Every few
months or years, in the recent past, different groups of "scientists"
announce the "results" of some "new genetic/genomic study"
which "proves" the old colonial theory of an Aryan invasion of India.
It is often cloaked in ambiguous terms, but not ambiguous enough for its target
audience (political and academic groups committed to the theory that India was
invaded by a race of people, popularly known as "Aryans", who brought
the Indo-European languages into India) not to get the message and the
ammunition. Certainly the present study ("The genomic formation of
South and Central Asia", co-directed by Dr David Reich and an
"international team of geneticists") is correctly regarded, by the writers who are
tomtoming it as a final answer to the "Aryan" question in India, as a
blatant statement in support of the AIT or Aryan Invasion (of India)
Theory: an article in the Economist, Delhi, on 5/8/2018, has the
following triumphalist title: "Steppe sons: A new study squelches a
treasured theory about Indians' origins - The Aryans did not come from India, they
conquered it".
This article
goes on to point out that the discovery of the relationship between the
languages of northern India and Europe, and the resultant theory that the
"Aryan" (Indo-European) languages of northern India were brought into
India from outside, led to two kinds of
reaction in India: one, "Caste-bound Hindu
conservatives declared that the paler-skinned intruders must be ancestors of
higher-caste Brahmins and Kshatriyas. Such talk stirred a backlash in southern
India, where generally darker-skinned speakers of Dravidian languages were
urged to see themselves as a separate nation." And two: "Hindu
nationalists took a different tack. The West, some said, had made up the theory
to set Hindus against each other. Christian missionaries and communists were
using it to stoke caste hatred and so to recruit followers, they claimed.
Worse, the theory challenged an emerging vision of Mother India as a sacred
Hindu homeland. If the first speakers of Sanskrit and the creators of the Vedas
had themselves been intruders, it was harder to portray later Muslim and
Christian invaders as violators of a purity that good Hindus should seek to
restore. So it was that some proposed an alternative “Out of India” theory.
This held that the original Aryans were in fact Indians, who carried their
Indo-European language and superior civilisation to the West."
The writer blatantly
positions himself on the first side: on the side of the "higher
caste Brahmins and Kshatriyas" who like to believe that the white European
colonialists "must be [their] ancestors" (even today there are coteries
of casteist-racist Brahmins who have this attitude towards a theory which
separates them from the "lower castes"), and on the side of the
communities (caste-based, regional, linguistic) who have learned to portray
themselves, actively and violently, "as a separate nation" within India.
And equally
blatantly on the side opposed to the side which treats "Mother
India as a sacred Hindu homeland": never mind that this opposition is on the basis of a
hypothetical "invasion" or "migration" event, unrecorded
in any text or tradition, alleged to have taken place around 4000 to 3500
years ago (long before even a single one of the cultures, civilizations and
religions prevalent in every corner of the earth today were even born or
conceived), which is treated as being on par with invasions in the last
thousand years or so (but which in fact are actually denied!) which are
recorded in detail and of which the foreign connections are still proudly held
aloft! The title, moreover blatantly abandons the cautious conversion by modern
historians of the "Aryan invasion" into an "Aryan
immigration", and proclaims: "The Aryans did not come from India,
they conquered it".
Most
important of all, the whole tone and tenor of the article (which actually
reflects, only more blatantly and openly, the tone and tenor of the "new
scientific study" on which it claims to be based) is not of someone
referring in passing to some crank fringe "“Out of India” theory": the tone and tenor is of
someone reporting the chinks or fallacies in an established theory! We
will see presently why this is so.
