Jijith Never Gives Up Lying

Jijith Never Gives Up Lying

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

It may seem incredible, but Jijith is up to his lies again. I find it very difficult to believe that a person who is a genuine scientist in his own field can be so grossly stupid and so incorrigibly persistent in his lies and stupidity. He repeats his lie about the Sarayu, this time compounding it in a strange way.

Today he has apparently tweeted:

https://x.com/Jijith_NR

“Found out one mistake in Talageri's Old Rgveda vs New Rgveda (23-08-2022). He makes this mistake because he think that the Rgvedic river Sarayu is a "Western River in Afghanistan", whereas it is only a Central Pakistan River Haro. Please note that the three Central Pakistan Rivers:- Jhelum (Vibali), Haro (Sarayu) and Indus (Sindhu) are mentioned for the first time in the 4th Mandala. This means, in the continous westward migration from Haryana, these Central Pakistan rivers were discovered/ came into the focus for the 1st time during the 4th Mandala composition period. Remember Talageri's own Chronology Sequence:- 6,3,7,4,2,5,1,8,9,10. (Updated version of 23-08-2022) Now see below what Talageri is writing:- "In the Old Books 6, 7, 3 and 2, references to all Western geographical words are completely missing in both the sets of hymns. In Book 4 (with its westward expansionist thrust), the references to Western rivers are found. But in Book 4 the names of Western animals, places, lakes and mountains, *are missing*." Here, Talageri got a confusing result of an *illusory western river in 4th Mandala*. This is because he thinks that Sarayu is Harirud in Afghanistan. That is why he says:- "In Book 4 (with its westward expansionist thrust), the references to Western rivers are found." But in the next sentence Talageri is faced with the shocking reality - "But in Book 4 the names of Western animals, places, lakes and mountains, *are missing*." Absence of Western animals, places, lakes and mountains in 4th Mandala - as per Talageri’s own admission, favors my identification of Sarayu as Haro in Central Pakistan. It goes against his identification of Sarayu as Harirud in Afghanistan.

8:51 AM. Apr 21 2025

This tweet demonstrates many things:

1. Firstly, he has not understood what the article “The Final Version of the Chronological Gulf between the Old Rigveda and the New Rigveda” is all about:

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2022/08/final-version-of-chronological-gulf.html 

It is about the vocabulary of the Rigveda. It is not about the geographical words in the Rigveda. This article does not mention the Sarayu or indeed any other river in its list of words. So where does Jijith see this word Sarayu in my list of words in this article, when he refers to a “mistake in Talageri’s Old Rgveda vs New Rgveda” in reference to this word? Obviously he has not seen the word in that article. Or does he mean I should have included the name Sarayu in my list of New Words?  But the question is irrelevant. Jijith has not gone through the article at all. All his presumptuous tweets, remarks and conclusions are based on his own fertile imagination, never on actual data. This is his style and level of scholarship.

 

2. People wonder whether I am being too harsh on him when he seemingly regards me as his “guru” and “mentor” and is believed by the credulous to be expanding on my work, and cannot understand why I consider his AIOIT case as more dangerous for the OIT case (by being a Trojan Horse attack on the OIT from “inside”), and as violating the most fundamental aspect of the OIT case: the Internal Chronology of the Books of the Rigveda.

Well, here in this tweet, his attack on the Internal Chronology of the Books of the Rigveda comes out undisguisedly in the open.

 

3. I ask the readers to consult any and every scholar or analytic source on the Rigveda to find a single other scholar, Indian or western, who has identified the Sarayu of the Rigveda with the Haro river. Every single other scholar unanimously identifies the Ārjīkīyā of the Rigveda with the Haro river. What is more, Jijith himself unwittingly identifies the Ārjīkīyā of the Rigveda with the Haro river once in his own book “Rivers of the Rgveda” (p. 99 of his book).

But, in his desperation to locate the Ikṣvākus on the Sarasvati, coupled with the childish belief that a Sarayu in the Punjab, and an Ayodhya on the Sarasvati. also have to be conjured up in the NW (the Rigvedic area) in order to “prove” the earlier (and nowhere recorded) presence of the Ikṣvākus on the Sarasvati, Jijith indulges in all kinds of clownish antics:

 

3a) He discovers five different Sarayus (three new ones within the Rigvedic area) in the Rigveda:

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.

 

3b). But then, all the scholars have identified the Ārjīkīyā of the Rigveda with the Haro river (including Jijith himself, unwittingly, once in his own book). So, to push the Rigvedic Ārjīkīyā out of the reckoning, he identifies it, out of thin air, or rather out of a vacuum, with the present-day Sil river, a small tributary close to the present-day Haro river. Again, no other scholar has ever made this identification, and Jijith sees no need to produce evidence for his claim.

