Original or Oldest Recorded Area of the Baluchis

 

Original or Oldest Recorded Area of the Baluchis

 Shrikant G. Talageri 

 

As half-baked people (see the comments to my article just before this one, on my challenge to Koenraad Elst) keep claiming that the Baluchi people came to Baluchistan (presumably from the west?) in “medieval times”, here are the answers given by Google Overview to certain questions asked by me:

 

1. “Earliest recorded references to the Baluchi people”.

Google AI Overview reply:

“The earliest definite mentions of the Baloch people appear in 10th-century Arabic chronicles, with Arab geographers like Istakhri and Al-Muqaddasi describing them as a distinct group in the Kerman, Khorasan, Sistan, and Makran regions, powerful and nomadic, inhabiting areas from the Iranian plateau eastward. While some theories link their name to much older terms like Meluḫḫa or Gedrosia, these are speculative, with the first concrete historical references pointing to the Islamic period. 

Key Historical Mentions:

·         9th-10th Centuries CE: Arab geographers document the Baloch in the eastern Iranian plateau, noting their presence in Makran and Sistan.

·         Ibn Khordadbeh (9th Century): Described them as strong animal herders in Makran, living in wooden houses.

·         Al-Muqaddasi (10th Century): Identified them as the population of Panjgur, the capital of Makran.”

 

2. “Makran”

Google AI Overview reply:

“Makran is a semi-arid, coastal region and historical area straddling the border of southeastern Iran and southwestern Pakistan, known for its harsh terrain and strategic location on the Arabian Sea/Gulf of Oman, with recent Iranian discussions focusing on developing it as a new economic/political hub, possibly even a new capital, due to its maritime potential. Historically, it was a significant route for trade and invasions (like Alexander the Great's) and included a princely state in British India until the 1950s. 

Geography & Demographics

·         Location: A coastal strip in the Balochistan region, shared by Iran (mostly) and Pakistan.

·         Terrain: An arid plain rapidly rising to mountains, with a long coastline.

·         People: Inhabited by Baloch people, with historical Hindu and Buddhist presence, and significant cultural ties across the border.”

 

3. “Sistan”

Google AI Overview reply:

“Sistan is a historical and geographical region in southeastern Iran and southwestern Afghanistan, known for its extreme dryness, rich ancient history (home to heroes like Rostam), and status as the Sistan Basin, a major endorheic watershed fed by the Helmand River. Today, it largely encompasses Iran's large, strategically important Sistan and Baluchestan Province, known for its diverse culture, handicrafts (like Suzan-doozi embroidery), and significant natural resources.”

In short: all the earliest recorded historical references to the Baluchis place them in Baluchistan (spread out over present-day southwest Pakistan and southeast Iran) and surrounding areas. There are no earlier references to them in any other historical records placing them anywhere else.

 

In the dāśarājña battle hymn in the Rigveda, the Bhalāna are referred to as taking part in the battle in Central Punjab, on the banks of the Paruṣṇī (present-day Ravi) river, along with tribes bearing names identifiable as the proto-names of almost all the other historically-known Iranian peoples.

Even Witzel identifies them as follows:

1. "the Bhalānas tribe took part in the Ten Kings Battle (RV 7.18) that settled the suzerainty of the Bharata chieftain over the Panjab tribes. The Bhalānas are identified with the Bolān pass and river near Quetta in Baluchistan" (WITZEL:1999a:24).

2. And again: "The southernmost tribe mentioned in the RV are the Bhalānas took part in the Ten Kings Battle (RV.7.18) and are certainly to be located near the Bolān pass and river near Quetta" (WITZEL:2000a:§11).

 

The only (and really inane) argument made by people trying to have them originating much further west outside India is the fact that in the classification of Iranian languages, Baluchi is classified as a “Northwestern Iranian language”.

I asked Google the question (just for the record): “is Baluchi a Western Iranian language?”

The Google AI Overview reply: “Yes, Balochi (or Baluchi) is classified as a Northwestern Iranian language, part of the broader Western Iranian branch, related to Persian and Kurdish, though spoken today mainly in Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan, with its classification stemming from historical links to older Iranian languages like Parthian and Middle Persian”.

