasvati-based Paradigm
In my books and articles I have repeatedly pointed out the original locations of the major tribes mentioned in the Puranas. I quote from my article I quote the relevant portion from my article "The 'Aryan' Story vs. True Aryan History":
"The Puranas contain masses and masses of mythical "data", but here we are only concerned with what they tell us about Manu Vaivasvata and his ten sons. [….] According to tradition, Manu Vaivasvata ruled over the whole of India, and the land was divided between his ten sons. However, for all practical purposes (and ignoring the mythical chaff), the Puranas, whose detailed narrative is restricted primarily to the Indian area to the north of the Vindhyas, concentrate only on the history of the descendants of two sons: Ikṣvāku and Iḷa. The descendants of Ikṣvāku are said to belong to the Solar Race, and the descendants of Iḷa are said to belong to the Lunar Race. The history of the descendants of the other eight sons of Manu is either totally missing, or they are perfunctorily mentioned in confused myths in between narratives involving the Aikṣvākus and the Aiḷas.
The historical data we get from amidst all the myths is the following:
1. The tribes described as descended from Ikṣvāku lived in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The descendants of Iḷa were divided into five main conglomerates of tribes (mythically treated in the later narratives as descended from the five sons of Yayāti, a descendant of Iḷa): the Pūru tribes in the general Area of Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, the Anu tribes to their North in the areas of Kashmir and the areas to its immediate west, the Druhyu tribes to the West in the areas of the Greater Punjab, the Yadu tribes to the Southwest in the areas of Gujarat, Rajasthan and western Madhya Pradesh, and the Turvasu tribes to the Southeast (to the east of the Yadu tribes).
The Puranas, just as they fail to give details of the history and even the precise geography of the other eight sons of Manu, fail to give details of the history and even the precise geography of the Turvasu tribes (who are generally mentioned in tandem with the more important Yadu tribes). The main concentration of Puranic (and the Epic and other later traditional) narrative is on the history of the Pūru tribes of the western north, the Ikṣvāku tribes of the eastern north, and the Yadu tribes of the southwestern north. The early history of the Druhyu tribes is given, but later they disappear from the horizon (for reasons that we will see presently) and the history of the Anu tribes occupies a comparatively peripheral space in the Puranas (again for obvious reasons, as we will see).
2. Manu is regarded as the traditional ancestor of all the people of India. While we get details of the geography and history only of the descendants of Ikṣvāku and Iḷa, the clear implication is that all the people of the different parts of India are descended from Manu, including the people in the areas to the south of the Vindhyas and the areas to the east of Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, who are regarded as descendants of the other eight sons of Manu.
The details of the geography and history of the people from the other parts of India (including perhaps the areas of the descendants of Turvasu) are missing from the earlier narrative because, due to distance from the main centre of Puranic compiḷation in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, there was less direct and regular interaction with them or the details of their activities were less detailedly known to the originally Pūru compilers of the Vedic and Puranic texts. The Pūru tribes were originally mainly concerned with their own history and traditions (and to a secondary extent that of the Ikṣvāku tribes to their east and the Yadu tribes to their south), and they had also developed extremely complicated techniques of maintaining oral traditions, unparalleled anywhere else in the world, which allowed them, for example, to keep their Vedic hymns orally alive for thousands of years without the change of a word or syllable or even tone."
This description is not based on my wishes and imagination, but on the data in the Epics and Puranas, but it stands generally fully corroborated by the Rigvedic data (i.e. the general areas, not the specific areas described above on the basis of the Puranas, since most of these areas were outside, i.e. to the east and south of, the areas directly familiar to the Rigvedic composers), as I have repeatedly shown in detail in my books and blogs.
This moreover fits in with the civilizational paradigm I have repeatedly stressed in my books:;
As I have repeatedly stressed, Hindu religion and culture are not derived from Vedic religion and culture (which is basically a form of religion and culture of the Pūrus, Anus and Druhyus of the northwestern areas from westernmost Uttar Pradesh westwards), although that forms the formal elite layer of Hinduism. Hinduism is basically a harmonious composite religion containing the diverse (and often contradictory) elements from the religions and cultures of all these different peoples from all parts of India.
However, many Hindus harbor a monocentric idea of Hinduism, and treat the "Vedas" as the mainspring of Hinduism as a whole. In the historical context also, there is this obsession with trying to derive the origin of all the Puranic lineages (or certainly the really prominent ones among them) from the Rigvedic-Harappan core area in the northwest. We see this in the writings of P.L.Bhargava and Narahari Achar, and now Jijith. This obsession is clear throughout the book, but I will only give a representative quote or two. As we already saw, Jijith locates the origin of the "Solar" dynasty and tribe of the Ikṣvākus of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to a fictitious "Ikṣvāku Homeland" on the banks of the Sarasvati.
Likewise he firmly locates the original area of all the five Aiḷa or "Lunar" dynasties and tribes to an unrecorded "Aiḷa Homeland" on that same Sarasvati, from where they spread out to their Puranic locations: "the Five-Peoples [….] whose ancestral Homeland is Sarasvatī. [….] these Five-Peoples spread from the banks of Sarasvatī to the banks of the other rivers (the other sisters of Sarasvatī) as a result of migrations. The Yadus and Turvaśas moved southward to occupy the Yamunā and later the southwestern sea at Dwāraka where they are seen before the Kurukshetra War. The Druhyus and Anus moved north-westward".
There is one important question I would like to pose to Jijith (the other two writers named above are no more, and cannot answer this question):
If all the Solar and Lunar tribes were on the banks of the Sarasvati before their migrations, then, before they migrated to the East and South, what was the state of inhabitation of the other areas to its east and south (where the Epic-Puranic texts actually locate these tribes) in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh? [I can concede that areas further east and south of these may have been originally mixed border areas with Dravidian and Austric language speakers, mythically descendants of the other eight sons of Manu]:
1. Were these areas completely devoid of human inhabitation?
2, Were they inhabited by other intelligent non-human inhabitants (as in fairy tale scenarios and in all mythologies, including modern ones like Lord of the Rings, etc.)?
3. Were they inhabited by speakers of Dravidian and Austric languages, who were invaded and displaced by the indigenous "Aryans"?
4. Were they inhabited by extremely primitive "uncultured Aryans" with no traditions of their own who were invaded and displaced by the "cultured Aryans" from the Sarasvati river?
C. The "Samvaraṇa Bharatas"
But it is not only the other Lunar tribes (Anu, Druhyu, Yadu and Turvaśa) and Solar tribes that Jijith places on the banks of the Sarasvati (in Puranic but possibly pre-Vedic times): he invents within the Rigvedic narrative itself and central to it, two rival tribes of Bharata Pūrus on the Sarasvati. He calls them the "Tṛtsu Bharatas" and the "Samvaraṇa Bharatas".
Throughout my books and articles I have pointed out that the Rigveda is a book of the Bharata Pūrus — i.e. of that Bharata sub-tribe of the Pūrus, whose illustrious lineage of kings from the ancestral Bharata, through kings like Devavāta, Sṛñjaya, Divodāsa, and Sudās, right down to Sahadeva and Somaka, dominates the Old Rigveda (Books 6,3,7,4,2). By the time of the New Rigveda, the text, though still a Bharata Pūru text, had become a less sectarian and more general Pūru text, even showing friendly interactions with other non-Pūru tribes.
But, throughout the text, it is a book of that single Bharata sub-tribe of the Pūrus, although, at the same time, again throughout the text, the word "ārya" (meaning "belonging to our, i.e. Pūru, tribe") is used in reference to all Pūrus, whether or not they belong to that sub-tribe.