 

3c). But this lands him in another quandary. There is a Sīlamāvatī river mentioned in the Nadī Sūkta. At least, most scholars translate this word as an epithet of the Indus, but a few, like Griffith, take it to be the name of a river. Using Jijith’s kind of logic (Haro=Haroyu, etc.) this Sīlamāvatī river of the Rigveda could be the present-day Sīl river. That would mess up Jijith’s identification of the Ārjīkīyā of the Rigveda with the present-day Sil river. Taking no chances (and not wanting to leave any loopholes), Jijith proceeds to identify the Rigvedic Sīlamāvatī river (again out of thin air, or rather out of a vacuum) with the Suru river in Ladakh!

 

4. And here is this classic example of his absolute failure to understand even the abc of my analysis of the Rigveda. He not only fails totally and absolutely to understand the logic of the westward expansion, but he even finds a contradiction in my analysis and present his extremely fatuous solution to this problem:

“, Talageri got a confusing result of an *illusory western river in 4th Mandala*. This is because he thinks that Sarayu is Harirud in Afghanistan. That is why he says:- "In Book 4 (with its westward expansionist thrust), the references to Western rivers are found." But in the next sentence Talageri is faced with the shocking reality - "But in Book 4 the names of Western animals, places, lakes and mountains, *are missing*." Absence of Western animals, places, lakes and mountains in 4th Mandala - as per Talageri’s own admission, favors my identification of Sarayu as Haro in Central Pakistan. It goes against his identification of Sarayu as Harirud in Afghanistan.”.

He thinks that "In Book 4 (with its westward expansionist thrust), the references to Western rivers are found." contradicts "But in Book 4 the names of Western animals, places, lakes and mountains, *are missing*.", and therefore one of the two sentences must be wrong. And he decides unilaterally that the first sentence is wrong and that Sarayu cannot be a reference to a western river.

But, this again shows how Jijith proceeds with half baked information, both about the data in the Rigveda as well as about my analysis of it. Let us see Book 5:

Book 5 mentions the following western rivers Rasā (V.41.15; 53.9) as well as the Sarayu, Kubhā, Krumu, Anitabhā and Sindhu (all five in one verse, V.53.9). But in Book 5 also “the names of Western animals, places, lakes and mountains, *are missing*.” So, as per Jijith’s kindergarten logic, the first sentence is wrong, and therefore  Rasā, Sarayu, Kubhā, Krumu, Anitabhā and Sindhu (all in one verse) cannot be references to western rivers: Jijith must now again stir up his magic cauldron and find out which eastern rivers Kubhā, and Krumu in particular refer to!!

 

What is more, Book 5 not only does not refer directly to the names of Western animals, places, lakes and mountains, but it does not even refer to the sheep indirectly by its name associated with the sheep in referring to wool (a product of the western “sheep” or avi). However, by the period of the middle Books (4,2), there was greater interaction with the west as compared to the Oldest Books 6,3,7,   and we find a reference in Book 2 to “avi” in the sense of “wool”:

The word ávi-, and its derived words ávya-, ávyaya-, and avyáya-, all signifying "woollen filters" (for filtering the Soma juice),  are distributed as follows in the Rigveda (again, the words are totally missing in the three Oldest Books):

Old Books:

II.36.1

New Books:

I.135.6

VIII.2.2; 97.2

IX.6.1,5; 7.6; 12.4; 13.1,6; 16.6,8; 20.1; 28.1; 36.4; 37.3; 38.1; 45.5; 49.4; 50.2,3; 52.2; 61.17; 62.8; 63.10,19; 64.5,25; 66.9,11,28; 67.4,5,20; 68.7; 69.34,9; 70.7,8; 74.9; 75.4; 78.1; 82.1; 85.5; 86.3,8,11,13,25,31,34,48; 91.1,2; 92.4; 96.13; 97.3,4,12,16,19,31,40,56; 98.2,3; 99.5; 100.4; 101.16; 103.2,3; 106.10,11; 107.2,10,17,22,68; 108.5; 109.7,16; 110.10.  

So, Book 2 at least refers to avi as “wool”. Book 5 does not even do that. So do we conclude that the geography of Book 2 is further west than that of Book 5? And therefore the Sarasvati of Book 2 (Sarasvati being the only river referred to in Book 2) is a western river (since Book 5 does mention the western rivers Kubhā, and Krumu?)

 

Stupidity, stubbornness, an inflated ego, and a tendency to lie make for a deadly combination.