But the classification of Iranian languages into “Western Iranian” and “Eastern Iranian” (and further sub-groupings) is a purely linguistic classification based on the known historical geographical locations of the major Iranian languages which share these characteristics. Persian and Kurdish are more to the west (as far west as inside Turkey), and so languages closely sharing the same linguistic characteristics are called “Western Iranian” languages. But, as we saw above, Baluchi is, from the earliest recorded references to it, located in and around Baluchistan, and never in western Iran or Turkey.

And the earliesr recorded evidence show that all these Iranian languages (“Western Iranian” and “Eastern Iranian”) are located in the Punjab at the time of the dāśarājña battle in the earliest Rigvedic times.

And later, see what historical records say about the “Western Iranian” Persians:

“We find no evidence of the future ‘Iranians’ previous to the ninth century BC. The first allusion to the Parsua or Persians, then localized in the mountains of Kurdistan, and to the Madai or Medes, already established on the plain, occurs in 837 BC in connection with the expedition of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III. About a hundred years afterwards, the Medes invaded the plateau which we call Persia (or Iran) driving back or assimilating populations of whom there is no written record” (LAROUSSE 1959:321). 

“By the mid-ninth century BC two major groups of Iranians appear in cuneiform sources: the Medes and the Persians. [….]  What is reasonably clear from the cuneiform sources is that the Medes and Persians (and no doubt other Iranian peoples not identified by name) were moving into western Iran from the east” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1974, Vol.9, 832).

“‘Persians’ are first mentioned in the 9^th century BC Assyrian annals: on one campaign, in 835 BC, Shalmaneser (858-824) is said to have received tributes from 27 kings of Paršuwaš; the Medes are mentioned under Tiglath-Pileser III (744-727 BC) [….] There are no literary sources for Iranians in Central Asia before the Old Persian inscriptions (Darius’s Bisotun inscription, 521-519 BC, ed. Schmitt) these show that by the mid-1^st millennium BC tribes called Sakas by the Persians and Scythians by the Greeks were spread throughout Central Asia, from the westernmost edges (north and northwest of the Black Sea) to its easternmost borders” (SKJÆRVØ 1995:156).

So it is time people stopped raising juvenile objections to the identification of the Rigvedic bhalānas with the Baluchi people, or claiming that the Baluchi language is a “western Iranian” language and that this therefore proves that they originated in West Asia or western Iran.

A Moral/Ethical Question: Let The Guilty Escape?

 

A Moral/Ethical Question: Let The Guilty Escape?

Shrikant G. Talageri 

 

Recently, I wrote an article “Terrorists and Terrorism and the Rights and Wrongs of the Matter”, in which I supported a kind of “vigilantism” shown in an American serial “Dexter” that I happen to be watching at the moment, where the protagonist of the serial is basically a psychopathic serial killer himself but he goes around fulfilling his psychopathic urges and obsessions by targeting and killing only (other) psychopathic serial killers and criminals who manage to escape the clutches of the extremely faulty American Justice System.

One reader in a long and sensitive comment pointed out that treating violence as a solution to crime could be dangerous since “as nobody is perfect, those who resort to such vigilantism also can evolve to become the monsters they set out to punish. Yet they might continue to believe they are doing a great service as they have convinced themselves of it from the start.”

I replied: “I agree with you. But isn't this exactly what I am also saying in the above article: "And indeed, human beings being human beings with their multiple faults, the individuals and organizations who/which start out on such activities generally tend to acquire criminal tendencies themselves in the course of time and become at least as big a problem as the socio-criminal tendencies and problems in society that they set out (or claimed to set out) to counter in the first place: perhaps Naxalites who claimed to have set out to oppose socio-economic exploitation in rural and tribal parts of India are the most telling examples of this. So it is not practical or realistic to really support violent vigilantism as a real solution to problems." I have given both the sides, you are only emphasizing one.” To which, the reader readily agreed.

I must add here that in supporting “vigilantism” of this kind, apart from noting the fact that such activities can go rotten, I must also note that to indulge in such violent activities you require to have some kind of similar strong or violent (which may extend in extreme cases to dangerous) element in your own personality as well. Thus I myself would never have been able to become a soldier or policeman or violent vigilante myself (any more than I could have become a street-fighter or a violent criminal of any kind) because such activity is simply not part of my personality. Crime-fighters do necessarily require to have, within themselves, some kind of similar (to criminals) violent traits, or readiness to indulge in violence in particular circumstances, in order to fight criminals.