Which is why there are references to enemy Pūrus and enemy āryas (i.e. enemies belonging to other sub-tribes of Pūrus, when they happened to be in conflict with these Bharata Pūrus). Therefore, all the positive references to Pūrus and āryas refer exclusively to these Bharata Pūrus (or to all Pūrus in general, including them), while specific negative references refer to other unspecified sub-tribes of Pūrus in the specific context of them being in conflict with these Bharata Pūrus — the only such group specified in the Rigveda is the Matsyas (VII.18.6) whom Sudās fought in his eastern battles on the Yamunā.
I have given all this in detail in my various books and articles, and will not repeat it here. I will only give one relevant quotation from my article "Āryas, Dāsas and Dasyus in the Rigveda": "Of course, those determined to find “complex” situations in the Rigveda could argue that the different hymns referring to ārya enemies could each have a different group of protagonist āryas and enemy āryas, so that the protagonist āryas of one hymn could be the enemy āryas of another, and vice versa. But logic shows that this would be unlikely, since the hymns are clearly a collection belonging to one particular group of people."
I was referring to AIT supporters who could be expected to argue as above. However, this is exactly what Jijith does in this book: he creates two groups of protagonist āryas in the Rigveda, and describes a scenario where "the different hymns referring to ārya enemies could each have a different group of protagonist āryas and enemy āryas, so that the protagonist āryas of one hymn could be the enemy āryas of another, and vice versa". He calls these two groups the "Tṛtsu Bharatas" and the "Samvaraṇa Bharatas".
By Tṛtsu Bharatas, he means the actual Bharata Pūru lineage of the Rigveda (with kings like Devavāta, Sṛñjaya, Divodāsa, and Sudās, right down to Sahadeva and Somaka). The Samvaraṇa Bharatas are an invention in order to force-fit various Puranic kings into the paradigm of Rigvedic history.
About the name Tṛtsu: it is extremely doubtful whether it refers to the Bharata Pūru lineage of the Rigveda. This word is used in reference to the protagonist heroes of the Dāśarājña battle, and hence it is generally assumed to refer to these Bharata Pūrus, as Sudās was the hero of this battle — in my first book in 1993, where I had not yet evolved through direct study of the sources, I also made this assumption. However, I realized that this had no basis, and did not use the name anywhere in my subsequent books and articles.
The fact is that this word Tṛtsu is only found in four hymns in the Rigveda: in VII.18,19,33,83, and nowhere else! All these four hymns are composed by the Vasiṣṭhas, and all of them use the word for the protagonists of the Dāśarājña battle. But neither is any Bharata Pūru person or king specifically called a Tṛtsu anywhere (not even Sudās), and nor is the word itself found in any context anywhere else in the Rigveda outside these four hymns or in any other Vedic or Puranic text.
An alternate suggestion (by Oldenberg) that the word may refer to the Vasiṣṭhas rather than to the Bharata Pūrus meets with the same roadblock: nowhere is any Vasiṣṭha found referred to as a Tṛtsu.
A logical conclusion is that the term was used by the Vasiṣṭha composers to refer to the combined forces of the Bharata Pūrus and the Vasiṣṭhas, and only in the context of descriptions of this specific battle, and hence the word is not found anywhere else or in any other context.
About the concoction "Samvaraṇa Bharatas", it may be noted that neither the Vedic texts nor the Epic-Puranic texts identify any such group, nor provide any data which could lead to the identification of such a primary category within the sub-tribes among the Pūrus.
In the Rigveda, the word samvaraṇa is found only six times:
a) In four of them (IV.21.6; VII.3.2; IX.107.9; X.77.6), the word is simply a general noun and refers to some kind of enclosure.
b) In one verse, V.33.6, the reference is to the poet of the hymn, Saṁvaraṇa Prājāpatya, who is not a king of any kind but a composer ṛṣi belonging to the Viśvāmitra family and descendant of an earlier ṛṣi, Prajāpati Vaiśvāmitra (composer of hymns III.38,54-56).
c) And in one verse, VIII.51.1, Manu Vaivasvat (see VIII.52.1 for the connection) is perhaps referred to as Manu Sāṁvaraṇī.
Nowhere in the Rigveda is the word used as a name for a tribe or sub-tribe (whether of the Pūrus or any other people). And, although there are kings named Saṁvaraṇa in the Puranic lists, nothing there indicates that any of them was the progenitor of a major group who could have become the founder of one of two primary mutually conflicting divisions of Bharata Pūrus in the Rigveda.
By converting the Rigveda into a text where two conflicting groups of Pūrus are both equally the People of the Book, Jijith follows exactly in the footsteps of Witzel (and Jamison), and lands up in the same contradictions:
1. Witzel accepts that the Bharata lineage of Divodāsa-Sudās-etc. is a Pūru lineage, but nevertheless detaches the word Pūru in the Rigveda from these Bharatas, and treats the word as a regular appellation for a branch of Pūrus who were the rivals or enemies of the Bharatas.
Jijith does the same, and he again has a piece of "logic" for this. Speaking about Trasadasyu's help to the Pūrus mentioned in IV.38.1, he decides that "These Pūrus are the Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas" (p.43).
His logic for identifying the Pūrus helped by Trasadasyu as "Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas" is as follows: "If the help was given to the Tṛtsu-Bharatas, they would have mentioned explicitly as the Tṛtsus instead of mentioning them generally as the Pūrus. The noun Pūru is mostly used in the Ṛgveda to refer to the Other-Pūrus (Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas)" (p.205).
His logic is again self-defeating:
a) As I have shown in detail in my books and articles. giving the full relevant data from the Rigveda, all the references to the enemy āryas and the enemy kinsmen are by the priests of the Bharatas: i.e. by the Aṅgirases (priests of Divodāsa and all his ancestors, as well as of Sahadeva and Somaka), the Vasiṣṭhas (priests of Sudās) and by the actual Bharata composers; and Viśvāmitra, in the one hymn (III.53) describing the military exploits of Sudās makes it clear that the protagonist Pūrus who show no mercy to their kinsmen enemies are the Bharatas. Jijith simply ignores all this direct Rigvedic data showing that the enemies can in no context be identified with the Bharata Pūrus whom he names the "Tṛtsu-Bharatas".
b) He also seems completely ignorant of the fact that the word Tṛtsu is used only in four hymns in the Rigveda (VII.18,19,33,83) and nowhere else in the Rigveda or in any other Vedic or Epic-Puranic text. Are all references to Pūrus, in the Rigveda as well as in all other texts, outside these four hymns, references to the "Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas"?
c) Divodāsa is directly called a Pūru in I.130.7. Is he also a "Saṁvaraṇa Bharata" because he is called a Pūru rather than being "mentioned explicitly" as a Tṛtsu? Apparently it does not require anyone to be "mentioned explicitly" as a "Saṁvaraṇa Bharata" (a name totally missing in the Rigveda, and for that matter even in the Epics and Puranas) in order to be identified by Jijith as a "Saṁvaraṇa Bharata", but the most obvious and direct other identifications require "explicit mentions" every time!!
2. Witzel treats Trasadasyu as a leader of those enemy Pūrus: Jijith, who has his own agenda for the Ikṣvākus, only differs in making Trasadasyu an ally of the enemy Pūrus.
On the basis of this, throughout the book, Jijith builds up a totally fictitious Grand Alliance (based on nothing in the Rigveda) in the Rigveda between the Ikṣvākus and these "Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas", led by Vasiṣṭha, fighting against both the "Tṛtsu Bharatas" and the Iranians!!
