Saturday, 15 March 2025

Russia, Ukraine and NATO

 

Russia, Ukraine and NATO

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

It may seem presumptuous on my part to pretend to be an international affairs expert and write on such an issue which does not directly concern India, and which may seem to be basically none of India’s business, or, to put it more mildly, it may be seen to be an issue on which India should remain neutral since both Russia and Ukraine are friends of India. 

But I do not think so. To me India always comes first. And there are some countries which have more or less always stood by India. Three of them are Israel, Russia and erstwhile (Saddam Hussein’s) Iraq. Indians and Hindus (including, and particularly, those who claim to speak for Hindus) generally seem to have no sense of loyalty even to India and Hindus, so it is not to be wondered if they should see no reason to have any loyalties or particularly friendly feelings and sympathies towards those countries which have always generally stood by India (to the extent possible for them). Many vocal Hindus and “Hindutvavādī” people, in fact, have fallen prey to woke propaganda in matters concerning Israel and Russia, and express themselves like woke activists in the matter of these two countries.

[Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had indeed long ago been abandoned to the dogs by “Hindutvavādī” politicians, and it is believed that the Vajpayee government was actively mulling the idea of allowing U.S. war-planes to take off from Indian soil at the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq based on false claims of Saddam Hussein possessing or developing chemical, biological and nuclear WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction).

Indeed, “Hindutvavādī” politicians have always been fickle in their foreign policies. In my article “Hindus, Hindutva, the BJP and TINA”, I wrote the following:

An example of the BJP's brainlessness as well as unprincipled attitude was Atal Bihari Vajpayee's speech at Shivaji Park in Mumbai during the campaigning for the 1980 elections. One of his criticisms was that Charan Singh had apparently said (in an election speech) that India should establish diplomatic relations with Israel and cooperate with that nation in developing our agriculture and dairying industries. Vajpayee's grouse was "Why had he never spoken about establishing relations with Israel before? He must explain his newfound love for Israel", thereby implying that it was in some way an election stunt. Although during that particular election, we were pro-Janata party and anti-Charan Singh, I found this extremely disgusting: Charan Singh had never, to my knowledge criticized Israel before, or opposed relations with that nation, so what was wrong if he now spoke of this? On the other hand, the Jana Sangh had always claimed to stand for friendly relations with Israel, but after merging into the Janata Party, the erstwhile Jana Sangh leaders had suddenly become critics of Israel. It was Vajpayee who had to explain his change of attitude, and not Charan Singh!

A few days later, I also attended Charan Singh's rally at the same venue. It became a case of "I went to boo, and stayed to cheer": to my utter surprise, Charan Singh's speech contained not a single derogatory reference to his foes, and was in fact a long and frankly boring speech on rural and agricultural issues. The sincerity of the man shone through, and although we continued to be against him, I felt a genuine respect for Charan Singh, especially in contrast to the playing-to-the-gallery Vajpayee.

Ultimately, it was under the leadership of Congress PM Narasimha Rao that India established diplomatic relations with Israel].


Now, Russia (along with Israel, of course) has become the special target of woke activists who control large sections of the media in both India as well as the west. Indian media groups seems to be trying to outdo each other in their blatantly woke reports on Russia, Israel (and also on Trump). And, at the moment, when there is immediate talk about a likely ceasefire which could put an end to the continuous slaughter of soldiers and civilians and continuous destruction of cities, towns and infrastructure, these woke media are busy propagating the accusation (against Russia) that while Zelenskyy is ready for (and has already practically agreed to) a ceasefire, Putin is imposing “a series of conditions that could delay or derail any agreement”.

And the conditions that Putin is insisting on (on the ground that a ceasefire has no meaning unless it should lead to "an enduring peace and remove the root causes of this crisis") are as follows, according to the Guardian: “These demands could include the demilitarisation of Ukraine, an end to western military aid and a commitment to keeping Kyiv out of NATO. Moscow may also push for a ban on foreign troop deployments in Ukraine and international recognition of Putin’s claims to Crimea and the four Ukrainian regions Russia annexed in 2022.

Putin could also revisit some of his broader demands from 2021, which go beyond Ukraine, including a call for NATO to halt the deployment of weapons in member states that joined after 1997, when the alliance began expanding into former communist countries.

Many in Europe fear these conditions for peace could weaken the west’s ability to increase its military presence and could allow Putin to expand his influence across the continent

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/13/russia-wary-of-proposed-ukraine-ceasefire-plan-as-us-talks-begin

 

Are these conditions unwarranted or unfair?

 

It must be remembered that the world was divided into two main powerful mutually antagonistic blocs called the Eastern Bloc (led by the USSR) and the Western Bloc (led by western European countries and the USA) after the second world war, with a third neutral or near-neutral (if often seen to be closer to the Eastern Bloc) bloc of countries called the Non-Aligned Bloc (led by India and Yugoslavia). The heyday period of these warring blocs, 1947-1991, is called the Cold War period.

 

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Association) was the main militant grouping in the Western Bloc, consisting initially, in 1949, of twelve members: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Two more, Greece and Turkey, joined in 1952, West Germany in 1955, and Spain in 1982.

 

This Cold War period started crumbling with Perestroika, a political reform movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s, widely associated with CPSU general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev (who came to power in 1985) and his glasnost (meaning "transparency") policy reform.

 

In 1986 itself, Gorbachev announced his new policies of Perestroika and Glasnost, and shortly after this, the first big event was the merger of East Bloc country East Germany and West Bloc country West Germany on October 3 1990, preceded by the fall of the Berlin Wall which separated the two Germanies on November 9 1989.

 

At the time of the unification of Germany, in 1990, in the talks held between the leaders of the Western Bloc and the USSR, the USSR was repeatedly assured by the Western Bloc leaders that NATO (basically seen as an anti-USSR alliance) would not be expanded further eastwards into eastern Europe to include former members of the Eastern Bloc, and on the basis of this repeated assurance, the USSR allowed Unified Germany to choose whether or not it would be a part of NATO  (which it chose to be):

 

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early

 

 

On December 25-26 1991, the Soviet Union (USSR) itself officially broke up into fifteen sovereign countries. Of these fifteen (not counting the eight Asiatic and Transcaucasian erstwhile Soviet Socialist Republics, i.e. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, which were well to the east of Europe), there were, apart from Russia itself, six erstwhile Soviet Socialist Republics in Europe: Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova. And, after the formation of united Germany (which joined NATO) there were, apart from Russia itself, six Central and East European countries left in the Eastern Bloc: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania.