To come to
the actual "new study" which has led to this sharp spate in
triumphalist articles and social media campaigns (even a second cousin of mine,
with whom I have not been in contact for many years, specially phoned me
ostensibly to offer condolences on the demise of the OIT or Out of India Theory
of Indo-European origins, carefully and firmly avoiding listening to what I
could have to say on the matter!), the tone and tenor of the study is no less
blatant in its political aims: to begin with, the title itself "The
genomic formation of South and Central Asia". The following is the
official abstract of the paper:
"The genetic formation of Central
and South Asian populations has been unclear because of an absence of ancient
DNA. To address this gap, we generated genome-wide data from 362 ancient
individuals, including the first from eastern Iran, Turan (Uzbekistan,
Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan), Bronze Age Kazakhstan, and South Asia. Our data
reveal a complex set of genetic sources that ultimately combined to form the
ancestry of South Asians today. We document a southward spread of genetic ancestry
from the Eurasian Steppe, correlating with the archaeologically known expansion
of pastoralist sites from the Steppe to Turan in the Middle Bronze Age
(2300-1500 BCE). These Steppe communities mixed genetically with peoples of the
Bactria Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) whom they encountered in Turan
(primarily descendants of earlier agriculturalists of Iran), but there is no
evidence that the main BMAC population contributed genetically to later South
Asians. Instead, Steppe communities integrated farther south throughout the 2nd
millennium BCE, and we show that they mixed with a more southern population
that we document at multiple sites as outlier individuals exhibiting a
distinctive mixture of ancestry related to Iranian agriculturalists and South
Asian hunter-gathers. We call this group Indus Periphery because they were
found at sites in cultural contact with the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) and
along its northern fringe, and also because they were genetically similar to
post-IVC groups in the Swat Valley of Pakistan. By co-analyzing ancient DNA and
genomic data from diverse present-day South Asians, we show that Indus
Periphery-related people are the single most important source of ancestry in
South Asia — consistent with the idea that the Indus Periphery individuals are
providing us with the first direct look at the ancestry of peoples of the IVC —
and we develop a model for the formation of present-day South Asians in terms
of the temporally and geographically proximate sources of Indus Periphery-related,
Steppe, and local South Asian hunter-gatherer-related ancestry. Our results
show how ancestry from the Steppe genetically linked Europe and South Asia in
the Bronze Age, and identifies the populations that almost certainly were
responsible for spreading Indo-European languages across much of Eurasia."
The very
concept of an "Aryan" people - even as an entity, let alone as an
invading race from outside India - arose from the revolutionary discovery by
colonial scholars that Sanskrit and the languages of northern India and the
languages of Europe, Iran and Central Asia, are related to each other as a
"language family" which has been given the name Indo-European
(formerly also "Aryan"). This language family has twelve
branches: Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic,
Albanian, Greek, Armenian, Iranian and Indo-Aryan,
and the extinct Hittite (Anatolian) and Tocharian. There
are five other (non-Indo-European) language families spoken in India: Dravidian,
Austric, Sino-Tibetan, Andamanese, Burushaski.
Likewise there are two other non-Indo-European language families in Europe: Basque
and Finno-Ugric. And three more between India and Europe: Uralo-Altaic
(actually, the Finno-Ugric already referred to are a branch of
this family), Caucasian and Semito-Hamitic. All this called for
an explanation as to how the Indo-European languages are spread out over such a
large geographical area, covering "racially" and culturally extremely
diverse people: where did these languages originate? Which was the original
area from which the twelve branches of Indo-European languages spread out to
cover their earliest known historical areas?
This was a
question which arose solely from a linguistic fact (the linguistic relationship
between all these languages), and three fields or disciplines of academic study
have been involved for over two centuries in the elucidation of this problem: linguistics,
archaeology and textual/inscriptional data (mainly the Rigveda
and the oldest recorded Indo-European language inscriptions and documents from
West Asia). The latest entrant in this field is genetics/genomics.
The latest
paper on the genetic/genomic evidence which has enthused AIT supporters and
activists seems to echo and substantiate with military precision the
exact points enunciated by the AIT scholars and activists since two centuries, especially
on the chronological angle. It shows an "expansion of pastoralist[s …] from the Steppe to
Turan in the Middle Bronze Age (2300-1500 BCE)" and the subsequent part of
this story where the "Steppe
communities integrated farther south throughout the 2nd millennium BCE" leading to "the formation of present-day
South Asians":
these were "the
populations that almost certainly were responsible for spreading Indo-European
languages across much of Eurasia."!
This genetic
evidence can be examined as follows:
I. Why the
Date of the Rigveda is Crucial to the Whole Debate.
II. The
Archaeological Evidence.
III. The
Textual/Inscriptional Evidence for the Date of the Rigveda.
IV. The New "Genomic"
Thesis.
I. Why the Date of the Rigveda is
Crucial to the Whole Debate
The key to all
AIT/OIT hypotheses is the date of the Rigveda.
This is
because:
1.The
Rigveda is the oldest recorded major text in any Indo-European language. As Griffith puts
it in the preface to the first edition of his translation of the Rigveda: “The
great interest of the Ṛgveda is, in fact, historical rather than
poetical. As in its original language we see the roots and shoots of the
languages of Greek and Latin, of Kelt, Teuton and Slavonian, so the deities,
the myths, and the religious beliefs and practices of the Veda throw a flood of
light upon the religions of all European countries before the introduction of
Christianity.”
2.
It shows absolutely no extra-territorial memories and shows ancestral
attachment to the geographical area extending from Haryana to Afghanistan, and particularly and originally to the Haryana area in the east.
