Interesting
Ending to Manu-in-Ayodhya Imbroglio
Shrikant G. Talageri
After my last three articles on the subject, this article had to be written. After Koenraad Elst gave his reply (in five parts), in all fairness I cannot ignore it, can I? It is a very interesting reply in itself as I will point out below, and indeed there is need to point out what his rather complicated reply tells us.
I. His five part reply:
“In
expectation of an article about the Manu-in-Ayodhya controversy (which I ought
to have taken more seriously), already this comment on the true story as per
the horse’s mouth. I was apparently right in locating Ikṣvāku’s dynasty as per
the horse’s mouth in Ayodhya, & at any/1”
Last edited
12:02 PM · Jun 18, 2025
“2/ rate in the east,
whence Aikṣvāku/Solar king Māndhātā came to help his Paurava in-laws, then to
return to his Aikṣvāku seat in Ayodhyā. Ikṣvāku was the successor (&
perhaps figuratively, "son") of Manu. The most economical hypothesis
is that he was born in Manu's Palace.”
Last edited
12:24 PM · Jun 18, 2025
“3/ But this isn't
strictly proven. Since only 6000y have passed, I should have done better than
to make this hazy assumption. So, Talageri's confirmed position about the Solar
dynasty's eastern location does indeed imply nothing about Manu. Sorry there,
Shrikant.”
Last edited
12:49 PM · Jun 18, 2025
“4/ It so happens that
in this case, the Purāṇa-based picture, of Manu's Lunar descendents trekking
west from the Ayodhyā area, is supported by 2 Vedic data: the east-to-west
rivers sequence, and the early reference to the Gaṅgā landscape as proverbially
well-known.”
Last edited
12:53 PM · Jun 18, 2025
“5/ It is this
convergence of evidence that persuaded me, & it is what I have remembered
since. This is a perfectly innocent psychology; at worst a "mistake"
can be involved, but no indication of a "lie", a word I've lately had
to hear a dozen times in this context.”
Last edited
1:12 PM · Jun 18, 2025
II. The meaning of his reply:
Here is how a reader of his comments (the same one who prodded him into replying) takes his reply:
(After tweet no 3):
“Sir Mr Talageri was
extremely upset due to your taking this issue lightly. But now that You have
said 'sorry' and admitted to misconstruing Talageri's position, you have set
the record straight. Thanks (Don't forget to check out the article that he has
addressed directly to U)”
1:01 PM · Jun
18, 2025
Was it a “sorry”? Well, I had never asked for or wanted a “sorry”, but for a clarification of a repeatedly repeated canard which was grossly misrepresenting my OIT case. Was his reply even a clarification of a repeatedly repeated canard? He calls it “innocent psychology”: so innocent that he stuck through it for months until a reply was practically forced out of him. He could have clarified that it was a “mistake” months ago instead of determinedly repeating it again and again against my repeated denials, and then comparing my alleged “location in Ayodhya” with Jijith’s stated “location in Haryana” to my detriment (repeatedly asserting that he found Jijith’s actually stated location more credible than “my” alleged location which I had never-ever-stated or even hinted).
Nevertheless
this matter is closed: let us assume it was a mistake he is now admitting.
But is he
admitting it? In any case, what is the new picture that rises from his reply?
His reply concedes that “Talageri's confirmed position about the Solar dynasty's eastern location does indeed imply nothing about Manu”. So I am out of the picture.
But this present round of discussion on Manu-in-Ayodhya started with Koenraad’s following tweet just six days ago:
“So much the better. Sometimes one is glad to have been wrong. At any rate, the only extant alternative to Shrikant Talageri's locating Manu in Ayodhya is Jijith Nadumuri Ravi, locating him in Haryana. I have no new arguments to add to their respective positions.”
4:08 PM. June 12, 2025.
But while Koenraad now concedes that I have not located Manu in Ayodhya, his above reply seems to indicate that he himself now locates Manu in Ayodhya:
1. “Ikṣvāku was the successor
(& perhaps figuratively, "son") of Manu. The most economical
hypothesis is that he was born in Manu's Palace.”
2. the Purāṇa-based picture,
of Manu's Lunar descendents trekking west from the Ayodhyā area, is supported
by 2 Vedic data: the east-to-west rivers sequence, and the early reference to the
Gaṅgā landscape as proverbially well-known.”
I have never
spoken of Manu and Ikṣvāku as actual human historical kings with
kingdoms, capitals, palaces and courts. or other geographical and chronological
specifics (except in quoting the formulations of other Purana-based scholars). I
have held that they were hypothetical ancestral figures
postulated for actual existing tribal conglomerates which covered different
parts of India at the point of time when the writers of the Puranas started
collating their traditional history. I have started the historical Puranic
narrative at the point where the Ikṣvākus are in the east, and
the other five “Lunar” tribes in the west in their respective
locations, and have never spoken about earlier people “trekking” in any
direction, east or west, before those historical locations. Thus, I have never
ever spoken of “Manu's Lunar descendents trekking west from the Ayodhyā area”.