 

In spite of the original assurance that NATO would not be expanded eastwards, the following eight among these twelve former SSRs and Eastern Bloc countries were gradually inducted into NATO:

Hungary and Poland in 1999.

Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania in 2004.

Albania in 2009.

 

Of the remaining four, one country Czechosovakia split into many smaller countries of which the two main ones, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, joined NATO in 1999 and 2004 respectively.

 

Yugoslavia, a former Communist country, which had not been a part of the Eastern Bloc, but one of the founding members of the Non-Aligned Bloc, also split into smaller countries, of which four, Slovenia (2004),  Croatia (2009), Montenegro (2017) and North Macedonia (2020) became members of NATO.

 

Only three of the twelve erstwhile SSRs and Eastern Bloc countries (and the three easternmost of them within Europe) are not a part of NATO yet. Of these, Moldova is committed to a neutral position by its Constitution, but, since 1992, has co-operated indirectly with NATO by becoming a member of the NACC (North Atlantic Cooperation Council). So, basically, only two former SSRs are still out of the NATO circle: Ukraine and Belarus, both being the closest to Russia in their languages and culture, and therefore whose absorption into the anti-Russian NATO is most vehemently opposed by Russia. As per the Wikipedia article on Russia-Ukraine Relations:  Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus claim their heritage from Kievan Rus' (Kyivan Rus'), a polity that united most of the East Slavic and some Finnic tribes and adopted Byzantine Orthodoxy in the ninth to eleventh centuries. According to old Rus chronicles, Kyiv (Kiev), the capital of modern Ukraine, was proclaimed the Mother of Rus Cities, as it was the capital of the powerful late medieval state of Rus”.[

 

Of all its earlier European SSRs and East Bloc allies, Belarus is the only country still aligned with Russia. That leaves the strategically important Ukraine. NATO attempts to completely encircle and isolate Russia, and to station NATO forces on almost every inch of Russia’s European borders have been concentrating on Ukraine since decades: Ukraine  first joined NATO's Partnership for Peace in 1994 and the NATO-Ukraine Commission in 1997, then agreed to the NATO-Ukraine Action Plan in 2002 and entered into NATO's Intensified Dialogue program in 2005.

 

In view of this background of treachery and trickery, there is nothing more hypocritical than supporters of Ukraine (or rather, haters of Russia) pretending to take the high moral ground in matters concerning Russia and Ukraine, by treating Russia as the aggressor and Ukraine as a hapless victim, and wanting the Russia-Ukraine war to go on and on till it manages to spark off World War III. Russia (like Israel in another context) has the full moral right to refuse to allow itself to be wiped out by its enemies, and to take every possible step necessary to prevent such an eventuality from taking place. And of all hypocritical critics, Indians and Hindus who take this anti-Russian stance are the most hypocritical of all.

 

I will stop at this point. As I wrote at the very beginning of the article, it may seem presumptuous on my part to pretend to be an international affairs expert and write on such an issue which does not directly concern India or Hindus. But it does concern India and Hindus. And most particularly Hindus, who have always been the target of similar hypocritical pseudo-moral attacks by powerful forces who deny Hindus the moral right to refuse to allow themselves to be wiped out by their enemies And for those Hindus who wax high moral indignation about the Russian annexation of parts of Ukraine (or about the plight of Palestinians in Gaza or elsewhere), how much such moral indignation have they ever actively felt the need to express about the parts of India annexed by China and Pakistan (or about the plight of Hindus in Kashmir and Manipur)?


My readers may or may not agree with all the above. But I felt the need to express my views on this subject.


Friday, 14 March 2025

Yajnadevam on the Elephant

 

Yajnadevam on the Elephant

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

Someone just sent me a tweet by Yajnadevam which confirmed that I had been right in not sticking out my neck (or rather, in retracting my wrongly-stuck-out neck) in seeming to endorse his decipherment. 

As I have already said in my articles, I do not know whether his decipherment is correct or not. But one thing I do know now is that he does not seem to have any compunction in making bold statements on matters on which he knows nothing. Whether this is in endorsing Nilesh Oak’s ridiculous datings, or in making statements as in the following tweet:

https://x.com/yajnadevam

https://x.com/yajnadevam/status/1900209437522133127

Monkey and elephant have been reconstructed in pielexicon. This is a neutral work. Talageri deriving it incorrectly only speaks to his ignorance of the PIE hierarchy, which itself has no universal form. It is not clear if he just picked examples or made his own etymology, it wouldn’t matter, he could have just pointed to pielexicon. It wouldn’t matter be OK to say that his linguistics is subpar, but where is the alleged dishonesty?

 

Thank you, Yajnadevam ji, for expressing your faith in my honesty, although I do not require certificates from you. But have you read my article on the Elephant? 

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-elephant-and-proto-indo-european.html

I am willing to bet anything that you have not, and I feel sure that your willingness to express critical comments on something which you have not read at all does not say much for your honesty. 

I honestly do not think that you have the intellectual capacity to say things like “Talageri deriving it incorrectly only speaks to his ignorance” and “his linguistics is subpar”, because I have a definite feeling you do not even know what I have written on the subject of the PIE word for “elephant.

If you have, why don’t you write a detailed article fully disproving what I have written in that article about the PIE word for the elephant? One person named “Sameer” already claimed he did it, and only ended up with egg on his face after babbling about unspecified and imaginary “mixed” Indian-African etymological origins for the common word for “elephant/ivory” found in four distinct Indo-European branches (Vedic, Greek, Latin and Hittite).

But of course, it is easy to make pompous pronouncements on things you do not know anything about, without going into details and specifics. Hence I hereby challenge you to go into details and specifics if you have any sense of honesty. Or else, learn to keep quiet about things you know nothing about.