The saga of these fictitious "Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas" (often with special emphasis on the above Grand Alliance, in describing which the word dasyu is identified as a variant of the tribal name Druhyu!) is spread out over the book: p.43-48, 55,99,134,136-138,176,182,184,198,203-207,216-218,220,224-225,243,280,303, 313-314,316-318,323. The whole thing has to be read in detail as a prime example of the way in which writing on Rigvedic history can be made into a massive exercise in the invention of Rigvedic characters, the inter-connections between them, and their alliances and battles.
In the process, many unsuspected individuals are identified as "Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas": Aśvamedha (V.27.4-6), Arṇa and Citraratha (IV.30.18), Saṁvaraṇa Prājāpatya (the Vaiśvāmitra composer of V.33, simply because of his name), and even Manu Vaivasvata (VIII.52.1, because one hymn earlier, in VIII.51.1, he is called Manu Sāṁvaraṇī)! Also Śantanu (X.98.1,3,7) and his descendants the Pāṇḍavas. Even the Pūrus who defeated the Asiknī people (VII.5.3) — actually a reference to the defeat of the enemies of Sudās, in the dāśarājña battle, who were fighting on the Paruṣṇī from the direction of the next western river Asiknī — are converted into "Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas" by detaching this reference from its dāśarājña context and converting this into a different fictitious battle (unrecorded anywhere else).
The "Pūru" in VII.19.3 is gratuitously identified as a Puranic king Saṁvaraṇa Ārkṣa, unknown to the Rigveda, and we are told: "We use the term Saṁvaraṇa Bharata to refer to the Bharata lineage descended from this Saṁvaraṇa Ārkṣa" (p46). The only proof for this is that the Mahabharata happens to refer to the Puranic king Saṁvaraṇa Ārkṣa as being driven out towards the banks of the Indus (by the Pāñcālas, post-Rigvedic tribes, whom Jijith identifies with the "Tṛtsu Bharatas" of the Eigveda)!
3. Witzel ends up seeing "contradictions" in the Rigveda because of this bifurcation of the Vedic Pūrus into two mutually antagonistic groups, both equally the People of the Book in the Rigveda. Again Jijith does the same, and only differs from Witzel in finding a "solution" to this "contradiction" created by his Epic-Puranic arguments.
Witzel and Jamison identify Trasadasyu as a Pūru enemy of the Bharatas,, and end up thoroughly confused. I have already pointed this out in my article "The Ikṣvākus in the Rigveda":
Witzel, in his 1995 papers, recognizes that it is “the Pūru, to whom (and to […] the Bharata) the Ṛgveda really belongs” (WITZEL 1995b:313), and that the Rigveda was “composed primarily by the Pūrus and Bharatas” (WITZEL 1995b:328), and even that the Bharatas were “a subtribe” (WITZEL 1995b:339) of the Pūrus. But he convinces himself that, while Divodāsa and Sudās were Bharatas, Purukutsa and Trasadasyu were Pūrus; and hence he confuses every reference to Pūrus (i.e. to the Bharatas) as a reference to those non-Pūru Tṛkṣi kings, whom, moreover, he somehow identifies as the enemies of Sudās and the Bharatas in the Battle of the Ten Kings. Altogether, therefore, he ends up with a thoroughly chaotic and confused picture of Rigvedic history, for which he blames “conflicting glimpses” and “inconsistencies” in the hymns themselves (!):
“Although book 7 is strongly pro-Bharata, it provides several, conflicting, glimpses of the Pūru […in] 7.5.3, Vasiṣṭha himself praises Agni for vanquishing the ‘black’ enemies of the Pūrus ― this really ought to have been composed for the Bharatas. Inconsistencies also appear in hymn 7.19.3, which looks back on the ten kings’ battle but mentions Indra’s help for both Sudās and Trasadasyu, the son of Purukutsa, and also refers to the Pūrus’ winning of land […]” (WITZEL 1995b:331)!
In her comment on VII.19.3, Jamison likewise sees a contradiction when she tells us: "The first half of this hymn (vss. 1-5) celebrates various victories of Indra, giving aid both to men of the mythic past (e.g., Kutsa, vs. 2) and those of the present, especially King Sudās (vs. 3, also 6), the leader also in the battle of the Ten Kings treated in the preceding well-known hymn (VII.18). The allegiances and enmities of that hymn are strikingly different here: for example, Indra helps the Pūru king in this hymn (vs. 3), whereas in VII.18, the Pūrus are the enemy". She does not comment on the other verses (I.63.7, and VI.20.10) where both Purukutsa/Trasadasyu and Sudās are led to victory by Indra!
Jijith also, in this book, identifies the "Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas" under Saṁvaraṇa Ārkṣa (in alliance with the Ikṣvākus led by Trasadasyu) as the enemies of the Bharata Pūrus (whom he calls the "Tṛtsu Bharatas") in the dāśarājña battle: "The Pūru who fought with Sudās was Saṁvaraṇa Ārkṣa" (p.176). and he "fought with the Tṛtsu Bharatas as part of the Anu confederation […] under the leadership of the Anu king Kavi Cāyamāna" (p.183-184). These "Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas" were "allied with the Western Ikṣvākus (Tṛkṣis)" (p.183). Finally, even the Bharata-vs.-Iranian battle, the vārṣāgira battle on the Sarayu, is converted into a "Tṛtsu Bharatas"-vs.-"Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas" battle": "the Anus and the Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas were allies in the Battle of Sarayu and the Vārṣāgira Battle, like they already were in the Dāśarājña Battle of Paruṣṇī. The Anus and the Pūrus (Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas) were both fighting against the Tṛtsu Bharatas in both the battles" (p.206).
All this is of course part of the agenda to locate the origin of all the Puranic tribes in the Sarasvati area, already described in sections A and B: "if even the Ikṣvākus and the four other Aiḷa tribes were originally inhabitants on the banks of the Sarasvati, how can the Other Pūrus (other than the Bharata Pūrus of the Divodāsa-Sudās line) be located anywhere else, and how can they then not also be the People of the (Pūru) Book, the Rigveda, like the Bharata Pūrus of the Divodāsa-Sudās line?" seems to be the unspoken logic behind the creation and elaboration of the "Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas" by Jijith.
But then the main Ikṣvāku agenda intrudes again: if the Ikṣvākus originated in the Sarasvati areas and were present there during much of the period of composition of the Rigveda, how does one account for the fact that the Vasiṣṭhas are the priests of the Ikṣvākus in the Valmiki Ramayana, when throughout the Rigveda they are the priests of the Bharata Pūrus? Somehow the explanation for this has to be found somewhere in the Rigveda itself!
Hence follows a long story about a close association between the "Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas", the Western Ikṣvākus, and the Vasiṣṭhas (p.203-207), by which the Vasiṣṭhas are explained to have "remained" the priests of the Ikṣvākus from the Rigvedic period and geographical area itself till even after the "migration" of the Ikṣvākus from the Sarasvati area to Ayodhya in eastern U.P.! It is as part of this story that the book regularly teams up the three (p.42-43, 46-47, etc.) and insists that the Pūrus helped by Trasadasyu in IV.38.1 "are the Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas" (p.43).
But how does one find the necessary evidence for this transfer of allegiance by the Vasiṣṭhas from the Bharata Pūrus to the Ikṣvākus in the Rigveda, when there is no verse connecting the Vasiṣṭhas and the Ikṣvākus in the entire text?