 

But this exchange again brought to my mind this moral/ethical question of innocent vs. guilty people.

[I also thought I vaguely remembered a quotation from the Mahabharata which referred to such a question. But, when I recalled the full context, and searched out the quotation, it turned out to refer to a different, if equally debatable, kind of moral/ethical question which is not strictly relevant here since it does not directly pertain to any question of guilt or innocence. The quotation is from the Vidura nīti section of the Udyoga Parva (Book 5). in which Vidura advices Dhṛtarāṣṭra to sacrifice his son Duryodhana for the greater good of the clan and community:

“Tyajed ekam kulasyārthe grāmasyārthe kulaṃ tyajet | Grāmaṃ janapadasyārthe ātmārthe pṛthivīṃ tyajet ||”. That is: “One individual should be sacrificed for the sake of the family. An entire family should be sacrificed for the sake of a village. A village should be sacrificed for the sake of the country or state (janapada). For the sake of the Self (Atman or self-realization), the whole world/earth should be sacrificed.”]   

Searching for the quotation relevant to my point, I found the following on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio

“In criminal law, Blackstone's ratio (more recently referred to occasionally as Blackstone's formulation) is the idea that:

It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.^[1]

This was written by the English jurist William Blackstone in his seminal work Commentaries on the Laws of England, published in the 1760s.

The idea subsequently became a staple of legal thinking in jurisdictions with legal systems derived from English criminal law and continues to be a topic of debate. There is also a long pre-history of similar sentiments going back centuries in a variety of legal traditions…..

Defending British soldiers charged with murder for their role in the Boston Massacre, John Adams also expanded upon the rationale behind Blackstone's Ratio when he stated:

We find, in the rules laid down by the greatest English Judges, who have been the brightest of mankind; We are to look upon it as more beneficial, that many guilty persons should escape unpunished, than one innocent person should suffer. The reason is, because it’s of more importance to community, that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt should be punished; for guilt and crimes are so frequent in the world, that all of them cannot be punished; and many times they happen in such a manner, that it is not of much consequence to the public, whether they are punished or not. But when innocence itself, is brought to the bar and condemned, especially to die, the subject will exclaim, it is immaterial to me, whether I behave well or ill; for virtue itself, is no security. And if such a sentiment as this, should take place in the mind of the subject, there would be an end to all security what so ever.^[”

 

The immediate precursors of Blackstone's ratio in English law were articulations by Hale (about 100 years earlier) and John Fortescue (about 300 years before that), both influential jurists in their time. Hale wrote: "for it is better five guilty persons should escape unpunished, than one innocent person should die." Fortescue's De Laudibus Legum Angliae (c. 1470) states that "one would much rather that twenty guilty persons should escape the punishment of death, than that one innocent person should be condemned and suffer capitally."

Some 300 years before Fortescue, the Jewish legal theorist Maimonides wrote that "the Exalted One has shut this door" against the use of presumptive evidence, for "it is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death."

 

Even Voltaire in 1748 in the work of Zadig used a similar saying, although in French his thought is stated differently than in the English translation: "It is from him that the nations hold this great principle, that it is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent man.”

 

There is also an opposite viewpoint:

“Viewpoints in politics

Authoritarian personalities tend to take the opposite view. According to the Communist defector, Jung Chang, similar reasoning was deployed during the uprisings in Jiangxi, China, in the 1930s: "Better to kill a hundred innocent people than let one truly guilty person go free";^[25] and during uprisings in Vietnam in the 1950s: "Better to kill ten innocent people than let a guilty person escape."^[26] Similarly in Cambodia, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge adopted a similar policy: "better arrest an innocent person than leave a guilty one free."^[27] Wolfgang Schäuble referenced this principle while saying that it is not applicable to the context of preventing terrorist attacks.^[28] Former American Vice President Dick Cheney said that his support of American use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" against suspected terrorists was unchanged by the fact that 25% of CIA detainees subject to that treatment were later proven to be innocent, including one who died of hypothermia in CIA custody. "I'm more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that in fact were innocent." Asked whether the 25% margin was too high, Cheney responded, "I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective. ... I'd do it again in a minute."”