Appendix added a few hours later:

Apparently, my strong reaction to Yajnadevam’s inadvertent or seeming support for the Shatterer’s criticism of the etymology of the PIE word for “elephant” has predictably given the jeering crowd of cowardly hecklers who make up the internet gang of liars the wrong impression that it releases “Sameer” from the onus of having to try to prove his dishonest lies about the “mixed” Indian-African etymological origins for the common word for “elephant/ivory” found in four distinct Indo-European branches (Vedic, Greek, Latin and Hittite). A drowning man will clutch at any straw, but straws do not save anyone from drowning. The fact still remains that the Shatterer stands completely shattered and defeated on this matter, and if he and his friends want to pretend to be satisfied with seeing Yajnadevam and myself “quarrel”, it speaks volumes for their degree of awareness of their own complete rout on the subject and their desperation to escape accountability for their dishonesty and lies. I am not holding my breath on the possibility of Sameer ever attempting to present his full “etymological” case for his false claims.

[Please also read the two comments below by "Cadaver" and my replies to them]


Thursday, 13 March 2025

“Sameer” – The Most Dishonest “Scholar” on the Internet

 

“Sameer” The Most Dishonest “Scholar” on the Internet

 Shrikant G. Talageri

 

Those who are acquainted with my blogs will be acquainted with the Shatterer, (https://x.com/dxrsam_0 )  the internet clown who claimed that he had “shattered” my article on the Elephant. I had dealt with the rantings and ravings of this pompous, and apparently completely lost-to-shame, fool in my following articles:

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2022/08/indian-fauna-elephants-foxes-and-ait.html

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-shatterer-again-on-leopards-rather.html

I have been told that, after getting completely shattered by my above articles, he had been lying low for a long time and trying to avoid coming on my radar. But, in the last few weeks, perhaps egged on by fans, he has again been trying for some troll comments about my “etymologies” on Twitter. However, since I do not believe in kicking a fallen and wounded foe, I did not react.

But yesterday I posted a short article to highlight a funny exchange of tweets on Twitter, titled “Twitter (X) Trolls, Nilesh Oak and Myself”, in which I wrote: “now, I have stopped reacting to troll tweets of the second type, since I realize that when people have nothing concrete to say, they descend to vulgar personal abuse, and resorting to personal abuse without having anything concrete to say is the surest sign of the troll having accepted that he stands defeated [...] Rather than reacting indignantly to tweets abusing or criticizing me, nowadays I find myself amused even by the most abusive of them.

Rather like Jayadratha in the Mahabharata who thought it was now safe to come out from hiding when he thought the sun had set, this coward thought it was now safe for him to come out of hiding and to tweet lies about me without any fear of retaliation or any other consequences. Yes, I will generally stick to my inclinations to not waste time on trolls, but just this once, and since this troll has been constantly raising points about my “etymologizing”, let me talk about etymologies.

 

Apparently, in the last few weeks, he has been trying to give what in Mumbai slang is called “हूल देना(to give tentative provocative shoves to test the ground to see if it is safe to attack). But today, he has apparently been emboldened to write as follows:

https://x.com/dxrsam_0

https://x.com/dxrsam_0/status/1900147466076373023

Talageri claimed that Hindi yār comes from Sanskrit jārá, neglecting the phonetic development of native words and the dynamics of Persian influence on Hindi. An indefensible etymology. Talageri does this so often that all etymologies given by him are automatically suspicious.

5:00 PM· Mar 13 2025

Mr. Clown, I fully understand the “dynamics of Persian influence on Hindi”, but you do not understand the “dynamics of Sanskrit-Iranian connections”. After searching through all my writings, if this is the only “wrong etymology” that you could discover, then you are really a pathetic object to be pitied. There is a direct connection between Sanskrit and (through Avestan) Persian. Thus Sanskrit yajña = Avestan yašna = Persian jashan, Vedic Mitra = Avestan Miθra = Middle Persian Mihr = Later Persian Mehr (and indeed the Sanskrit name Mihir is a borrowing from the Persian form of an ancient Vedic word), and countless other common words can be cited. Even the Muslim word namāz is derived from the Persian root nam- cognate to Vedic root nam- (which is why fundamentalist Muslims object to the word and insist on using the Arabic word salāt).

In the medieval period, there was plenty of “Sanskrit-Iranian” dynamics flowing around in North India, and in the Hindi-Urdu-Hindustani speech of the common people, so that Sanskrit-origin words were alternately used in their Sanskrit-derived forms or their Persian-influenced forms. Thus, although we know that the original Sanskrit word for “week” is saptāha, and that the Avestan/Persian form derived from it is haftā, both the words are alternately used in common Hindi speech, and in fact, in many cases (including this one), the Persian-influenced form is used more frequently. That does not mean that the word is not related to the Vedic word, and that connecting it to the Vedic word represents wrong etymology.

It is exactly the same with the word yār, which is the Iranian form of the Vedic word jāra. As this word has not played any important role in my OIT theory, it is pathetic that he could have found nothing better to fall back on in his desperate attempts to show that I indulge in wrong “etymologyzing”.

 

Which is not to say that I have never made any mistakes at all in the matter of etymologies. But, whenever any such mistake has been brought to my notice, I have accepted it, and there has been no such mistake which has ever affected the validity of my OIT thesis.

On the other hand, this fraudulent textbook-worm who regularly spouts etymological jargon in his writings and tweets, has indulged in the most ridiculously flawed etymological reasoning in debating AIT-OIT interpretations with me in the past. Before he dares to set himself up as an expert in etymology-spouting, let him confess to his extremely foolish etymological claims in his earlier debates with me, which genuinely lead to the conclusion that “all etymologies given by him are automatically suspicious.