A via-medium is required to demonstrate this transfer of allegiance. Such a connection is created in this book by the following series of measures:
a) The creation of the "Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas" as a Pūru entity, distinct from and rival to the line of Bharatas represented by Divodāsa-Sudās who now become the "Tṛtsu Bharatas".
b) The transfer of crucial references, to the Purus, from the "Tṛtsu Bharatas" to the "Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas", to make them both equally the People of the Book in the Rigveda.
c) The transfer of a crucial verse by a Vasiṣṭha composer (VII.5.3) from the context of the dāśarājña battle to the context of a new and fictitious battle, different from and unconnected with the dāśarājña battle: the Battle of Asiknī (p.182-184), which Jijith tells us "occurred earlier than the Dāśarājña Battle" (p.183). In this Battle of Asiknī, the heroes are not apparently the "Tṛtsu Bharatas" but the "Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas"! And their allies are the "Western Ikṣvākus" (p.183).
Though none of this is actually found in the Rigveda (or for that matter in the Epics and Puranas), stray unconnected references in all these texts are used to create this story and this non-existent connection between the Vasiṣṭhas and Ikṣvākus in the Rigveda!
[The reference in VII.5.3 is actually to the dāśarājña battle which dominates book 7 of the Vasiṣṭhas: in that battle, on the banks of the Paruṣṇī, Sudās and the Bharatas are fighting from the east and the enemies from the west. The next river to the west is the Asiknī, and so the enemies are referred to in VII.5.3 as "the Asiknī people". One hymn later, another connected reference in VII.6.3 tells us that the dasyus were driven out westwards: again a reference to the various proto-Iranian tribes mentioned in the dāśarājña battle migrating westwards after their defeat. Jijith transfers these two references to a new and fictional battle to connect the Vasiṣṭhas and Ikṣvākus through the "Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas"!].
But then a contradiction arises (as it does for all scholars, like Witzel and Jamison above, who postulate two mutually inimical Pūru groups in the Rigveda, both of them protagonist heroes in the text): if for the Vasiṣṭhas the "Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas" are the enemies in one battle (the dāśarājña battle), how is it they are the protagonists in the other one (the "Battle of Asiknī")?
Jijith realizes this contradiction, and has the following explanation: "Mahābhārata subsequently says, Vasiṣṭha helped Samvaraṇa. This enabled his lineage to return to their own territory in the Yamunā-Sarasvatī region from where they were expelled by Sudās. But, as per the Ṛgveda, it was Vasiṣṭha who helped Sudās to gain victory against the Pūrus and Ānavas in the Dāśarājña Battle. how is it then possible that Vasiṣṭha help the enemies of Sudās? The Mahābhārata says Vasiṣṭha had a period of conflict with Sudās's son, Kalmāṣapāda Saudāsa, also known as Mitrasaha. Due to this, Vasiṣṭha abandoned Sudās's son. During this time he might have aligned with the enemies, viz. the Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas. Vasiṣṭha helped Saṁvaraṇa by forging an alliance with the Tṛkṣi-Ikṣvākus (the Western Ikṣvākus). This is indirectly implied in the marriage of Saṁvaraṇa with the princess Tapatī Vaivasvatī (Tapatī the daughter of the sun-god Vivasvat). The Vaivasvatī surname indicates that she belongs to the Solar (Vivasvat) dynasty of the Ikṣvākus" (p.46-47).
This one small passage from the book demonstrates in a nutshell the way in which Rigvedic history is reconstructed throughout the book, with masses of references picked up from the Puranas and force-fitted into unconnected contexts — contexts not found in either the Rigveda or the Epic-Puranas — and all kinds of situations and events imagined and reconstructed out of thin air:
1. Yes, the Mahabharata says Vasiṣṭha helped Samvaraṇa. But this Epic-Puranic Samvaraṇa is completely missing in the Rigveda. And the Mahabharata does not connect Sudās in any way with this Epic-Puranic Samvaraṇa: it speaks of the Panchalas, but (although the Panchalas are a post-Rigvedic, and more eastern, entity), Jijith decides that this actually means Sudās!
2. Kalmāṣapāda is totally unknown to the Vedic texts. But even if we assume that a son of Sudās alienated Vasiṣṭha, after which he abandoned them and aligned with the "Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas", Jijith forgets that he has already stated that the "Battle of Asiknī", where Vasiṣṭha was apparently aligned with the "Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas", had "occurred earlier than the Dāśarājña Battle" (p.183)!
3. Vasiṣṭha helping Saṁvaraṇa by forging an alliance with the Tṛkṣi-Ikṣvākus (the Western Ikṣvākus) is also not mentioned anywhere in either the Vedic or in the Epic-Puranic texts. Nor is he supposed to have arranged the marriage between the Epic-Puranic Saṁvaraṇa and the Epic-Puranic Tapatī. Nor even is Tapatī called an Ikṣvāku anywhere: she is only supposed to be the daughter of the Sun-God Vivasvat (like Manu, Yama, Sugriva and Karṇa, none of whom are classified as Ikṣvākus on that ground).
In short: there is absolutely no evidence anywhere in the Rigveda that the protagonist Pūrus (or āryas) in the text are anyone other than the Bharata Pūrus of the Divodāsa-Sudās line, and it becomes clear that Pūrus or āryas who appear rarely as enemies are unspecified other Pūru groups who happen to have entered into conflict with these Bharata Pūrus: the only specified ones being the Matsyas on the Yamunā in VII.18.6. There are no protagonist "Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas" in the Rigveda.
D. Chronological and some other minor problems in the book
Throughout the book, Jijith statedly agrees with, and bases his analysis on, the internal chronological sequence of the Maṇḍalas or Books of the Rigveda as specified in my books and articles (Books 6,3,7, 4,2, 8,9,10, with parts of Book 1 stretched out between Books 7 and 10, with the additional factor of the Redacted Hymns in Books 6,3,7, 4,2). There are people (ranging from AIT supporter Witzel to AIT opponent Narahari Achar) who have objected to this internal chronology (although, on the other hand, Nilesh Oak, for example, who otherwise objects to my absolute chronology, accepts my internal chronology). I have shown how iron-cast and invincible this case is, for the sharp division between the Old Rigveda and the New Rigveda, in my article:
https://talageri.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-chronological-gulf-between-old.html
Let me repeat, it is impossible to reconstruct Rigvedic history correctly by violating this fundamental division of the Rigveda, which no-one will be able to challenge on the basis of the actual data in the Rigveda: I challenge anyone to challenge it.
But Jijith, who seems to accept this division, blatantly violates it in the service of his Ikṣvāku agenda, which basically amounts to an assault on the logical OIT case itself.
To start out, he tells us that Trasadasyu belongs to the period of Book 5, but note the way he tells it: "As per Talageri (2000), the references of Trasadasyu and Purukutsa in the Maṇḍalas older than the 8th Maṇḍala are later interpolations. However, based on my analysis, Trasadasyu the son of Purukutsa is mentioned as a patron in the 5th Maṇḍala (5.33.8) by Saṁvaraṇa Prājāpatya". (p.42)."
I have nowhere said that the references to Trasadasyu and Purukutsa in the Maṇḍalas older than the 8th Maṇḍala are later interpolations. I have very clearly written that "Trasadasyu is referred to as a patron, and therefore a contemporay, only in Maṇḍalas V and VIII (V.27.3; 33.8; VIII.19.32,36)" (TALAGERI 2000:36), and I have given a list of the later interpolations, all of which are in the Old Rigveda: VI.20.20; VII.19.3; IV.38.1; 42.8-9; and I have given the details and the reasons for the interpolations very clearly (TALAGERI 2000:66-72).
So, if Jijith finds Trasadasyu "mentioned as a patron in the 5th Maṇḍala", it is based on my earlier analysis and not his. But that is beside the point. The point is that Trasadasyu and Purukutsa clearly belong to the period of the New Rigveda (which includes Book 5).