 

The first question that arises from all this is: is it absolutely essential that “letting guilty persons escape” and “letting innocent persons suffer” must necessarily be juxtaposed and linked together, and made negatively dependent on each other? Can’t it simply be “let guilty persons suffer and let innocent persons escape” instead of “it is better to let guilty persons escape than to let innocent persons suffer” (the so-called humanitarian view) or “it is better to let innocent persons suffer than to let guilty persons escape” (the authoritarian view)?

And is it really a fact that the justice systems of the so-called democratic modern western world generally follow any of these three principles in their sincere “legal” application of “laws” in making legal judgments on the innocence and guilt of accused criminals who appear before the judges in their courts (even when − as they very often do − corruption, bias and ulterior motives do not rule the rulings, and the rulings are strictly as per “legal” rules and procedures)?

In my article “Hindutva or Hindu Nationalism” I referred to an American TV serial “The Practice” which (like almost every other TV serial about court cases in the west, which would seem to suggest that this is the norm or generally observable case in the west) seems to follow the principle (unless it is exposing the distortions in the principle)  “it is better to see that all the rules and regulations of the Law (including and especially all its logical loopholes)  are strictly followed than to allow questions of actual guilt or innocence to decide the judgments and rulings, or to decide whether to let innocent persons suffer or to let guilty persons escape”. No wonder Law is the biggest, most powerful and most lucrative business in the West.

In that article, I wrote: “Let us examine, as briefly as possible, the relevance of the above basic principles, or the different ways in which the present set-up and trends are moving in the direction opposite to these basic principles:

1) The first basic principle, enumerated above, is the primacy of the spirit of Justice over the letter of the Law. This is important because Law has not always been synonymous with Justice in this world. A blind belief in the sanctity of the Law, and in the power of Authority to enforce the Law, has always been fostered by different entities (eg. by different kings, governments, civilisations, religions, priesthoods, etc.) to establish, and maintain, their stranglehold over their followers or subjects. Every Authority, the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan as much as the democratic government in the USA, believes, or claims, that its system of Law is the best in the world. But the truth is that most laws are formulated, established and enforced by vested interests, and, throughout history, laws have, more often than not, been used more to perpetrate injustice and exploitation than to establish Truth and Justice. Even the seemingly most impartial and objective laws are susceptible to willful technical misinterpretations. The western or “modern” system of Justice, as much as any other, is notorious for its great capacity for manipulation and injustice.

[There is an American serial on the Star World channel, “The Practice”, which depicts the gross injustices that take place in the American system, where heinous crimes - murder, serial killings, rape, cannibalism, to name a few - go unpunished because the judges, lawyers and juries conclude that even open-and-shut cases do not merit convictions if there are technical - sometimes incredibly, trivially technical - grounds for acquittal; while even openly innocent people are convicted on equally technical grounds. The serial, incidentally, defends and justifies such a system]. Similarly, in India, rules and laws (and, especially in modern contexts, “discipline”) have always been, at the very least, instruments for the victimization of sincere people, for the benefit of vested interests, and for the legitimization of unjust or wasteful systems and activities.

There is no doubt that a lawless society cannot be an ideal: laws are absolutely necessary for the smooth running of society; but only when they are formulated, and administered, on the principles of Truth and Justice, and guided by logic, common sense, and principles of common humanitarianism.”

 

In so many cases, the purely technical nature of the points which let a guilty criminal go free, or which let an innocent accused get convicted, are so clearly open and obvious that few can honestly feign ignorance or unawareness of the fact that Justice is being grossly violated. The whole thing is defended and excused on the ground that “this is the Law, and it must be respected and enforced”.