I will only take up the most blatantly foolish claim made by him in his debate with me about the etymology of the IE words for elephant. During the debate, I had asked him these questions which this Jayadratha hiding in the shadows has never dared to answer. At the end of the first above article, I wrote:

In fact, the logic seems to be: "anything goes" or "anything but a PIE word in India". There is no need for specific rules of phonetic change to show the changes from the non-IE sources to the IE languages, and no need to even specify the particular non-IE source words or even the non-IE source languages. Sameer goes so far as to breezily tell us: "words for “elephant; ivory” were getting borrowed around in the area in antiquity. The ultimate origin might be an Afroasiatic (or another African) language, or it might be India, or a mixture of both". Earlier, about the "wanderwort" for the ape/monkey, also, he tells us: "The ultimate source could be Afroasiatic; India cannot be ruled out either". Here, everywhere, he means "pre-Aryan" India when proto-Indo-Aryan was supposedly still in the Steppes or somewhere on the way! The fact that there is no non-IE Indian language which has any word for the elephant which could even remotely be suggested as the origin of these alleged "wanderwörter" is not important: it is all a matter of "multiple leaps of faith".

Most astounding is his claim that the "wanderwörter" could be "a mixture of both": i.e. of both African and Indian origin! It would be extremely interesting to see how he shows the sound changes which combine to jointly produce multi-origin "wanderwörter" originating in a mixture of originally African and Indian words (especially seeing that he sees no need to even specify the African and Indian origin words themselves, or the languages which produced them, and the exact path by which they jointly reached the PIE area from two different directions)!

 

At the end of the second article, when he was still jumping around, I wrote:

He refuses to accept that the four Indo-European words are derived from *ṛbha/ḷbha (ivory, elephant), from an original root (I am giving the Vedic form of the root rather than reconstructing a "PIE" one) *rabh/*labh: Vedic ibha, Latin ebur, Greek erepa/elepha, Hittite laḫpa, each of the four words individually bearing a distinct resemblance to the word *ṛbha/ ḷbha.

But his pretence to be a textbook citer gets completely shattered when he is not able to explain how these four Indo-European languages happen to have such similar words for ivory/elephant when the elephant was not found either in the Steppes or in the historical areas of any of the branches other than Indo-Aryan. Then, without bothering to cite a single scholar, without giving a single protoform (or even a group of different protoforms) from Africa or "pre-Aryan" India, and without showing how and by which rules of phonetic derivation these words were derived from any such protoforms, he very breezily informs us that "words for “elephant; ivory” were getting borrowed around in the area in antiquity. The ultimate origin might be an Afroasiatic (or another African) language, or it might be India, or a mixture of both".

For someone who so very pompously and superciliously rejects the derivation from *ṛbha/ḷbha, in spite of (a) the very close resemblance of the four Indo-European words to *ṛbha/ḷbha, (b) the parallel semantic example of hastin, and (c) the connected etymology of the Vedic ṛbhu from *ṛbha/ḷbha, in a show of being a stickler for strict phonetic rules of derivation, Sameer does not find it necessary to be equally circumspect when suggesting alternate derivations.

So, I again put it as follows: the discussion can only proceed further (although I can sense many people yawning already and wondering when this quibbling will end), and/or Sameer can only save his face, by providing textbook quotations from other scholars of such words which are "mixtures" of "both" African and Indian words, and giving the specific African and (non-IE) Indian words which got "mixed" together to produce these four Indo-European words for ivory/elephant, and naming the specific African and (non-IE) Indian languages from which those words arose. A short description of the way in which those diverse words met together before getting "mixed" and the phonetic rules explaining these "mixtures" would also help.

It is not my call to "reconstruct PIE". It is his call to reconstruct the "mixtures" of "non-Aryan" Indian words and African words, to point out which Indian and African languages they came from, how they managed to join together and get "borrowed" only by four IE languages (but not by the Caucasian, Uralic, Altaic, Sumerian, etc. languages), and so on. While going about it, he could also reconstruct one common PIE word for "fox", explaining all the anomalies.

So this modern Jayadratha does not have to keep searching out innocuous words (not having to do with the AIT-OIT debate) in my writings to try desperately to show that he is the King if Etymology (and my etymologies are suspicious).

All he has to do is produce the correct etymologies for the IE words for the elephant as per his atrocious and absurd claims. Or else, go back in hiding. The sun has not yet set. But then avoiding answering those questions and trying to raise lame new ones is all he can do.


Wednesday, 12 March 2025

Twitter (X) Trolls, Nilesh Oak and Myself

 

Twitter (X) Trolls, Nilesh Oak and Myself

 Shrikant G. Talageri

 

I often get updates from some people on what the Internet (or often specifically Twitter) Trolls have to say about me. I used to react to them and write articles, but usually only when it gave me a chance to clarify the analysis on some important point directly or indirectly raised by them, or when the abuse got on my nerves. But now, I have stopped reacting to troll tweets of the second type, since I realize that when people have nothing concrete to say, they descend to vulgar personal abuse, and resorting to personal abuse without having anything concrete to say is the surest sign of the troll having accepted that he stands defeated.

 

In the last few days, there seems to have been a spate of abuse, and, far from reacting indignantly I only find the abuse amusing, exhilarating and even flattering as an indication of their acceptance of defeat. So this article is not a reaction to these abusive tweets, but to a rather funny outcome of one such abusive tweet. This abusive tweet, in turn, came as a reaction to a tweet by what seems to be one of the ultra-orthodox traditionalist “Vedic” enthusiasts:

 

This original tweeter https://x.com/adithya  had tweeted as follows:

https://x.com/adithya/status/1898635930283704352

"Appa, how old are the Vedas?" "They are older than you can ever imagine. They have veen existing since time immemorial" "Oh! Did they exist even before dinosaurs?" "Yes!" "Did they exist before the big bang also?" "Yes, Vedas existed even before the creation of this universe and even before the Pralaya or the dissolution of the earlier universe! Vedas are the breath of the eternal Brahman and were discovered (not invented) from the cosmos by the Rishis through their special ears. Hence the Rishis are called Mantra Drashta (discoverers of Veda Mantras) and not Mantra Karta (inventor or composer). The only thing that is ALWAYS there and has stood the test of time are Vedas. Can you imagine that the Rudram you are learning now was chanted in the exact same way by our ancestors thousands and thousands of years ago?" "WOW! THIS IS AMAZING Appa!"