3.
It does not refer to any "non-Indo-European" entities at all: i.e. to
entities anywhere in the vicinity which can be identified linguistically
as Dravidian, Austric or anything else "non-Aryan", let alone to
non-Indo-European people who lived in these areas before them and were invaded
and conquered by them.
4.
Even the rivers and animals in this area have purely Indo-Aryan (Indo-European)
Sanskrit names: as Witzel puts it, “in
northern India rivers in general have early Sanskrit names from the Vedic
period, and names derived from the daughter languages of Sanskrit later on […] This is especially surprising in the area once occupied by the Indus
Civilisation where one would have expected the survival of older names, as has
been the case in Europe and the Near East. At the least, one would expect a
palimpsest, as found in New England with the name of the state of
Massachussetts next to the Charles river, formerly called the Massachussetts
river, and such new adaptations as Stony Brook, Muddy Creek, Red River, etc.,
next to the adaptations of Indian names such as the Mississippi and the
Missouri”.” (WITZEL 1995a:105-107). This contrasts for example, sharply
with Europe: "In Europe, river
names were found to reflect the languages spoken before the influx of
Indo-European speaking populations. They are thus older than c. 4500-2500 B.C.
(depending on the date of the spread of Indo-European languages in various
parts of Europe).” (WITZEL 1995a:104-105).
So what is
the date of the Rigveda? The scholars are compelled to calibrate the
date of the Rigveda between two known dates:
a) The
linguistically determined date of 3000 BCE, which was the date when all the
twelve Indo-European branches were together in their Original Homeland (which
was assumed to be South Russia) and only started separating away from each
other around that point of time.
b) The
Buddhist period in Bihar from around 600 BCE, when it is definitely
recorded that the whole of northern India was covered mainly by speakers of
Indo-Aryan languages, and which definitely followed the periods of composition
not only of the Rigveda but also of the three other Vedic Samhitas, the
Brahmanas, Aranyakas, Upanishads and Sutras.
Therefore
it is vital and mandatory, in fact a life-and-death requirement for the AIT,
to date the Rigveda to a date calibrated between 3000 BCE and 600 BCE, ideally
to a date around and after 1500 BCE.
Calibrating
the date of the Rigveda by squeezing all the periods between these two dates,
the scholars arrived at the following dates (echoed by the present scientists):
a) The
"Indo-Iranians" migrated eastwards from the Steppes of South Russia
around 3000 BCE.
b) They
were settled in Central Asia or "Turan in the Middle Bronze Age (2300-1500 BCE)".
c) They
moved southwards "throughout
the 2nd millennium BCE", finally reaching the area described in the Rigveda, settling
there, forgetting their entire past, and finally composing the text of the
Rigveda.
The Rigveda
is thus dated, by both the traditionalist AIT scholars, as well as by these new
"genomic" scientists, to a period 1500-1000 BCE. Both these
theses therefore stand or fall on the correctness of this date.
This date
is absolutely mandatory for the AIT. If the Rigveda, for example, is
accepted or proved to be going, even in its earliest parts, beyond 2500 BCE or
even 2000 BCE, the entire AIT structure collapses like a pack of cards. It is impossible
to bring the Indo-Aryans from the Steppes of South Russia all the way into the
Rigvedic area of Haryana-Afghanistan (with complete loss of memory of the
invasion/migration, with complete absence of any trace of non-Indo-European
languages or people in the area, with Indo-Aryan names for the local rivers,
etc.) within that microscopic period.
Hence we
will first examine the textual and archaeological evidence for the date of the
Rigveda. The linguistic evidence is so massive and uni-directional (all
the evidence confirms the OIT, and not a single piece of evidence
supports the AIT) that it will require a big article on its own (although all
the evidence has already been given by me at various places in my books and
other blog articles) - and in any case it cannot tell us much about the exact date
of the Rigveda.
Then, we
will look at the totally irrelevant (to the AIT/OIT debate) genetic/genomic
data.