In many cases, even this fig leaf of doubt is missing, and this is where the apologists have to fall back on “humanitarianism” (at least in the case of letting the guilty go free). And this “humanitarianism” is often even more ghoulishly criminal, inhuman and psychopathic than the actions of either the criminals themselves or of any violent vigilantes. The example of the Indian Courts not only letting the minor (who not only raped “Nirbhaya” in the notorious Delhi gang rape incident, but ghoulishly inserted a rod into her body and pulled out her intestines) go free with a nominal sentence of a few years in a “reform facility”, but actually (out of the taxpayers’ money and with the assistance of tax-financed administrations) let him anonymously loose (with a new secret identity) in a totally undisclosed part of South India, shows how the “Laws” and “legal systems” can even exceed the ghoulishness and perverted sadism displayed by the actual criminals themselves. When we see, in films and serials and news reports, the person raped by the powerful local politician’s son in a remote village being punished by the sarpanch or panchayat for trying to “blacken the name of a respected member of society”, how is it different from how the “Laws” and “legal systems” in almost every part of the world treat criminals and their victims most of the time? Is blind belief in “Laws” and “legal systems” really something to recommend with fundamentalist fervor?

A second point that all these advocates of pious “moral-ethical” maxims like “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer” turn a blind eye to is the fact that each of those ten “guilty persons”, who “escape” punishment, and are let loose on society, can then again kill or victimize ten other innocent people? Apparently those hundred innocent people (if one must compulsorily juxtapose guilty persons escaping as equivalent to, or even “being better than”, innocent persons not suffering) have less value than that one innocent person in the eyes of these moralists. As I said, why not just accept the principle “let guilty persons suffer and let innocent persons escape” and see that it is followed?

These are just my personal thoughts on this moral-ethical question.      

 

 

   

 

Koenraad Elst: I Challenge You To Either Prove Your Words or To Eat Them Rather Than Playing Politics and Verbal Games

 

Koenraad Elst: I Challenge You To Either Prove Your Words or To Eat Them Rather Than Playing Politics and Verbal Games

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

Someone just sent me a very interesting tweet just put up by Koenraad Elst. Apparently, someone put up a tweet saying he did not take Jijith seriously. And Koenraad replied:

https://x.com/ElstKoenraad/status/2001266760063033765

“Those are only Jijith's Twitter posts. To take his true measure, read his books. His historical assessments of scripture are revolutionary, & totally unrefuted. For the 1st time ever, the Vedas & Epics make sense against the background of *reality*.”

5:52 PM · Dec 17 2025

 

Really? His books are “revolutionary and totally unrefuted”, and “For the 1st time ever, the Vedas & Epics make sense against the background of *reality*.”?

Thank you for coming out in the open. At least you have taken one step towards speaking the truth (about your agenda), and also making very clear your (till now closeted) low opinion about the amount of “sense” that my own analysis of the Vedas “makes”. And also making clear your equally low opinion about my point-by-point factual and data-based criticism (in my review) of his extremely fictitious story-book “Rivers of Ṛgveda”!

But opinions have zero value without data-based arguments and evidence. Isn’t that the principled stand you always pretend to take in your twitter squabbles with your critics and with trolls? Why don’t you move one step ahead on the march towards openness and honesty and actually give your detailed point-by-point reply to the criticism of his book in my review of his book below, instead of playing politics and stonewalling the refutation, all the while pretending and even proclaiming that his books are “revolutionary and totally unrefuted”? Or at least admit (point-by-point) that you accept all his fictitious creations, starting with the five Sarayu rivers and the two mutually inimical Bharata tribes who are both the heroes of different hymns in the Rigveda?

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2022/03/a-review-of-rivers-of-rgveda-by-jijith.html

 

For many months you and Jijith were carrying on a grand and relentless disinformation campaign about my analysis of the Rigveda (Manu in Ayodhya, Divodāsa and Sudās in Kashi, etc. etc.) which remained unchecked even after I repeatedly clarified the points in public (and before that in discussion threads on the now closed-down Indic discussion group), until I had to remove my kid-gloves, abandon discretion and politeness, and openly call out your lies. I thought you had stopped your attacks, but this above tweet shows that you were only biding your time.  I do not wish to again indulge in mutual mudslinging.

Please keep the discussion (if you dare to have it) restricted to the data, and give your point-by-point data-based replies to every point of criticism of his first book that I have made in my above review. I address this to you, Koenraad, and wish to have nothing to do with Jijith himself (I cannot function at that level of inanity). Don’t shoot from his shoulders.