I do not know whether the above tweet was serious or tongue-in-cheek. But it had a lot of supportive and derisive reactions. One of them was the following troll tweet by a member of the AIT-supporting-Brahmins gang whom I have had occasion to refer to in some earlier articles:

https://x.com/shrikanth_krish

https://x.com/shrikanth_krish/status/1898805638068883569

This kind of traditional attitude is more honorable than the dishonest historicism of the likes of Nilesh Oak or for that matter Srikant Talageri 

Apparently, there were many more tweets in reply to this, either supporting me or concurring with his condemnation of myself as “dishonest”. Nothing that I saw fit to reply to.

 

But now comes the funny part. One person tweeted the following:

https://x.com/TradDeshastha

https://x.com/TradDeshastha/status/1898815015333044724

Talageri afaik is not in the category of Nilesh Oak. What even.

So here we have two tweeters writing comparing together Nilesh Oak and myself. And Nilesh Oak, thinking he was being complimented to my detriment, immediately jumped into the fray to tweet:

https://x.com/NileshOak

https://x.com/NileshOak/status/1899669315361902886

This I agree. While both of us have done original work, when it comes to absolute chronology, for reasons inexplicable to me, Shir Talageri ji gives up all sense of scientific acumen, empiricism and logical reasoning. I tried to show these errors and after repeated attempts, gave up.

This seems to have surprised the tweeter to whom he replied, who expressed his surprise as follows:

https://x.com/TradDeshastha

https://x.com/TradDeshastha/status/1899693360975343732

The funniest shit happened 😂😂I actually wanted to say that Talageri is notches higher than Nilesh Oak. Oak thought I meant the opposite.

 

Rather than reacting indignantly to tweets abusing or criticizing me, nowadays I find myself amused even by the most abusive of them.

But the above exchange was priceless!

 


Saturday, 8 March 2025

Sarayu Again: And a Discussion in Chanakya University Bangalore

 

Sarayu Again: And a Discussion in Chanakya University Bangalore

Shrikant G. Talageri

  

Dr Koenraad Elst was in Bangalore recently, and there was a suggestion by some faculty member of Chanakya University, Bangalore, to hold a discussion to debate the issue of the Sarayu river and the Ikṣvākus, which has been a bone of contention between Jijith Nadumuri Ravi and myself in the last few years. As I was not able to travel there, I took part in the discussion online (the other two speakers being, of course, Jijith Nadumuri Ravi himself and Koenraad Elst). The identification of this river, and of the original location of the Ikṣvākus, is a fundamental point in the OIT-AIT debate, and in understanding the exact identity-aspects of Indian civilization, so this debate was necessary; and I knew that I could not avoid being blunt and precise on the issue, which, although necessary, I really do not like to do it, since Jijth apparently believes there is a personal angle in my opposition to him on this point, and that I am jealous of anyone else intruding into my “space” of Rigvedic interpretation. So I was hesitant as to how blunt I should be in my part in the discussion (scheduled for yesterday, 8 March 2025, 2.30 PM).

However, yesterday morning, Someone brought to my attention a tweet by Jijith which referred to this discussion which was to take place in the afternoon, in which he wrote:

This talk will bring clarity to the question of Sarayu in Rgveda. Mentor and Guru Shrikant Talageri thinks the Rgvedic Sarayu is in Afghanistan and agrees with the AIT scholars's identification of Sarayu as an Afghanistan River. My research shows Sarayu of Rgveda, rendered as Haroyu in Avesta, is the Haro River, an eastern tributary of Sindhu where it enters the plains after flowing through the mountainous terrain in northern Pakistan. Sarayu - Haroyu - Haro.

To begin with, I do not “think” “the Rgvedic Sarayu is in Afghanistan”: every single writer on the Rigvedic rivers (except Jijith) has identified it with the Afghan river, except of course for the few Indians who identify it with the Śarayu of Ayodhya, and P.L. Bhargava who tentatively identified it with the Siritoi, a tributary of the Indus (an identification I blindly accepted in my second book, and failed to correct myself until prodded by a reader of my blogs).

And it is not an “AIT scholars's identification”: it is simply an identification, and the correct one, having nothing to do with the AIT. Similarly, the Rigvedic Śutudrī is identified with the Sutlej, the Rigvedic Vipāś with the Beas, the Rigvedic Paruṣṇī with the Ravi: these are all identifications, and correct ones, not “AIT scholars's identifications”, having nothing to do with the AIT. [Likewise, all “AIT scholars” have correctly identified the Rigvedic Gangā and Yamunā as the rivers of U.P., except extremists like the leftist writer Rajesh Kochhar who identifies them as tributaries of the Helmand in Afghanistan].

Likewise, before Jijith’s book, not a single writer or scholar on the Rigvedic rivers, ancient or modern, Indian or western, has identified the Rigvedic Sarayu with the Haro river.

 

I spoke (online) in the discussion, and today Jijith has apparently tweeted as follows: “While Shrikant Talageri continued holding on to some points on Sarayu in Afghanistan and Manu & Mandhata in Ayodhya” (this contains a gross misrepresentation: I have never located Manu in Ayodhya in any book or article, and certainly not in the discussion yesterday, where my only references to Manu described him as a mythical figure whom Indian historical tradition records as the ancestor of all the different tribes covering the whole of India).

He goes on: “The talk at Chanakya University was a pivotal event in my research career. I could clarify some 5-year-old confusion in the mind of Shrikant Talageri, my mentor and guru, for the study of Rgveda. In the end, it all went well! Dr Elst supported my position based on archaeology and the literary evidence from the two Itihasas, apart from Rgveda and the Puranas.” I would appreciate it if Jijith put down in written record exactly which “5-year-old confusion in [my] mind” he clarified yesterday, and it would be better if Koenraad Elst (rather than Jijith himself) specified in writing that he “supported [Jijith’s] position based on archaeology and the literary evidence from the two Itihasas, apart from Rgveda and the Puranas” in respect of the identity of the Sarayu river, and the Sarasvati area origin of the Ikṣvākus.


