Jijith, Purukutsa and Trasadasyu

 

Jijith, Purukutsa and Trasadasyu

 Shrikant G. Talageri

 

I ended my earlier article yesterday with “Stupidity, stubbornness, an inflated ego, and a tendency to lie make for a deadly combination.”. To this may be added incorrigibility.

Today, Jijith has put up another tweet. The latter part of this second tweet refers to Purukutsa and Trasadasyu. I have written many articles about this (apart from dealing with the subject in my various books and articles (including my review of his book), but I will reply to it further on in the article when dealing with his third tweet. I will first only show the first part which demonstrates incorrigible stupidity:

https://x.com/Jijith_NR

“Here is the second mistake found in Talageri's Geochronology which is corrected in my book Rivers of Rgveda. The first one was a geographical error - he mistook the new Rivers discovered in Rgvedic 4th Mandala: Sarayu (Haro) and Rasa (Indus) as Western Rivers in Afghanistan where as both are in Middle Pakistan. This is why he isn't finding western animals, flora and fauna in 4th Mandala.

Western animals, flora and fauna are not in 5th Mandala too. This is because the Rgvedic People just entered Eastern Afghanistan during 5th Mandala Period. When they go further westwards in Late Rgvedic Perod, later to the 5th Mandala Period, they note western animals, flora and fauna”.

 

The clown does not realize that he is again contradicting himself sharply. In the first tweet I dealt with yesterday, he points out that Book 4 does not refer to “western animals, flora and fauna” and gives it as his logical argument that this automatically proves that the rivers referred to in Book 4 cannot be “western rivers” (i.e. “if they could mention western rivers, why not western animals, flora and fauna? So the rivers also cannot be western but must be eastern”).

When I pointed out that Book 5 also does not refer to “western animals, flora and fauna” but does refer to western rivers, so his logic is wrong, he argues back: “This is because the Rgvedic People just entered Eastern Afghanistan during 5th Mandala Period. When they go further westwards in Late Rgvedic Perod, later to the 5th Mandala Period, they note western animals, flora and fauna”!

Does not this Space Scientist understand that he is making a fool of himself by giving an argument for Book 5 which also applies to Book 4? That is: “This is because the Rgvedic People just entered Eastern Afghanistan during 4th Mandala Period. When they go further westwards in Late Rgvedic Perod, later to the 5th Mandala Period, they note western animals, flora and fauna”, and that this, in his own words, proves his earlier logic wrong? Clearly, there is no consistency in his statements and logic.

 

And then, to buttress the “Purukutsa and Trasadasyu” point, he gives a third tweet. As I said, I have already dealt with the topic in innumerable books and articles, right from the year 2000 (my third book). So I will only deal with his warped logic here. He writes the following in this third tweet (quoting out of place my references to Epic events being given new additions in later renderings and narrations);

https://x.com/Jijith_NR

“"However, the most important point to be understood about the Redacted Hymns is that they were linguistically updated, but they were not changed in historical and geographical context and content: the only interpolated references naming historically late persons in the Rigveda (there are no interpolated references pertaining to geographical contexts) are the handful of *deliberately interpolated references to the much later Purukutsa and Trasadasyu*, (see TALAGERI 2000:67-72 for details), but these interpolated references were actually *interpolated into Old Hymns in the Old Rigveda and not into the Redacted Hymn.*"

Talageri admits Purukutsa & Trasadasyu are part of the proper Old Hymns of Early Rgveda / Old Rgveda, and not interpolated into the Redacted Hymns of Early Rgveda/ Old Rgveda.”

 

Jijith puts it very trickily as such tricksters always do. He correctly quotes me to show that I have been pointing out since long that the references to Purukutsa and Trasadasyu were deliberately interpolated into Old Hymns in the Old Rigveda, and that these are the only historical interpolations in the Old Rigveda.

And after quoting my words correctly, he lies brazenly about it in the very next line: “Talageri admits Purukutsa & Trasadasyu are part of the proper Old Hymns of Early Rgveda / Old Rgveda.” Does the quote show that I admit “Purukutsa & Trasadasyu are part of the proper Old Hymns of Early Rgveda / Old Rgveda” or that I call them “interpolated references”?? Jijith shows many times in his writings that his level of English is wanting in many respects. But surely the reader can read what I have written, and see what he fails to understand?

 

The uniqueness of the Purukutsa and Trasadasyu references in the Old Rigveda is that they are the only interpolated references to historical personalities in the whole of the Rigveda. As I pointed out, the New Words in the Redacted Hymns never represent historical and geographical interpolations: they are always natural interpolations where innocuous New Words inadvertently appear in old narrations in the course of their re-narration in later (in these cases, New Rigvedic) times.