In any case, I have no genuine expectations of objective scholarship or honesty from you now, after your continuous display of being on the same intellectual level as Jijith. So I do not really expect you to behave like a scholar instead of like a person with an agenda.

ADDED 22 Dec 2025:

I am told Koenraad replied to someone (I don’t have that tweet) as follows:

https://x.com/ElstKoenraad/status/2002733803966759195

“Scientists sometimes propose hypotheses that don’t hold up in the end. It could even happen to Jijith. But that someone “prioritizes his imagination over facts” doesn’t apply to him at all. It’s a flippant allegation that clearly comes from someone w/out experience in research”.

7:02 PM · Dec 21, 2025.

Well, I don’t require a certificate from Koenraad or anyone else as to whether I for one am or am not “someone w/out experience in research”, or whether or not I am being “flippant”, but I have pointed out in detail how every part of Jijith’s book “Rivers of Ṛgveda” reeks of an imagination gone berserk with no basis in facts. Would Koenraad for starters (and just for starters) point out the “facts”, as opposed to a wild imagination, which indicate that the rivers Sarasvatī, Dṛṣadvatī or Haro were ever also known as Sarayu; or that there are two groups of protagonist  Bharatas in the Rigveda (called the “Tṛtsu Bharatas” and “Saṁvaraṇa Bharatas”), both being enemies in two different battles, with the former being the heroes (and the latter the antagonists) in the dāśarājña battle and the latter being the heroes (and the former the antagonists) in a separate battle called the battle of Asiknī?

Now when Koenraad squabbles with his foes on “X” and elsewhere, and preaches the ethics and logic of debate with them, he is definitely being flippant when he accuses them of failing to stick to facts and data. Perhaps their not being “scientists” as per his definition justifies his double standards?  In my thirty-three years of acquaintance with him, I never suspected him to be capable of such a degree of intellectual dishonesty and cowardice. 

Any Logic in Treating These References to River Names as Establishing Some Kind of Historical Chronology?

 

Any Logic in Treating These References to River Names as Establishing Some Kind of Historical Chronology?

 Shrikant G. Talageri 

Koenraad Elst (who treats every utterance of certain Scientists as Historical Revelations as long as the utterances abound in Puranic names) has apparently reposted the following tweet:

https://x.com/Jijith_NR/status/2000962019487588468

“Rivers remember rulers, long after kings are forgotten. In early Indian memory, rivers are not passive geography. They are political statements encoded in poetry. When Gaṅgā is called Jāhnavī, it is not a mythological accident. It records Kuśika dominance over the Gaṅgā basin: Jahnu > Jāhnavī - a name anchored to the lineage of Viśvāmitra, the Kuśika seer-warrior of the Early Ṛgveda. The same political language repeats later: • Bhagīratha > Bhāgīrathī: - Ikṣvāku control of Gaṅgā • Gaṅgā as wife of Śantanu: - Kuru sovereignty over the Gaṅgā heartland. Each renaming marks who commanded the river corridor at that time. Poetry preserved what inscriptions did not. This places Viśvāmitra’s Kuśika phase earliest, before Ikṣvāku and long before the Kurus. Early Ṛgveda (3rd Maṇḍala) supports this sequence. Viśvāmitra appears as the military-political adviser of Sudās, whose territory lay between Yamunā and Sutlej. East of him lay Kikata, not yet Pañcāla land. Viśvāmitra’s campaign pushed Kuśika influence toward the Gaṅgā, remembered as Jāhnavī. Only much later does Gaṅgā become the Kuru river. #Vedic #history”.

9:41 PM · Dec 16, 2025

 

I have no doubt that “Rivers remember rulers, long after kings are forgotten. In early Indian memory, rivers are not passive geography. They are political statements encoded in poetry”. But what exactly does the rest of the tweet show in this respect? I am a bit confused.

Does this mean that Jāhnavī (urf Jahnāvī) is the oldest name of the Gaṅgā river? That it is named Jahnāvī on the basis of an ancestral (to Viśvāmitra) person named Jahnu? That it acquired this name after the period of Sudās, when “Viśvāmitra’s campaign pushed Kuśika influence toward the Gaṅgā, remembered as Jāhnavī”? And that the river came to be known as Gaṅgā in much later (Kuru) times on the basis of Śantanu acquiring control of the area?