I do not know if Chanakya University has recorded the discussion on video, and if it will be uploaded on youtube or elsewhere. But I give below the note sent to me by Chanakya University giving the points on which I was to speak, followed by the write-up sent by me to them, with the gist of what I was going to say on those points:

I. Structure of Discussion.

II. My Write-up for the Discussion.

 

 

I. Structure of Discussion

Structure of Discussion

1. Opening Presentations (10 minutes)

Individual scholars present positions on three key interrelated topics (3 minutes each):

  • Geographic Scope
    • Homeland—Extended (UP) or Localized (Haryana)
  • Tribes
    • Tribes—Purus and Ikshvakus
  • Movement Patterns
    • Migration pattern—East to West or West to East (including the status of Mandhata)

2. Sarayu Discussion (12 minutes)

  • JijithNadumuri - 5 minutes
  • Shrikant Talageri - 5 minutes
  • Dr.KoenraadElst - 2-3 minutes

3. Methodological Considerations (10 minutes)

Issues of Methodology/Nature of Evidence (3 minutes each):

  • Integration of Multiple Disciplines
    • Appropriate way to synthesize linguistics, archaeology, genetics, etc.
  • Textual Analysis
    • Tribes in the Rig Veda vs. Tribes in Puranas (Which should be privileged, how to synchronize)

4. Chronological Analysis (10 minutes)

Discussion of chronological challenges (3 minutes each):

  • Rig Veda
  • Ramayana/Ayodhya
  • Mahabharata/Kurukshetra

5. Cultural Impact (15 minutes)

Open discussion on Cultural implications for the Rest of India (5 minutes each)

 

II. My Write-up for the Discussion

 1. Opening Presentations (3 minutes each)

·         Geographic Scope

o    Homeland—Extended (UP) or Localized (Haryana)

·         Tribes

o    Tribes—Purus and Ikshvakus

·         Movement Patterns

o    Migration pattern—East to West or West to East (including the status of Mandhata)

1. The total geographical horizon of the Rigvedic data covers a northwestern area from the Sarayu river in Afghanistan (the Herat or Harirud) in the north-west to the westernmost areas of the Ganga and Yamuna in the south-east, i.e. to the lands of the Matsyas (VII.18.6) and the Kīkaṭas (III.53.14, whom WITZEL 1995b:333 fn locates "in eastern Rajasthan or western Madhya Pradesh").

2. The total geographical horizon of the Epic-Puranic data extends not only all over India but beyond it on both sides, extending to parts of SE Asia in the east and Central Asia in the northwest:

2a) However, this total Epic-Puranic data represents the areas known to the writers of the Epic-Puranic texts during and after the Mauryan period when these texts came to be put down in writing.

2b) The earliest origins of the different peoples, nations and tribes, as per the Epic-Puranic data, are mythically traced to an ancestral Manu Vaivasvata whose ten sons ruled over different areas covering this whole geographical horizon. However, while there are formally ten sons, the history and geography of only two sons (Iḷa and Ikṣvāku) and their descendants (respectively the Lunar and Solar tribes or peoples) are described in detail. And their geographical areas described in the texts are as follows:

The tribes described as descended from Ikṣvāku lived in eastern-central Uttar Pradesh extending to Bihar. The descendants of Iḷa  were divided into five main conglomerates of tribes (mythically treated  in the later narratives as Aiḷas 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 (generally 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 and the history of the Anu tribes occupies a comparatively peripheral space in the Puranas.

 

So this is the very clear geographical data in the two (sets of) texts for the earliest period. The question is: what is the narrative which can explain or coordinate the difference in the two sets of geographical data by way of movements east-to-west or west-to-east? In respect of the Rigvedic People (the Pūrus), I have given all the details in my books and papers. Here I will only dwell on the Ikṣvākus:

The Rigveda and Vedic texts refer to five kings: Mandhātā, Purukutsa, Trasadasyu, (and Trivṛṣan and Tryaruṇa).

The Ramayana (II.110) refers to a long list of kings, including all the important ancestors of Rama and kings of Ayodhya known to the Puranic traditions, including (other than Mandhātā) Ikṣvāku, Triśaṅku, Dhundhumāra, Ajita, Sagara, Aṁśuman, Dilīpa, Bhagīratha, Raghu, Kalmāṣapāda and Daśaratha, none of whom (again other than Mandhātā) are known to the Rigveda. But it does not seem to know the very important Purukutsa, Trasadasyu and the other Ikṣvāku kings known to the Rigveda.

Thus there are two mutually exclusive sets of Ikṣvāku kings; those named in the Vedic texts and those named in the Ramayana. And both these sets of kings are named in the Puranas in the list of Ikṣvāku kings. The only very important common king is Mandhātā.

Clearly, there are two lineages of Ikṣvāku kings: one in Ayodhya in the east and one in the Rigvedic area in the northwest. And the connecting link is Mandhātā.

The explanation is given in the traditional narrations:

The Puranas tell us that the ancient Ikṣvāku king Mandhātā of the east was related to the Pūrus through his mother, who was the daughter of a Pūru king Matīnāra. It is at least clear from this that Mandhātā (half a Pūru himself) had reason to be friendly with the Pūrus, who were his maternal relations.

The Puranic accounts of the Ikṣvāku dynasty associate all the early kings with the east, but in the case of Mandhātā, they relate his movement westwards in support of his Pūru kinsmen who were under assault from the Druhyus to their west in a pre-Rigvedic period. The Druhyus had attacked all the people to their east and all the eastern people combined against them to drive them out. Mandhātā moved out as far as the Punjab and drove the Druhyus out from the Punjab into the northwest. Pargiter describes it as follows: "The Druhyus occupied the Punjab, and Mandhātṛ of Ayodhya had a long war with the Druhyu king Aruddha or Aṅgāra and killed him" (PARGITER 1962:167). Later, more in detail, he tells us that Mandhātā  pushed past "the prostrate Paurava realm, and pushing beyond them westwards, he had a long contest with and conquered the Druhyu king who appears to have been then on the confines of the Panjab, so that the next Druhyu king Gandhāra retired to the northwest and gave his name to the Gandhāra country" (PARGITER 1962:262).