As I wrote in my article “The Ikṣvākus in the Rigveda”:

“As I pointed out in detail in my second book (TALAGERI 2000:66-72), the names of these Tṛkṣi kings in these 4 references are unique and extraordinary in the ethos of the Rigveda, since they are cases where their names were deliberately added into the Old Hymns in the period of the New Books, by composers belonging to the two families most closely associated with the Bharata Pūrus, the Angiras and Vasiṣṭha composers, as a special homage of gratitude for some extraordinary aid given by them to the Bharata Pūrus in particular or the Pūrus in general…

In these circumstances, the deliberate interpolations into Old Hymns, of references to Tṛkṣi kings of the New Books, during the later Rigvedic period must have been motivated by a truly extraordinary sense of gratitude for the help given by these kings to the Vedic Pūrus. While we cannot discover the details, the basic fact is clear: the 4 references in the Old Books stand out from normal references to kings in the Rigveda: IV.42.8-9 twice refers to Trasadasyu as an ardhadeva or "demi-god", an extraordinarily adulatory phrase found nowhere else in the Vedic texts. It glorifies his birth in a manner reminiscent of the glorification of the birth of later divine heroes not only in India but all over the world, but without parallel in the Rigveda: the Seven Great Sages (sapta ṛṣi) gather together, Purukutsa's wife gives oblations to Indra and Varuṇa, and the two Gods are pleased to reward her with the birth of Trasadasyu "the demi-god, the slayer of the foe-men".

That these 4 references are late interpolations in the hymns is definite. Although it cannot be expected that there should necessarily be discernible clues to the lateness of these references in the Old Books, since that was not the intention of the interpolators (late composers from the Aṅgiras and Vasiṣṭha families), we do find such clues:

1. In the case of IV.42.8-9….although the hymn is not a Redacted Hymn, Griffith tells us that "Grassmann banishes stanzas 8, 9 and 10 to the appendix as late additions to the hymn".

2. VI.20.10 is the only verse in the Old Books, singled out by Prof. Hopkins (HOPKINS 1896a:72-73), in the "Final Note" to his path-breaking article "Prāgāthinī - I", as a verse which seems to have "interesting marks of lateness", in spite of the hymn not being a Redacted Hymn…..

3. Verse IV.38.1 is definitely totally out of place in the hymn. Hymns 38-40 are hymns in praise of Dadhikrās, the deified war-horse, and this one verse, out of the 21 verses in the three hymns, is the only verse which stands out from the other 20 verses in deifying Trasadasyu (who is not mentioned at all in the other verses) rather than Dadhikrās.

4. About VII.19, the hymn itself may have been composed long after the period of Sudās, since  Griffith points out that the contemporaneous king referred to in verse 8 is "probably a descendant of Sudās, who must have lived long before the composition of this hymn, as the favor bestowed on him is referred to as old in stanza 6".”

 

While these four references in the Old Rigveda clearly stand out as odd ones, the references to Purukutsa or his son Trasadasyu in the New Rigveda show that they are normal contemporary references to people living in that period. These references show them to be contemporaneous gift-giving kings in the period of the New Rigveda: in V.33.8 and VIII.19.32,36.

And these two hymns, where Trasadasyu is a contemporaneous living person, are New Hymns in the New Rigveda, loaded with New Words:

V.33: 2. prārya, dhiyasāna.  3. ayukta.  5. jagamyāt, yātá.  6. enī, vasavāna, mārutāśva, prārya.  7. piprīhi.  9. anūka, dádāna.  10. saṁvaraṇa. [7 verses, 13 words +C].

VIII.19: 2. vibhūta, īḷiṣva, yantura, sobharī.  6. dyumnintama.  7. svagni.  8. mitriya.  9. kṣayadvīra.  11. viṣa (servant).  12. upari, yahu, makṣūtama.  13. ajiraśocis.  15. atriṇam.  16. indratvota, gātuvid.  20. sāsaha.  24. gandha.  26. pāpatva.  28. tavāham.  31. vastu.  32. sahasramuṣka, āganma, sobharī, trāsadasyava.  35. carṣaṇīsah, mitrāryama.  [17 verses, 27 words +M].

Another additional point:

a) The eponymous Viśvāmitra was a contemporary of Sudās.

b) Trasadasyu is a contemporary and a gift-giving patron of Saṁvaraṇa Prājāpatya (V.33) and Sobhari Kāṇva (VIII.19, which is actually not even composed by the eponymous Sobhari, but by a descendant who refers to his co-composers as “Sobharis” in the plural).

c) Saṁvaraṇa Prājāpatya is a descendant of Prajāpati Vaiśvāmitra, himself a descendant of the eponymous Viśvāmitra.

The Sobharis are descendants of Sobhari Kāṇva, who is a descendant of Kaṇva Ghaura, who was a disciple or descendant of Ghora Āṅgiras, himself a junior co-composer in a late hymn in Book 3 with a Vaiśvamitra, a descendant of the eponymous Viśvāmitra.

d) If Trasadasyu is the contemporaneous patron of such far descendants of the eponymous Viśvāmitra, so far down the line, how can Trasadasyu be older and earlier than Sudās?  

 

Only a person like Jijith could claim that the contemporaneous patron king of very late hymns like V.33 and VIII.19 could be older than the period of the four Old Hymns of the Old Rigveda, IV.38 and 42;  VI.20, and VII.19, into which the names of Purukutsa and Trasadasyu were deliberately interpolated: all four of these hymns do not contain a single New Word.

I am at any rate happy that Jijith has been forced out of his Trojan Horse into the open, and is now actively and openly attacking the Internal Chronology of the Books of the Rigveda which is the foundation of the OIT, and which he otherwise pretends to be supporting. An open (or still half-open) enemy is better than a chhupa dushman.