The Absurdities of Vedveer Arya’s Chronological Theories

 

The Absurdities of Vedveer Arya’s Chronological Theories

Shrikant G. Talageri 

 

Someone has just sent me a tweet by Vedveer Arya apparently uploaded less than an hour ago:

https://x.com/VedveerArya3/status/2014349521124499940

“Why It Is Absurd to Relatively Date the Mandalas of the Rigveda  ……………………………………………….

According to Shrikant Talageri, the 6th Mandala is the oldest. The hymns of the 6th Mandala were composed by eight Rishis belonging to the Bharadvāja gotra, with Bharadvāja Bārhaspatya (son of Bṛhaspati) authoring 59 of its 75 sūktas.

In this mandala, Bharadvāja refers to King Nami Sāpya (6.20.6). The Pañcaviṃśa Brāhmaṇa states that Nami Sāpya was the first to perform the Sarasvatīya Sattra and that he travelled from Plakṣa Prāsravaṇa (the source of the Sarasvatī) to Vinaśana (the place where the river disappeared). This clearly indicates that the Sarasvatī had already been lost in the desert at Vinaśana well before the time of Videha King Nami Sāpya.

Consequently, Bharadvāja Bārhaspatya must be counted among the latest Rishis of the Rigvedic period. If the 6th Mandala is treated as the oldest, a serious chronological contradiction arises: how could Rishi Gṛtsamada (of the 2nd Mandala) and other Rishis describe the Sarasvatī as the mighty, flowing “nadītamā” river and refer to the Sadānīra — features that belong to an earlier phase when the Sarasvatī was still a perennial river? This makes any relative dating of the mandalas chronologically untenable.

It is fundamentally mistaken to assign relative dates to entire mandalas of the Rigveda. The true authors of the mantras are the individual Rishis who composed the sūktas. Chronology must therefore be established by dating these Rishis through careful relative analysis of their references and historical indicators, rather than by mechanically dating whole mandalas.

The entire framework of relatively dating the mandalas is a speculative construct introduced by colonial Indologists, which many later Indian scholars have adopted without critical examination.”

8:18 PM ·Jan 22, 2026

 

I find it strange that a person living in a glass house should dare to throw stones at a stone house. Vedveer Arya’s absurd datings have been noted by me in an earlier article:

This man, whose datings are so absolutely absurd that they will never be taken seriously by any genuine scholar, has a very large fan following, as will any man who writes nonsense, because nonsensical claims seem to attract certain types of minds.

But even within his own range of absurd dates, how does he fit in his mad ramblings in the above tweet?

1. In this tweet he tells us that “In this mandala, Bharadvāja refers to King Nami Sāpya (6.20.6). The Pañcaviṃśa Brāhmaṇa states that Nami Sāpya was the first to perform the Sarasvatīya Sattra and that he travelled from Plakṣa Prāsravaṇa (the source of the Sarasvatī) to Vinaśana (the place where the river disappeared). This clearly indicates that the Sarasvatī had already been lost in the desert at Vinaśana well before the time of Videha King Nami Sāpya”. But in his above table, he dates the entire Rigveda from 11500-10500 BCE.

Does he mean that “the Sarasvatī had already been lost in the desert at Vinaśana” at some point of time between 11500-10500 BCE?

2. He takes a statement in a later text like the Pañcaviṃśa Brāhmaṇa to date a Rigvedic king. But in his above dates for the different texts, he does not give us his dates for the Pañcaviṃśa Brāhmaṇa. If we assume that it is the same as his date for the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa (i.e. 8800 BCE), isn’t it strange that he takes the data from a text that he dates at 8800 BCE to decide the date of a king named in the Rigveda that he dates from 11500-10500 BCE?

3. And then he completely ignores the data given in the Rigveda itself and arrives (on the basis of his data from the Pañcaviṃśa Brāhmaṇa) at a conclusion completely contradicting the evidence of the Rigveda.

Thus he concludes that Book 6 and its rishi “Bharadvāja Bārhaspatya must be counted among the latest Rishis of the Rigvedic period” since “the Sarasvatī had already been lost in the desert” at the time of composition of Book 6, while Book 2 is a very much earlier book because “Rishi Gṛtsamada (of the 2nd Mandala) and other Rishis describe the Sarasvatī as the mighty, flowing “nadītamā” river and refer to the Sadānīra — features that belong to an earlier phase when the Sarasvatī was still a perennial river”.

This man thereby wants us to believe, purely on his say-so:

a) That within the Rigvedic period (which he dates 11500-10500 BCE), we have both the phases of the Sarasvati river, the “earlier phase when the Sarasvatī was still a perennial river” as well as the later phase when “the Sarasvatī had already been lost in the desert at Vinaśana”!

b) That the Rigvedic data, which tells us before every hymn of Book 2 that “Rishi Gṛtsamada (of the 2nd Mandala)” was originally a descendant of Bharadvāja’s descendant Śunahotra Bhāradvāja, and was later adopted into the family of Śunaka Bhārgava, is wrong and that Gṛtsamada is actually an ancestor of Bharadvāja!

And he talks about “serious chronological contradictions”!

I feel degraded to have to reply to people of this low an intellectual level. To such people, pure data has no value and must give way to their personal biases and prejudices. In my books and articles, I have given all the solid data which shows the exact order of the books of the Rigveda.

And my article on the Chronological Gulf simply cannot be answered by "scholars" of this type:

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

As I have said before in referring to these chronological extremists, they are free to cultivate and enjoy their legions of admirers. But please they should not make the mistake of thinking that they can find any “absurdities” in my chronological datings.