[Yes, in my linguistic analyses, I have postulated that there were other “Indo-European” branches spoken to the east of the Vedic Pūru area, whose languages, lost to the actual record, contained linguistic features found in other IE branches outside India but not in “Vedic Indo-Aryan” or “Indo-Iranian”, and also suggested that the original PIE originated further east and had contacts with other eastern speeches. I have even suggested that the Ikṣvākus and other eastern and southern tribes must have spoken these languages which got completely Sanskritized in the course of time and have therefore not left detailed records. But I nowhere connected these with textual descriptions of migrations of Puranic tribes, and certainly not with hypothetical ancestral figures.]
Koenraad, however still treats the earliest names of ancestors as historical, and talks about Puranic tribes trekking in different directions before arriving in their historical Puranic original locations.
After Koenraad’s above tweet no 4, note someone’s comment and Koenraad’s reply:
(After tweet no 4)
“Manu
is as real as Unicorn”
12:53
PM · Jun 18, 2025
“In "rationalist" circles you'll
harvest some success w/ it, but it's hopelessly obsolete, from the scientistic
wave of late 19th century. Of Laozi, Jesus, Mo & other founders it has been
questioned whether they existed. By now their names are still doubted, but of
course /1”
1:27
PM · Jun 18, 2025
2/ someone on whose life events his foundational story
was based, did exist. Unlike the names of his children, "Manu" was
first a figure from myth (the Creator, together w/ Yemo/Yama, his
"twin"), then the (possibly postumous) title of a founder-king. Greco-Roman
sources call
3:23
PM · Jun 18, 2025
“3/ him Dis Pater, "divine
father". So many literarily attested figures (Troy, the Hittites, Jesus,
Zarathuštra, Rāma) have been declared non-existent until their existence was
corroborated, often from unexpected quarters.”
5:00
PM · Jun 18, 2025
So Koenraad clearly accepts Manu as an actual historical human being of that name having “Lunar descendents trekking west from the Ayodhyā area”. I have no argument with that: it just happens to not be my position: that is all.
Should Koenraad’s earlier tweeted “alternative” now be restated as follows: “the only extant alternative to Koenraad Elst's locating Manu in Ayodhya is Jijith Nadumuri Ravi, locating him in Haryana”? My views on this point are in a different category altogether: I don’t locate Manu, Ikṣvāku, Iḷā etc. anywhere in particular.
Namaste!
ReplyDeleteFor a balanced view, readers must read my refutation of all the points raised by Talageri against my book, Rivers of Rgveda.
https://www.academia.edu/73752426/In_Defense_of_the_Book_Rivers_of_Rgveda
This book endorses Shrikant Talageri's great books upto 2008 and presents them positively.
This is the irony!
The purpose of my book Rivers of Rgveda wasn't to create an alternate OIT version, but to create a foundation for my next two books, Geography of Ramayana and Geography of Mahabharata! This is because the Rigvedic Geography is the oldest Geography Layer. It acts as a foundation for the multi-layered Ramayana Geography and Mahabharata Geography. However, the book Rivers of Rgveda ended up correcting some minor mistakes in Talageri's OIT scholarship.
One is the location of Sarayu, which is correctly the Haro River (Sarayu - Haroyu - Haro[yu] - Haro) in Pakistan and not Harirud in Afghanistan, as Talageri thinks.
The other is the chronological positioning of Purukutsa and Trasadasyu in the Rgveda.
If you follow Oldenberg and Aitareya Brahmana classification of which hymn is late and which hymn is authentic, then both Trasadasyu and his father Purukutsa are mentioned properly in the Early Rgvedic Mandalas as contemporary to Early Rgveda itself. They are mentioned within the authentic Early Rgvedic hymns, which are not classified by Oldenberg or Aitareya Brahmana as relatively late.
It is Talageri who deviated here from this norm and brought in some strange arguments to push Trasadasyu and Purukutsa as Late Rgvedic, by mistaking references to descendants of Trasadasyu to be Trasadasyu himself!
Talageri says I talk about 5 Sarayus.
My book focuses only on 3 Sarayus - Ancestral, Western and Eastern.
However, the book does refer to two more Sarayus. The 4th one is the Harirud of Afghanistan, which I disagree with being identified as the Rgvedic Sarayu! The 5th is Sutlej (Sutudri, Satadru), which technically gets the name "Sarayu" due to its origin from the Saras, that is Manasa Saras (Manasarovar), exactly from where the Eastern Sarayu (Ghaghara) originates.