II. The Archaeological Evidence
Archaeology completely disproves the idea of any
Indo-European movement into India around 1500 BCE:
1. To begin with, absolutely no archaeological
evidence has been found of the Proto-Indo-European language spoken in Russia
before 3000 BCE, or of the Indo-Iranian speakers moving from South Russia to
Central Asia between 3000-2000 BCE, or of the Indo-Aryan speakers moving from
Central Asia to the Punjab around 1500 BCE, or even of the Vedic
Indo-Aryans moving from the Punjab into the rest of northern India after 1000
BCE. Even Michael Witzel, who is spearheading the AIT battalions, admits that
archaeology offers no proof of the AIT: "None of the archaeologically
identified post-Harappan cultures so far found, from Cemetery H, Sarai Kala
III, the early Gandhara and Gomal Grave Cultures, does make a good fit for the
culture of the speakers of Vedic […] At the present moment, we can only
state that linguistic and textual studies confirm the presence of an outside,
Indo-Aryan speaking element, whose language and spiritual culture has
definitely been introduced, along with the horse and the spoked wheel chariot,
via the BMAC area into northwestern South Asia. However, much of present-day
Archaeology denies that. To put it in the words of Shaffer (1999:245) ‘A
diffusion or migration of a culturally complex ‘Indo-Aryan’ people into South
Asia is not described by the archaeological record’ […] [But] the
importation of their spiritual and material culture must be explained.
So far, clear archaeological evidence has just not been found" (WITZEL
2000a:§15).
2. In fact, archaeologists are almost
unanimous on the point that there is absolutely no archaeological evidence
for any change in the ethnic composition and the material culture in the
Harappan areas between "the 5th/4th and […]
the 1st millennium B.C.", and that there was "indigenous
development of South Asian civilization from the Neolithic onward";
and further that any change which took place before "the 5th/4th
[…] millennium B.C." and after "the 1st
millennium B.C." is "too early and too late to have any
connection with ‘Aryans’".
3. The archaeological consensus against the
AIT is so strong that in an academic volume of papers devoted to the subject by
western academicians, George Erdosy, in his preface to the volume, stresses
that this is a subject of dispute between linguists and archaeologists, and
that the idea of an Aryan invasion of India in the second millennium BCE "has
recently been challenged by archaeologists, who ― along with linguists ― are
best qualified to evaluate its validity. Lack of convincing material (or
osteological) traces left behind by the incoming Indo-Aryan speakers, the
possibility of explaining cultural change without reference to external factors
and ― above all ― an altered world-view (Shaffer 1984) have all contributed to
a questioning of assumptions long taken for granted and buttressed by the
accumulated weight of two centuries of scholarship" (ERDOSY 1995:x).
Of the papers presented by archaeologists in the volume (being papers presented
at a conference on Archaeological and Linguistic approaches to Ethnicity in
Ancient South Asia, held in Toronto from 4-6/10/1991), the paper by K.A.R.
Kennedy concludes that "while discontinuities in physical types have
certainly been found in South Asia, they are dated to the 5th/4th,
and to the 1st millennium B.C. respectively, too early and too late
to have any connection with ‘Aryans’" (ERDOSY 1995:xii); the paper by
J. Shaffer and D. Lichtenstein stresses on "the indigenous development
of South Asian civilization from the Neolithic onward" (ERDOSY
1995:xiii); and the paper by J.M. Kenoyer stresses that "the cultural
history of South Asia in the 2nd millennium B.C. may be explained
without reference to external agents" (ERDOSY 1995:xiv). Erdosy points
out that the perspective offered by archaeology, "that of material
culture […] is in direct conflict with the findings of the other
discipline claiming a key to the solution of the ‘Aryan Problem’, linguistics"
(ERDOSY 1995:xi).
On
the other hand, there is conclusive archaeological evidence for the arrival of
the European branches (the Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic
and Slavic branches) into Europe from the east, for the arrival
of the Hittites (the Anatolian branch) into Turkey (Anatolia) from
the northeast, for the arrival of the Greeks and Albanians (the Greek
and Albanian branches) into Greece from the east (across the
Aegean Sea), and for the arrival of the Tocharian branch into the
Qinjiang province of China from Central Asia to its south. [The arrival
of the Iranian branch into Iran from the east is recorded in
Babylonian texts. The Armenian branch is also clearly an intruder into
Armenia, as evident from the evidence of the place names in Armenia]. It is
only the theoretically postulated arrival of the Indo-Aryan
branch (as represented by its oldest form, Vedic) into northwestern India from
further northwest which is absolutely unsupported by any archaeological
evidence.
III. The Textual/Inscriptional
Evidence for the Date of the Rigveda
The exact
copious details of the data for dating the Rigveda have been given in my books
and other blogs. I will only give the essential points here:
1. The
Divisions of the Rigveda: As per the consensus among all the
Indologists, the ten Books or Maṇḍalas of the Rigveda can be divided into two
groups:
a) The
earlier Family Books: Books 2-7.
b) The
later non-Family Books: 1,8-10.