But the Ikṣvāku agenda requires that the Tṛkṣi (Ikṣvāku) kings should be found in the Rigveda right from the period of the Old Rigveda. So, in Jijith's "analysis", the references in the Old Rigveda are also not interpolations: they refer to Purukutsa and Trasadasyu as contemporaries. But most amazing is that he makes these kings even older in the Rigveda than Sudās himself (the hero of Books 3 and 7):
a) He first tells us that the reference to Trasadasyu in hymn VII.19 is not an interpolation: "Much earlier in the 7th Maṇḍala Vasiṣṭha mentions Trasadasyu and Pūru (Samvaraṇa Ārkṣa as per my analysis […] hymn 7.19 is not falling in the classification of the late hymn in the classification of either Oldenberg or Aitareya Brāhmaṇa. Hence, this reference to Trasadasyu does have merit" (p.43).
b) Then on the basis of this hymn he tells us that "Trasadasyu and Pūru (Saṁvaraṇa Ārkṣa) jointly won many lands" (p.47), and everywhere he treats all the references in the Old Rigveda (including the ones in Book 4) to the Pūrus being aided by Trasadasyu as references to this aid given by Trasadasyu to Saṁvaraṇa Ārkṣa. He even decides that Tapatī (whom, as we saw, he gratuitously classifies as an Ikṣvāku), the wife in the Puranas of the Epic-Puranic king Saṁvaraṇa Ārkṣa, "could as well be a sister or daughter of king Trasadasyu or his immediate descendant" (p.47).
But, as we already saw, he has already classified Saṁvaraṇa Ārkṣa as the king who fought against Sudās in the dāśarājña battle, and who fought in alliance with Trasadasyu (in fact, this is the "aid" which Trasadasyu gave him) in the "Battle of Asiknī" which actually "occurred earlier than the Dāśarājña Battle" (p.183).
So, as per Jijith's "analysis", this king Trasadasyu, who is contemporaneous in Books 5 and 8 in the New Rigveda is actually "earlier than" Sudās, the hero of Books 3 and 7 in the Old Rigveda!! Can there be a greater assault on the internal chronology of the Rigveda and on the OIT case?
Another place where Jijith makes a similar assault (perhaps unwittingly, since there does not seem to be any particular reason for this) is on the subject of the "name" Vadhryaśva. In drawing up the lineage of the Bharata Pūru kings, he tells us: "Divodāsa's father is Vadhryaśva. Hence Vadhryaśva has to be placed in between Sṛñjaya and Divodāsa" (p.38).
As I have repeatedly been pointing out since my third book (2008), the -aśva names in the Rigveda are found only in the New Rigveda, where they are very common, and they are also very common in all later Vedic and Sanskrit texts: but they are completely missing in the Old Rigveda. They are one of the huge list of names and name types which are found only in the New Rigveda (and subsequent texts) and in the Avesta and the Mitanni king-lists of West Asia, but are completely missing in the Old Rigveda, and form a vital part of the evidence showing that the pre-Avestan Iranians and the ancestors of the Mitanni kings emigrated from India after the period of composition of the Old Rigveda.
The word vadhryaśva in VI.61.1 is not a name but an epithet meaning "sterile/impotent": there were no -aśva names in the Old Rigveda, and the word etymologically, as indicated by the accent, falls in a separate category from all other actual -aśva names (all found in the New Rigveda), only paralleled by another opposite epithet vṛṣaṇaśva ("virile" used in two special contexts in the Rigveda, in I.51.13; VIII.20.10; in the first of which, in I.51.13, the person named is so virile that Indra himself seems to have converted himself into a woman, a weird myth not elaborated more in detail elsewhere).
This epithet is applied to Sṛñjaya, the father of Divodāsa, in the verse to emphasize that the impotent king, when he worshipped Sarasvati with all his being, was blessed with the birth of an illustrious son, Divodāsa. Exactly the same thing is repeated in the very next hymn in the Rigveda (in VI.62.7) in reference to vadhrimatī , "the wife of an impotent husband", where an exactly similar feat is attributed to the Aśvins, who, at the call of this lady (wife of Śayu), made her pregnant. This early theme in the oldest Book 6 is repeated in the case of various vadhrimatīs (or wives of impotent husbands) in the latest books who give birth to illustrious sons after being blessed by the Aśvins: in I.116.13; 117.24; X.39.7; 65.12. The reference in VI.61.1 differs only in that it refers directly to the impotent man than to his wife, and the deity is Sarasvatī and not the Aśvins.
[As an interesting aside, while the modern word vāñjh, if it is derived from or connected to vadhri, or even if it isn't, is used to insult childless wives, do these references show a different attitude in the Rigveda, where the husband is held responsible?]
It is true that this epithet began to be construed as the name of Divodāsa's father even by the time of composition of Book 10, but the error is obvious from the above evidence. This particular assault, on the Old Rigveda vs. New Rigveda evidence which conclusively proves the OIT, may not be part of any agenda, and may just be a careless mistake. There are many such breezy conclusions drawn in the book which I need not go into here. But I felt this one worthy of mention.
Apart from this, there are numerous minor statements in the book (not particularly concerned with the above topics) which require comment or clarification. I will deal with only a few of them:
1. "The Vasiṣṭhas and Agastyas could have diverged from the Bhṛgus in the ancient unknown past, like how the Bharadvājas and Gautamas diverged from the Aṅgirasas. The Vasiṣṭhas would then be the earliest Bhṛgu branch which got associated with the Ṛgvedic people" (p.53).
As, just before this, a table shows the ten distinct composer families of the Rigveda, this speculation seems to have no basis anywhere in the Vedic or Epic-Puranic texts.
2. "Such 'Agastyas' are responsible for bringing the Vedic lore to southern parts of Bhārata" (p.54).
I have already pointed out in my blogs that the ancestral Agastya was a Dravidian-language speaking non-Vedic muni from the extreme South, in present-day Tamil Nadu, many of whose descendants migrated northwards into the Vedic-Harappan area during the period of the New Rigveda and became part of Vedic culture. But I suppose Jijith is not alone in rejecting this, and insisting that Agastya was originally a northern sage who migrated South. I just mention this for the record.
3. "It is only in the Itihāsa-Purāṇas that Indra is riding a white elephant (Airāvata) often described as having many tusks and trunks. Such imagery is not found in the Ṛgveda and hence is a later development" (p.62).
True, most of the imagery of this kind in Hindu iconography is (when it comes to Vedic Gods, at least) later development, perhaps influenced by the imagery of Eastern and Southern (IE, Austric or Dravidian) religious imagery. But the Rigveda does in one place describe Indra's "horses" (vehicles) as fat and corpulent (pīvo-aśva) (IV.37.4): could this be a disguised reference to an elephant?
4. "If we blindly follow the Itihāsas and Purāṇas we will be tempted to identify it with the Aitihāsic Magadha kingdom. But Magadha is too far away in the east, located in Bihar. Talageri (2000) identifies Kīkaṭa with Magadha because the name of their king Pramaganda sounds like Magadha (Maganda). I agree with the identification of the Kīkaṭas with the Magadhas. But I don't agree with the location of Kīkaṭa with any territory in Bihar" (p.106).
4a) I don't know if this paragraph is trying to suggest that I " blindly follow the Itihāsas and Purāṇas"!! But I will let that pass.
4b) It is not I who identified "Kīkaṭa with Magadha because the name of their king Pramaganda sounds like Magadha (Maganda)". I wrote: "King Pramaganda (whose name is connected by many scholars with the word Magadha = Pra-maganda)" (TALAGERI 2000:119). These scholars include classic Indologists like Zimmer, Weber, and others. Yes, I did accept this in my book in 2000, but have never repeated it again. I just treat it as an eastern place, without specifying Bihar (which I agree is not possible).