Later, Mandhātā returned to his own kingdom in the east, and there is little record in traditional history of the activities of his successor kings in the east having much to do with the northwest (until the much later period of the Epics). However, it is clear that some of his descendants remained in the northwest and originated a new northwestern branch of Tṛkṣi or Ikṣvāku kings distinct from the eastern ones. Undoubtedly Purukutsa, Trasadasyu and their descendants in the Rigveda were late descendants, in the period of the New Books of the Rigveda, belonging to this northwestern branch.

So this shows that as per the combined evidence of the Vedic texts and the Epic-Puranic data, the movement o0f the Ikṣvākus was from the east to the west.

 

2. Sarayu Discussion (5 minutes each)

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.

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:

 

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!

[Please read my review of Jijith’s book to show more contradictions in the attempts to identify the Sarayu with the Haro].

 

3. Methodological Considerations (3 minutes each)

Issues of Methodology/Nature of Evidence (3 minutes each):

·         Integration of Multiple Disciplines

o    Appropriate way to synthesize linguistics, archaeology, genetics, etc.

·         Textual Analysis

o    Tribes in the Rig Veda vs. Tribes in Puranas (Which should be privileged, how to synchronize)

Linguistics, archaeology, textual data, and genetics, are four different disciplines dealing with different areas. How the first three can be integrated is shown in my books and papers, and it is too long to detail that here. The fourth (genetics) has no connection with the AIT-OIT debate or even the internal migrations.

All I can point out here is how not to “integrate” them:

1. By taking some genetic feature (some particular genes, DNA, haplogroup, clade, etc.) and assigning to it a linguistic identity (IE, Dravidian, etc.) or a textual identity (Pūru, Ikṣvāku, etc.).

2. By taking an archaeological culture (PGW, etc.) and assigning to it a linguistic identity (IE, Dravidian, etc.) or a textual identity (Pūru, Ikṣvāku, etc.).   

 

4. Chronological Analysis (3 minutes each)

Discussion of chronological challenges:

·         Rig Veda

·         Ramayana/Ayodhya

·         Mahabharata/Kurukshetra


Chronologically, the Rigveda falls into 4 stages:

1. Old Books (6,3,7): pre-3000 BCE-2800 BCE.

2. Middle Books (4,2):  post-2800 BCE-2500 BCE

3. New Books (1-Final version, including updated earlier upamandalas-,8,9): 2500 BCE-2000 BCE

4. Book 10 and final additions: 2000 BCE-1500 BCE (roughly)

 

Epic Events: 2000 BCE-1500 BCE

Epics Recorded Final Version: 300 BCE onwards

 

5. Cultural Impact (5 minutes each)

Open discussion on Cultural implications for the Rest of India

1. Indian culture is not derived from the culture of the northwest or the Sarasvati area.

2. Indian people of other parts of India not descendants of the people of the northwest or the Sarasvati area.

There were different types of civilizations in different parts of India. If the Harappan civilization had not been discovered, would we have rejected all of India’s traditional history as false or invented or imaginary on that ground? Then why does the discovery of the Harappan culture in the early 20th century mean that all the other parts of India (which do not have similar urban archaeological remains) were bereft of people, culture, history and traditions until the Harappans took their people, culture, history and traditions to that area, and that therefore all the traditions about the people, culture, history and traditions of those different areas are invented or imaginary in those areas and must be originally located in the Harappan areas which were the only civilizational areas in India?

To begin with, many discoveries have been made in the eastern Gangetic areas in the last few decades which show sites as old as or older than the Harappan sites (though not with the same type of urban culture). And now, the discovery that iron was first used in South India before it was used anywhere else in the world shows that there was some different kind of civilization in the South. So why this obsession to falsify traditions and invent stories to show that all the traditional peoples recorded in our historical traditions lived only on the Sarasvati and in the northwest and spread out from there?

As I have written countless times, India was a huge banyan tree of cultures, and the Harappan culture only represents the culture of the Druhyus, Anus and Pūrus and some western Yadus. The Ikshvakus represent the culture of the east. There were other Dravidian-language speaking cultures in the south.  

 

In India, after the emigration of the Anu and Druhyu tribes, the religion of the Pūru, because of its highly organized and systematically developed priesthood and rituals, spread over the rest of the country along with Vedic culture. As the religions of the different tribes all over the country converged into the increasingly diluted Pūru religion, the original Pūru (Vedic) rituals and myths increasingly came to occupy the position of a nominal upper layer in a new multi-layered and multi-facetted religion which was rapidly becoming the common Pan-Indian religion of the sub-continent. When this pan-Indian religion and culture came to be known as Hindu is a matter of irrelevant dispute. That it is known as Hindu is an indisputable fact.

 

But there was a big difference in the spread of Hinduism all over India and the spread of Abrahamic religions all over the world. Unlike these Abrahamic religions, which demonised the Gods, beliefs and rituals of the religions which they sought to uproot, destroy and supplant, Hinduism accepted and internalised the Gods, beliefs and rituals of the tribal religions which converged into it. The result is that today the most popular Hindu deities in every single part of India are originally local tribal Gods: whether Ayyappa of Kerala, Murugan of Tamilnadu, Balaji of Andhra, Vitthala of Karnataka (Vithoba of Maharashtra), Khandoba of Maharashtra, Jagannatha of Orissa, etc., etc., or the myriad forms of the Mother Goddess, with thousands of names, in every nook and corner of India. Further, every single local (originally tribal) God and Goddess is revered by every Hindu in every corner of India, in the form of the kuladevata, the grihadevata or the gramadevata. In time, of course, myths were formed nominally associating many of these deities with one or the other of the main Gods and Goddesses of Puranic Hinduism as their manifestations, these Puranic Gods themselves being additions from different parts of India to the Hindu pantheon (or originally Vedic Gods like Vishnu and Rudra with basic characteristics adopted from the other local and tribal deities). But these associations were not an imposition “from above”, they were the result of popular local myth-making and part of the consolidation of the national popularization of the local deities: the deities retained their local names, forms, rituals and customs, and became all-India deities, objects of pilgrimages from distant areas.