The fact is that both the names, Gaṅgā and Jahnāvī, are old names of the river (perhaps for different parts of the river) and, for what it matters, the name Gaṅgā is the older one at least in record since it is already mentioned as an old name of a traditionally known river (with the bushes on its banks already a subject of idiomatic imagery) in the Oldest Book 6, long before Viśvāmitra of Book 3, and definitely very long before Śantanu of the latest Book 10 (and the period of the Kurus). And Jāhnavī is already mentioned by Viśvāmitra in Book 3 as an existing name of the river associated with the east (i.e. as symbolically the direction whence the Aśvins accompany the rising Sun, or Uṣas the Goddess of the Dawn, as her charioteers).

Whether Jahnu is the actual name of a king who ruled the area (and was an ancestor of Viśvāmitra) is again uncertain: his name appears only in later literature, and the people of the area are already referred to as Jāhnavas in post-Rigvedic Vedic texts (indicating their residence in the area of that river rather than as the name of an ancestral king whose name was given to the river) long before the name of any such king appears in the records. Clearly, the name of the river predates (at least as a matter of record) the name of any king of that name. That he was an ancestor of Viśvāmitra is again a matter of Epic-Puranic myths as part of the lore about Viśvāmitra originally being a king who was in conflict with the rishi Vasiṣṭha, which again has no basis in any Vedic reference.

 

I specially mention this because the name of the river precedes the related name of any dynasty or king, and any association of the origin of the name of this river as being derived from the name of this “king” is part of Puranic lore rather than of Vedic record. And because I have already made this point before in reply to Witzel’s notorious ”review”, in 2001, of my book published in the year 2000.

I will quote the relevant portion from my reply to his review, in which he accused me of having a “Purāṇic mindset” and an “Amar Chitrakatha” type of view of Vedic history, and I pointed out that it was in fact his own interpretation which reeked of a “Purāṇic mindset” and an “Amar Chitrakatha” type of view of Vedic history:

“III.1.a) Jahnāvī  and the dolphin:

Witzel sharply rejects my identification of RV jahnāvī  as the Gangā , and in the process, of the śiṁśumāra as the Gangetic dolphin, and devotes a whole section (§4) as well as numerous other references (particularly in §5) to the subject. These two words (jahnāvī  and śiṁśumāra) provide the context for repeated references to my “purāṇic preconceptions” “lack of grammatical and linguistic expertise”, and all the numerous references to my ignorance on “zoological” matters.

To begin with, he rejects (§4) on “linguistic” grounds my “claim that RV jahnāvī  > post RV jāhnavī.” According to him, “the meaning of that word can .... be explained along simple linguistic and grammatical lines as follows: female derivatives of masculine names often have vṛddhi in the second last syllable ... That is all there is to it.”

But who has disputed the fact that RV jahnāvī is a “female derivative” of a masculine name, and how does this negate, on linguistic grounds, its connection with post-RV jāhnavī which is also a “female derivative” of the same name? The only difference is that jahnāvī is RV and jāhnavī is its post-RV form. Just like manāvī is the older form of mānavī.

Then Witzel insists that jahnāvī in the RV refers to “the wife or a female relation of jahnu or otherwise connected to him or his clan” (§4): a broad category-reference (anything but the river!) to a woman totally unknown to the whole of Sanskrit literature and to all traditional and almost all modern commentators on the RV, but so important that she is mentioned twice in the RV (and in obscure contexts where her womanhood is difficult to envisage) while “jahnu” and his clan (both of whose very existence Witzel assumes on the basis of post-RV literature) do not merit a single mention!....

…. It is difficult to know where the Purāṇas enter into the picture: the Jāhnavī is a river of U.P. (also, and more commonly, known as the Gaṅgā) as simply as the Yamunā is a river of U.P. — But the Purāṇas do figure in Witzel’s claim that the word refers to the “wife or female relation of Jahnu” (a “chieftain” or person known only from the Purāṇas as an eponymous ancestor of the Jāhnavas referred to in post-Samhita Vedic literature).”