4c) In fact, I now prefer the more rational location by Witzel! In my article "The Rigveda and the Aryan Theory: A Rational Perspective THE FULL OUT-OF-INDIA CASE IN SHORT", I put it as follows: "These forays further east include Kīkaṭa (III.53.14): this is often assumed by traditional scholars to refer to as distant an area as Magadha in Bihar, but, even without going so far, even Witzel accepts it to be a place to the south-east of Haryana: "in eastern Rajasthan or western Madhya Pradesh" (WITZEL 1995b:333 fn).".
4d) But I fail to understand how Jijith agrees with the identification of the Kīkaṭas with the Magadhas, when he does not accept the "Pra-maganda" argument. However, without any actual specific data from the Vedic or Epic-Puranic texts, he tells us: "The Magadhas known in the Ṛgveda as Kīkaṭas started their migration from between Yamunā and Gaṅgā and then shifted to the east of Kanyakubja (Kanauj). Their migratory trail from the east of Kanyakubja (Kanauj) to Girivraja (Rajgir) in Bihar is recorded in the Rāmāyaṇa" (p.113)! He even decides that "the original name Gaṅgā seems to be given to this river by the Kīkaṭas" (p.111)!! Finally, he concludes that this purely fictitious and unrecorded migration "satisfactorily explains why Kīkaṭa kings had names like Pramaganda sounding like Magadha. This explains how the Ṛgvedic Kīkaṭa and the Aitihāsic Magadhas are related. This also explains the origin of the name Gaṅgā" (p.115)!!!
5. "In the hymn 8.5, the poet Brahmātithi Kāṇva informs us that his patron Kaśu Caidya (viz. the king of Cedi) gave him hundred camels (Uṣṭra) and ten thousand cows. [….] The donation of camels signifies an arid desert-like region. Such conditions existed in the Thar desert of Rajasthan. This allows us to place the Ṛgvedic Cedi in the Thar desert in the western Rajasthan, close to the drying Sarasvati channels" (p.116).
However, there is no connection between the Rigvedic Cedi and the later Cedi kingdom. Kaśu Caidya is the name of a northwestern proto-Iranian king. The following from my article "The Rigveda and the Aryan Theory: A Rational Perspective THE FULL OUT-OF-INDIA CASE IN SHORT":
"Dāsa: This is a word which refers to any non-Pūru (i.e. non-"Vedic Aryan"), but particularly to Iranians: it is found in 54 hymns (63 verses) and the overwhelming majority of these references are hostile references. But there are three verses which stand out from the rest: they contain references which are friendly towards the Dāsa:
a. In VIII.5.31, the Aśvins are depicted as accepting the offerings of the Dāsa.
b. In VIII.46.32, the patrons are referred to as Dāsa.
c. In VIII.51.9, Indra is described as belonging to both Ārya and Dāsa.
As all these three hymns are dānastutis (hymns in praise of donors), it is clear that the friendly references have to do with the identity of the patrons in these hymns. Two of these hymns (VIII.5,46) have camel-gifting patrons (and it is very likely that the third hymn has one too: this dānastuti does not mention the specific gifts received, and merely calls upon Indra to shower wealth on the patron), and the only other hymn with a camel-gifting patron is another dānastuti in the same book: VIII.6.48.
These four hymns (VIII.5,6,46,51) clearly belong to a separate class from the other Rigvedic hymns:
a) 3 of them (VIII.5,6,46) refer to patrons who gift camels,
b) 3 of them (VIII.5,46,51) speak well of the Dāsa, and
c) 3 of them (VIII.5,6,46), all being the hymns with camel-donors, have patrons whose names have been identified as proto-Iranian names: a range of western Indologists (including Hoffman, Wilson, Weber, Witzel and Gamkrelidze) have identified Kaśu (VIII.5), Tirindira Parśava (VIII.6), and Pṛthuśravas Kānīta (VIII.46) as proto-Iranian names. Ruśama Pavīru, the patron of VIII.51, is not specifically named as Iranian by the scholars. However, the Ruśamas are identified by M.L.Bhargava (BHARGAVA:1964) as a tribe of the extreme northwest from the Soma lands of Suṣomā and Ārjīkīyā. This clearly places them in the territory of the Iranians".
The camels in the hymns do not indicate Rajasthan. The camels in the Rigveda are the two-humped Bactrian camels (known also to the Avesta as uštra and found in the name of Zaraθuštra), and not the Arabian camel found today in Rajasthan, but probably not yet introduced into Rajasthan till the Muslim period. See the following references:
https://www.sahapedia.org/camel-cultures-of-india
"camels were introduced in Sindh in AD 717 by Muhamed Qasim who had 3,000 camels with him when he arrived to invade. It is also historically attested that Afghan invaders who regularly looted India starting with Mahmud of Ghazni in 997 CE passed through Jaisalmer and used thousands of camels to carry water to cross the desert".
https://www.harappa.com/answers/were-camels-present-indus-civilization-or-not
"Bactrian camels had been domesticated earlier and were in common use in eastern Iran and Afghanistan in Harappan times".
6. "Bharadvāja mentions Iḷaspada in the hymn 6.1 and subsequently the two rivers Hariyūpīyā and Yavyāvatī in the hymn 6.27. The mention of Hariyūpīyā and Yavyāvatī comes before the mention of even Gaṅgā to the further east in the hymn 6.45" (p.124).
Using the peculiar kind of logic that he uses elsewhere in the book, Jijith seems to treat the hymn numbers within Book 6 as pointers to the chronological order of the hymns, and therefore (although there is no historical context involved) he finds that rivers/places named in hymn 1 were known earlier to the Bharadvājas (or the Vedic people themselves) than rivers/places named in hymn 27, and rivers/places named in hymn 27 were known earlier than rivers/places named in hymn 45! So even the Ganga, he seems to imply, was probably unknown to the composers of hymns VI.1 and VI.27!
[And no, this is not the kind of geographical logic used by me in the OIT case].
See also his interpretation of III.58.6, next, which mentions the Jahnāvī (the Ganga), which he again interprets as a west-to-east movement towards the Ganga:
"Talageri (2000) uses the second interpretation to conclude that the ancient home of Aśvins is at Jahnāvī (Gaṅgā) . I have a different identification for the ancient home of Aśvin based on the first interpretation. Based on our assumption that Aśvins are coming along a land trade route from the west to the eastern Terminus at Gaṅgā, their ancient home can be in the west" (p.130).
He hastens to add: "But when we say west, we need not immediately think about Afghanistan or beyond"!
In my books, I have pointed out that the oldest book of the Rigveda already treats the Ganga (representing the east to them from the area of the Sarasvati) as the ancient home of the Gods. Even taken from a nature-myth point of view, the Aśvins are supposed to ascend into the sky from the east with the Goddess of the Dawn, Uṣas. But to Jijith, the east, by any interpretation, should come chronologically after the Sarasvati!