 

But it is not only in respect of “Gods” and “Goddesses” that Hinduism freely and respectfully adopted from local tribes and religions: even the most basic concepts of the Hindu religion are originally elements adopted from the tribal and local religions from every part of India. The original Pūru (Vedic) layer of religion which forms the pan-Indian umbrella of Hinduism was originally more or less the religion depicted in the Rigveda: the worship of Indra, Varuna, Mitra, Agni, Soma, the Maruts and Ashvins, and other specifically Vedic deities (including Vishnu and Rudra, who later become the most important Puranic Gods), and the main religious rituals were the Agni rituals (homa, yajña, etc.) and the Soma rituals. The Soma rituals are completely defunct today (in fact, even the exact identity of Soma is debated and disputed), the Agni rituals are still performed, but only during major ceremonies (birth, death, weddings, ritual inaugurations of houses, etc.) and on other major occasions, and the major Vedic Gods are minor figures of Puranic stories.   

 

Practically every single basic feature of Hinduism today was adopted from the religious beliefs and rituals of the other, originally tribal, religious traditions of the people from every single corner of India as they all converged into Hinduism. To begin with, Idol-worship which is absolutely the central feature of Hinduism and which includes (a) the worship of the lingam, “rude blocks of stone” with eyes painted on them, or roughly or finely carved or cast images of stone, metal or some other material, (b) treating the idols as living beings (bathing, dressing and feeding them, putting them to sleep, etc.), (c) performing puja by offering flowers, water and fruits, bananas and coconuts, clothes and ornaments to the idols, (d) performing aarti by waving lights and incense before the idols, (e) performing music and dance before the idols, (e) partaking of prasad of food offered to the idols, (f) having impressive idol-temples with pillared halls, elaborate carvings and sculptures, sacred tanks and bathing ghats, temple festivals with palanquins and chariots, etc. (g) applying ash, sandal-paste, turmeric, vermillion, etc. on the forehead as a mark of the idols, etc. This entire system in all its variations was adopted from the various practices of the people of eastern, central and southern India, along with the Gods and idols themselves.

 

All the basic philosophical concepts of mainstream Hinduism are likewise adopted from the tribal and local populations of different parts of India: the concept of rebirth and transmigration of souls, the concept of auspicious moments based on the panchanga and the tithis, the worship of particular trees and plants, animals, birds and reptiles, the worship of particular forests, groves, mountains and rivers, the worship of ancestors in elaborate ceremonies, etc., etc.

The spread of this Vedic religion (ultimately Vedic only in name) from an original Pūru centre in Haryana to all over India can in no way be treated as an invasion, any more than the spread in later times (after 600 BCE) of Buddhism and Jainism from an original Ikṣvāku centre in Bihar to all over India (and in the case of Buddhism, all over Asia at one time).

 

ADDITIONAL POINTS:

Modern western Indologists (even more than the early Indologists, who were actually more objective, but were wearing the blinkers of the AIT which distorted their vision) set out with the agenda of finding evidence for the AIT in the Rigveda. Jijith (and other AIOIT believers like PL Bhargava and Narhari Achar) sets out with the agenda of finding evidence for the origin of the Ikṣvākus in the northwest or specifically in the Sarasvati area. When people set out to analyze the Rigveda with an agenda in mind, and treat the agenda as more important than the data, it leads to a complete distortion of perspective and to fundamental mistakes.

In the case of “Rivers of the Rigveda”, it leads to a complete distortion of perspective on two fundamental matters:

1. The identity of the Vedic Aryans.

2. The internal chronology of the Rigveda.


1. Western Indologists find “Aryans” and “non-Aryans” among the entities named in the Rigveda. Jijith finds two mutually hostile groups of protagonist Vedic people in the Rigveda who are both simultaneously the People of the Book.

All the Rigvedic data shows that the People of the Book were the Bharata Pūrus, whose rulers or leaders were the dynasty of Divodāsa and Sudās:

a) In the Old Rigveda, it was purely a book of the Bharata Pūrus, and other Pūrus were rivals.

b) In the New Rigveda, it was still a book of the Bharata Pūrus, but the other Pūrus were no longer rivals, but part of the expanding Vedic culture. And even non-Pūrus were no longer enemies but included patrons of the Vedic rishis.

c) In subsequent Vedic literature, the Vedic culture was no more a culture only of the Pūrus, but was becoming the umbrella-culture of large parts of North India, and was incorporating more and more of the non-Pūru religious elements of the east.

d) In post-Vedic literature, the Vedic culture became more or less the umbrella-culture of most of North India with innumerable new originally non-Vedic religious elements increasingly being incorporated into it, and it metamorphosed into Hinduism.

Of the Vedic texts, the Rigveda alone gives us details of the Pūru tribal identity of the Vedic Aryans vis-à-vis other tribes: the subsequent Vedic literature, including the other Samhitas are purely ritualistic and religious texts, and do not even once mention the names of the five Aiḷa tribes or the Ikṣvākus in an identity sense. Hence movements depicted in the subsequent Vedic texts (e.g. Videgha Māthava) are movements of ritual and religious elements and not of tribes or people.

Jijith, in the zeal of the Ikṣvāku agenda, creates two rival People of the Book in the Rigveda, and (like Witzel and Jamison) finds contradictory verses supporting two rival factions of the People of the Book within the same hymn. Also, he ends up echoing the views of Witzel and Jamison about Videgha Māthava representing a migration movement towards the east. For details, see my review of the book.

 

2. He claims that he fully supports my internal chronology, which is absolute (see my article on “The Chronological Gulf Between the old Rigveda and the New Rigveda”), but in pursuit of the Ikṣvāku agenda, he

a) places Purukutsa and Trasadasyu of the New Rigveda as older than Sudās of the Old Rigveda,

b) converts the historical Bharatas-vs.-Iranians battle, the vārṣāgira battle, into an ambiguous "Tṛtsu Bharatas"-vs.-"Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas" battle.

c) and invents a new Battle of Asiknī which is older than the Dāśarājña battle (thereby endorsing the AIT view that western battles preceded eastern battles).

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)" (p.46-47).

This lands him in another contradiction: “Sudās's son, Kalmāṣapāda Saudāsa is totally unknown to the Vedic texts (and names with “-pāda” are extremely post-Rigvedic). But even if we assume that a son of Sudās (whatever his actual name) 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) where he is aligned with Sudās!