But practically, Sarayu can be used as a generic river name (indicating flow of water, sr: to move, to flow, to glide). Thus, Sara means both water and lake.
Hence, the river names Sarayu and Sarasvati both mean almost the same thing - flow (sr) of water, which may or may not involve lakes (sara).
Because of this, there can be many more rivers with or resembling the names like Sarayu and Sarasvati in the entire IE-speaking world of Eurasia, or IE influence areas like SE Asia, unknown to us. Similar is Apa[ya] again meaning flow of water (Apa) used for many rivers in the world as Ob, Obe, Ab, Abe, Ap, Apo, Abo etc. The river inside Vara Prithivya is called Apaya in RV and Apaga in MBH. Apaga is used once to denote the specific river Chandrabhaga (Chenab / Asikni) in MBH. Bhishma is called Apaga Suta, where the poet implies Ganga as Apaga (a generic river name Apaga applied to the specific river Ganga). Hence, Talageri's counting of the number of Sarayus is not substantial for a river name, which can repeat multiple times in a wide geographical area due to migration or due to it being a generic river name.
Sarasvati as Ancestral Sarayu:-
Apart from the evidence given in Rivers of Rgveda, with Manu & Ila close to Sarasvati represented by the place-names Manusha and Ilaspada (implying Manu's son and Ila's brother Ikshvaku too as close to Sarasvati), I note more evidence from Mahabharata, where Sarasvati is directly called Ikshumati. This is mentioned in the book Geography of Mahabharata. That settles the matter. Ancestral Sarayu was Sarasvati herself.
On Manthatha
ReplyDeleteMahabharata clearly mentions Mandhatha as a king ruling in the Yamuna-Sarasvati region (Haryana). Ramayana mentions Mandhata's conflicts with rulers of Mathura and his wish to take half of Indra's domains - alluding to Vara Prthivya (Kurukshetra / North Haryana) and Kurujangala (South Haryana), which much later inspired the name of Indraprastha for the new Kurujangala capital of the Pandavas. Manthatha in Haryana aligns with Manu and Ikshwaku in Haryana, which we have already established.
On Manu
Talageri's old books, writings and talks I have personally listened to, mention Mandhata coming from Ayodhya to NW India to fight Druhyus and after creating an Ikshvaku lineage there (the Rgvedic Trkshi lineage in which Purukutsa and Trasadasyu were born later), then returning to Ayodhya!!!!
I have noted his writing where he has endorsed even the son of Manu, that is, Ikshvaku, as the king of Ayodhya. All this automatically implies Manu is from Ayodhya, even if it is not explicitly mentioned.
https://x.com/Jijith_NR/status/1934937723552547155
The same Valmiki Ramayana, in its late Kanda (Bala Kanda), mentions Manu as the founder of Ayodhya.
Post-Rgvedic texts, like the Puranas and the late additions in Ramayana (mostly found in Bala Kanda & Uttara Kanda), record the post-migration scenario of the Iksvakus after they had already reached Ayodhya from the banks of Sarasvati. These texts report all Iksvaku lineage ancestors, including Manu, and Manu's son Iksvaku as the rulers of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh. If one follows these and endorses these, it is as good as agreeing that Manu was the founder of Ayodhya.
https://x.com/Jijith_NR/status/1934943776646246646
If a person follows the very late texts like the Puranas, he gets the opposite result, that the Ikshvakus (like Manthata) migrated from Ayodhya (North Eastern UP) to the Punjab Region. Similarly, the same texts give the wrong impression of the Sudyumna dynasty (i.e Aila dynasty) migrating from South Eastern UP to the Punjab Region.
Both for Ikshvakus and Ailas, the original destination is the Sarasvati Region. Correspondingly, the oldest archaeological sites are along Sarasvati & Drishadvati like Bhirrana (8000 BCE), Rakhigarhi (6000 BCE), Kunal (4000 BCE), etc.
Both for Ikshvakus and Alis, the final destinations are as reported by the later Puranas in North Eastern UP and South Eastern UP. Correspondingly, Ayodhya, Kausambi and Kashi emerged in the 2000-1500 BCE period.
We also have the Purus later shifting from Hastinapura to the much eastern Kausambi before the lifetime of Buddha. This is also recorded in the Puranas, which were continuously edited from 1700 BCE to 1900 CE.
Rigveda gives the oldest snapshot, and the Puranas give a later snapshot. This is an important lesson for all Indologists, especially those doing a comparative analysis of the Rgveda, Ramayana, Mahabharata and the Puranas.
I will not repeat everything that I have written again and again.
DeleteOnly a small request: please stop referring to Mandhata as Manthatha. if you cannot even get the name right, you lose out right there.