E. The date of Rāma
This is not strictly a part of my criticism of Jijith's book. Jijith identifies Rāma as "a contemporary of Śaṁtanu" (p.319), and dates him "towards the end of Ṛgvedic 10th Maṇḍala (2000-1900 BCE)" (p.299). I feel the date should be closer to 3000 BCE. But strictly speaking I have no logical reason for my dating: it is just instinct or conjecture. Jijith may even be right on this: the one thing I find which would support his dating is that the father of Rāma has a name with -ratha, which belongs to the class of names (common to the Rigveda, Avesta and Mitanni) which came into use only in the period of the New Rigveda. I have always assumed/concluded that this name may have been the metamorphosis of some other name into the new name Daśaratha by the time the text came to be reduced to writing in the form of the Valmiki Ramayana in Mauryan times (post 400 BCE). But it could be that it was indeed the original name of Rāma's father (if we accept Jijith's date) under the influence of more western trends: after all the post-Rigvedic Samhitas were already being composed at some point of time during the period of the New Rigveda, and their geographical area certainly shows a more eastern shift of the Pūrus. However, all this is speculation, but certainly a subject for much deeper research, and — if one goes by the fire and fury in internet debates on the date of the Mahabharata war — for future internecine battles between different types of Hindu scholars. While it is certain that the extravagant dates proposed by some Hindus (and the older the dates proposed by them, the larger and more militant their fan following among Hindus) are not worthy of serious consideration, much less debate, I myself would not be interested in participating in any discussion on the date of the Ramayana (beyond what I am writing here), because there is absolutely no genuine data on which such a discussion could be based. In the case of the Mahabharata events, they took place in an area which has left us plenty of datable and analyzable textual data. But the Ramayana events are recorded centuries or millennia after the events (i.e. during the Mauryan age).
What is definite about the Ramayana events and history is that they are definitely based on a historical core, that they took place in the east (in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar), and that these events precede the Mahabharata events as per a unanimous consensus among all the sources (including the two Epics themselves).
About Jijith's dating, the problem is that it is part of a larger obsessive agenda to prove that the origins of the Ikṣvākus lay in the Sarasvati area.
But the east was not an uninhabited desert area which received all its culture, religion, people and history from the Vedic-Harappan area, and nor is it necessary that historical traditions have to arise only from urban civilizations of a particular type: even the most primitive people in the most isolated spots on earth have their own historical traditions steeped in mythical coatings. And eastern U.P. and Bihar are certainly not such primitive isolated spots:
Jijith has a huge database of material on the Epics and Puranas, and if he had chosen to collate it all into a magnificent deeply-researched narrative, he could have produced an encyclopaedic magnum opus on Ancient Indian Historical Tradition (far ahead of Pargiter's book of that name) which would have become the ultimate database for all future studies on ancient Indian history. Unfortunately he chose to selectively use data to create a narrative which tried to forcefit the origins of ancient Indian history into the restricted geographical horizon of the Vedic-Harappan area. Of course, this will not prevent him from acquiring a massive fan following, and, even after writing this review I still genuinely wish him all success in that respect.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BHARGAVA 1956/1971: India in the Vedic Age: A History of Aryan Expansion in India. Bhargava, P.L. Upper India Publishing House Pvt. Ltd. Lucknow, 1956.
JAMISON-BRERETON 2014: The Rigveda―The Earliest Religious Poetry of India. Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 2014.
TALAGERI 2000: The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis. Talageri, Shrikant G. Aditya Prakashan (New Delhi), 2000.
WITZEL 1995b: Rgvedic History: Poets, Chieftains and Politics. Witzel, Michael. pp. 307-352 in “The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia”, ed. by George Erdosy. Walter de Gruyter. Berlin.
Can you roughly guess the borders of the Vedic area during mature IVC period? From which state to which state?
ReplyDeleteI have mentioned it various times in my books and blogs. The core area of the Puru Bharatas of the Rigveda was (as pointed out in this article itself) Haryana and westernmost Uttar Pradesh. Other Purus (e.g. the Matsyas) were in other areas to the east (perhaps deeper in western UP), and border areas of nearby (present-day) states like Rajasthan and MP (bordering with the Yadus and Turvasus to the south, the Kikatas perhaps belonging to either the Yadu, Turvasu, or another Puru subtribe)).
DeleteAfter expanding to the west, their area (mingling with the Anus who remained behind, like the later Madras and Kekayas) right up to the western tributaries of the Indus in the west. the Afghan Sarayu, up to which their wars reached at the time of Sahadeva and Somaka, was known to them after that, but only as Anu-Iranian territory (which it is to this date)
All this is not guesswork. It is indicated by the geographical data in the Rigveda. Subsequent Samhitas show the spread of the Vedic religious system further eastwards into the territories of the eastern Purus and also other non-Purus.
What is the time gap between the samhitas and brahmanas
ReplyDeleteIn my article "The Use of astronomical Evidence in Dating the Rigveda", I have written as follows:
ReplyDelete"4. Another important point which must be clarified here is the relative position of the other Vedic texts (the other Samhitās, the Brāhmaṇas, the Āraṇyakas, the Upaniṣads and the Sūtras) vis-à-vis the Rigveda in terms of their period of composition. If the Rigveda was completed by 1400 BCE or so, does this mean that the other texts follow each other in a chronological line after 1400 BCE?
Assuming that this is so would be wrong. There is nothing to indicate that the periods of the different texts are mutually exclusive. While the points of completion of the different texts may indeed be in line with their hitherto accepted chronological order, there is no reason to believe that the entire bodies (so to say) of the different texts were necessarily composed in mutually exclusive periods. The composition of the oldest texts in most of these categories may already have started at different points of time in the Late Rigvedic period, along with the composition of the hymns in the Late books of the Rigveda: it is only that the Rigveda was preserved with much greater care and exactitude than the other texts and therefore the Late books preserved older linguistic forms than the other Vedic texts. The exact chronological details must await detailed investigation, including an examination of genuine astronomical details or data which may be available in these texts."
Educated Shrikant Talageri, I with agreement with you on the fact that Jijith is trying to derive all of India's culture back to Vedic Puru homeland, is certainly far stretched. I have spoken to Jijith about this and brought his attention to the book called "Greater Magadha" by Johannes Bronkhorst. In that book Prof Johannes have should that there is a distinction between the Brahmana's and the Sramana's, which he indicates as greater Magadha. The purpose of this distinction was on the basis that there is absence of Karmic retribution and reincarnation in the Vedas and later Brahmana texts. This to me is clear, that Vedic culture and later Buddhist and Jain culture have two seperate orgins. Even they derive from two seperate lineages, Chandravamsa and Suryavamsa. Jijith of course rejected this view and claim that he see no problem in deriving Sramanic believes from early Vedic rituals and customs. I was not too convince, with Jijith. In fact I don't understand why so many Indians believe in this Vedic-Centric worldview of ancient India, has if everything came from the Vedas. We need to be critical, we have a chance to knock the AIT/AMT by pointing out these differences. Currently scholars assume that Indo-Aryans migrated to India, brought the Vedic traditon and this vedic traditon gave rise to Sramanic cultures appearing in the east. But the question remains is, but how? Its not going wok if we insist in deriving all from the Vedas, and with that respect I totally agree with you. In fact it became apparent to me from the time of the Rig Veda, the Indo-Aryans, our ancestors, were already divided by caste, tribes and dynasties. The Rig Veda represents a multicultural society.
ReplyDeleteHowever I disagree with you on the date of these texts. This I am confident I know your wrong on this. Its not that I simply accept Vedveer's dates - he too has loop holes - but more sound when he discusses the date from Mahabharata to medieval period. Your problem starts by isolating the dating of the Rig Veda from other consecutive events and by assuming those dates of those events. Hopefully by the grace of your deceased parents that you get to know the truth before you to, depart.
I am not trying to derive all of India's culture back to Vedic Puru homeland. Rgvedic culture is predominantly the culture that developed in the Yamuna-Sarasvati region. But that is not the only culture that constitute Indian Culture.
DeleteNew culture / traditions continue to develop as the Purus and Bharatas diversified into branches and sub-branches, and spread into all over North India and all over India. For example the culture and tradition related to Ramayana is the culture / tradition that emerged when Ikskwakus with Rama was living in Ayodhya along the Sarayu river in Uttar Pradesh. Similarly the culture / tradition related to Mahabharata is the culture / tradition that emerged when the Kuru and Panchala branch of the Bharatas lived along the banks of Ganga and spread as far as Kausambi later. Thus tracing their ancestry into the region between Yamuna and Sarasvati, is not preventing the emergence of any new culture or tradition anywhere in Bharata.
I have published my defense of the book here:-
ReplyDeletehttps://www.academia.edu/s/c1f11c887e
Talageri, I reread narasimha et Al’s 2019 genetic paper. Yes the oldest steppe dna in swat is 1200 bce but that is not the date of admixtures. the paper also reveals that the date of the admixture (that gave rise to the ancient dna samples seen today) happened 26 generations prior to when the swat valley people with the steppe dna lived which is 2000 bce or so. That is enough to fit in Western rig Veda chronology with genetics.
ReplyDeleteyou might wanna read this:
Deletehttps://a-genetics.blogspot.com/2021/12/steppe-india-900bce.html
Great thanks
DeleteGreat and fascinating article 3rdacc. Genetics has no connection with the IE spread, and the article proves that beyond question. I did not quite catch who was the writer of the article.
Delete@Shrikant Talageri
DeleteThis is his profile: https://www.blogger.com/profile/08812352482004389085
His email is listed on the left hand side.
Please also see this review of the book Rivers of Rgveda for the sake of balance
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/3QhL1bd48Qw
Thank you
ReplyDeleteI have also read that paper and Rakhigarhi paper. One thing I do not understand if we want to agree that IE language came from Outside India. Both papers acknowledge that there were cultural contacts with Gonur Turan. Then why IE language spread have to be associated with spread of pre-state large scale movement of people in context of India. Indus valley people will probably need to learn the language used in areas where they traded and can easily bring it back long before any large scale migration happen. They were living in that area for generations as per paper.
ReplyDeleteSir, Rig Veda 8.96.13 is taking about an Asura named Krishna near ansumati river, is it in anyway similar to Krishna of Yamuna river (Sri Krishna of Mahabharata)?
ReplyDeleteI know that your theory puts mandala 8 during mature Harappan phase and Mahabharata near 15th century BC, but recently I came across this claim by leftists. Apparently the river ansumati is interpreted as Yamuna river so they were claiming this as an earliest example of Indra vs Krishna tussle with Krishna being a "pre-vedic indigenous diety". What's your opinion on this one sir?
DeleteSorry for repeatedly asking this, but can you at least confirm whether the ansumati river is another name for Yamuna?
DeleteAccording to all the scholars who have interpreted the name, it is a name for the Yamuna, and I see no particular reason to dispute it.
DeleteAs for the crank theories by leftists and AIT writers who go positively berserk in hunting down imaginary and non-existent "pre-Vedic indigenous" things, I have already dealt in detail with their excesses in my books. Going by their mad theories, all the Vedic rishis (except the Vishvamitras), and almost all the Vedic gods (except Indra) are "non-Aryans", and all Vedic tribes whose names end in -u (that includes Purus!) are "non-Aryan". Ushas is a non-Aryan deity because she has a "conflict" with Indra. And so on: every "conflict" makes one side "indigenous non-Aryan".
Krishna is a common Indo-Iranian name (Karshnaz in the Avesta).
I generally ignore their claims because I feel like they have identity crisis, they see that all the major Gods are mentioned in "sanskritic literature" and get upset
DeleteBut Krishna vs Indra is something even practicing Hindus believe in, many think Krishna stopped the "Indra worship" (govardhana giri incident) and opposed the Yajnas and personally I feel the evidence is flimsy, so I'm undecided in that regard.
Since Rigveda talked about Krishna, his wives, cows and yamuna river, it made me panicked
I was talking about this particular answer,
https://www.quora.com/Is-Krishna-mentioned-anywhere-in-the-Vedas/answer/Ambika-Vijay?ch=10&oid=363563021&share=cf744e3a&srid=uKE2d&target_type=answer
I have a comment regarding the so-called Samvarana Bharatas. I suppose that Jijith chose that term because in the Mahabharata, Adi-parva, chapter 94 there is the following description of hardships that supposedly befell Samvarana:
ReplyDelete"And, O king, it has been heard by us that while Samvarana, the son of Riksha, was ruling the earth, there happened a great loss of people from famine, pestilence, drought, and disease.
"And the Bharata princes were beaten by the troops of enemies. And the Pancalas setting out to invade the whole earth with their four kinds of troops soon brought the whole earth under their sway. And with their ten Akshauhinis the king of the Pancalas defeated the Bharata prince.
"Samvarana then with his wife and ministers, sons and relatives, fled in fear, and took shelter in the forest on the banks of the Sindhu extending to the foot of the mountains. There the Bharatas lived for a full thousand years, within their fort."
In the subsequent verses it is stated that Vasistha became Samvarana's purohita and that he was able to recover his kingdom. However, there is something deeply incongruous about this story. It is said that Pancalas conquered "the whole world" during Samvarana's time, but if we look at the lists of kings given in the Puranas, we can see that Samvarana lived around ten generations prior to the original five Pancala brothers, so there is no question of Pancalas conquering the world during that time for the simply reason that they did not exist then.
Therefore, there are only two ways in which we can resolve this contradiction: it is either true that Samvarana was beaten by members of the line from which Pancalas would appear later on, or it is true that Pancalas conquered the world long after Samvarana's time. I think that the second possibility is much more likely to be true because Puranic genealogies clearly show that Rig Vedic kings Vadhryasva, his son Divodasa and later descendant Sudasa were Pancala kings, so the logical conclusion would be that Kurus wanted to embellish their past by pretending that they were not squarely beaten only a few generations prior to Pratipa's rule but long before that, even before Kuru's time. This argument is supported by the fact that the only two persons from Riksha's line who feature in the Rig Veda are Devapi and Santanu, and they only appear in the last and youngest mandala. If the first scenario were true, many more Kuru kings should have been mentioned in the Rig Veda, but that is not the case. Kuru kings such as Pratipa, Vicitravirya, Dhritarastra, Pariksit and Janamejaya are only mentioned in the later Vedic texts, so it is clear that the Kurus were not very strong during most of the Rig Vedic period.
A small correction of a mistake I made inadvertently: There were around five generations between Samvarana and Bhrmyasva, the father of the five Pancalas. However, Sudasa lived around five generations later.
DeleteA comment regarding the identity of Divodasa's father: Talageri ji, I am not sure about the literal interpretation of the word vadhryasva which you have apparently come to prefer to the usual interpretion which you favoured in your second book, but I have no doubt that Srnjaya was not Divodasa's father and I will explain why I am so convinced about that. The identification of Divodasa as the son of Srnjaya rests on a misunderstanding of the referent of the name Divodasa in verses 22 and 23 of VI, 47. Verses 22-25 of this hymn form the danastuti of Prastoka Sarnjaya, the actual son of Srnjaya Daivavata, or at the very least a close descendant of his. Therefore, it is illogical to interpret the reference in verse 25 to the son of Srnjaya as a reference to anyone other than Prastoka Sarnjaya himself. Sayana confirms this in his bhashya, in which he states that the names Divodasa, Atithigva and Asvattha are used in reference to Prastoka.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Prastoka, there is an interesting story about him and Abhyavarti Cayamana in Brihad-devata. It connects hymns VI, 27, 47 and 75 and relates how Bharadvaja and his son Payu helped the two of them overcome Varasikhas. In my opinion, the story seems plausible because Garga mentions his brother Payu, the composer of hymn 75, in his hymn 47, while Bharadvaja mentions Abhyavarti and Srnjaya (apparently an indirect reference to his son Prastoka).