Further, on
the basis of a large range of criteria, one of the Family Books, Book 5, is
later than the other four Family Books. Thus, we get two chronological groups
of Books:
a) The
Old Books: Books 2-4,6-7.
b) The
New Books: Books 1,5,8-10.
2. The
external sources for comparison of data with the Rigvedic data: There
are two external sources for comparison of common or related data with
the Rigvedic data:
a) The
Iranian Avesta.
b) The
Mitanni data.
The Mitanni
data is particularly significant because:
a) It is
specifically "Indo-Aryan" or "Vedic" data.
b) It is
scientifically dated data found in the scientifically dated inscriptions and
documents about the Mitanni kingdom and kings of Iraq and Syria, in the
historically well-attested records of Egypt and West Asia.
3. Conventional
Interpretation of the common data as per the AIT: The conventional
theory is that:
a) The
Indo-Aryan and Iranian branches jointly migrated eastwards from the Steppes of
South Russia to Central Asia over a period of time.
b) The
Indo-Aryans and Iranians separated from each other after a common sojourn in
Central Asia:
The Vedic
Indo-Aryans (who were to compose the Rigveda) migrated southeastwards into the
Greater Punjab region (Saptasindhava or northern Pakistan).
The Iranians
(who were to compose the Avesta) migrated southwards into Afghanistan.
The Mitanni
Indo-Aryans (whose data is found recorded in the dated documents of Iraq, Syria
and West Asia in general) migrated southwestwards towards West Asia.
c) The
common linguistic-cultural elements found in the Rigveda, the Avesta, and the
Mitanni records, are pre-Rigvedic elements of the common culture
developed jointly by these three peoples during their common sojourn in Central
Asia.
4. Actual
Facts Emerging from the common data: An actual examination of the
common data shows that the common elements are not elements of a common
pre-Rigvedic culture, but elements of a common culture developed during the
period of the New Books of the Rigveda. These elements are completely
missing in all the Old Hymns and verses in the Old Books of the Rigveda (though
found occasionally in a handful of occurences in certain hymns which the
Indological scholars themselves have classified as late, interpolated or
redacted hymns in the Old Books), but found in overwhelming numbers in the New
Books of the Rigveda, in all the post-Rigvedic Vedic literature, and in all the
post-Vedic Sanskrit literature. These elements are also central to the Avesta
and the Mitanni data.
The
distribution of these common elements in the Rigveda is as follows:
TOTAL HYMNS AND
VERSES:
1. Old Hymns in
Books 2,3,4,6,7: 280 Hymns, 2351
verses.
2. New Hymns in
Books 1,5,8,9,10: 686 Hymns, 7311
verses.
COMMON
RIGVEDIC-AVESTAN-MITANNI NAME TYPES IN COMPOSER NAMES:
1. Old Hymns in
Books 2,3,4,6,7: 0 Hymns, 0 verses.
2. New Hymns in
Books 1,5,8,9,10: 309 Hymns, 3389
verses.
COMMON
RIGVEDIC-AVESTAN-MITANNI NAME TYPES AND WORDS WITHIN THE HYMNS:
1. Old Hymns in
Books 2,3,4,6,7: 0 Hymns, 0 verses.
2. New Hymns in
Books 1,5,8,9,10: 225 Hymns, 434
verses.
COMMON
RIGVEDIC-AVESTAN NEW DIMETRIC METERS:
1. Old Hymns in
Books 2,3,4,6,7: 0 Hymns, 0 verses.
2. New Hymns in Books 1,5,8,9,10: 50 Hymns, 255 verses.
This is not arbitrary data: it is
absolute data. It proves that the three peoples separated from each other
not in some pre-Rigvedic period but during the period of composition of the New
Books of the Rigveda, when these new cultural elements developed, and therefore
that they were all three of them together with each other during the
composition of the Old Books, within the geographical area of the Rigveda.
The geographical area of the Rigveda
as a whole stretches from Haryana-western U.P (Ganga) in the east to Afghanistan in the west. This therefore is the area from
where the ancestors of the Mitanni kings and the composers of the Avesta
migrated to their historical areas, taking these common cultural elements with
them.
5. The Date of the Rigveda:
The Mitanni data is found in securely dated records in West Asia, and can be
exactly dated: the Mitanni kingdom flourished from around 1500 BCE onwards, and
the Mitanni (and a related people, the Kassites) are found in West Asian
records from around 1750 BCE. Moreover, they were already so long settled in
West Asia that they had even adopted the local Hurrian language, while still
retaining what the scholars refer to as "remnants" and "residual
elements" of their ancestral Indo-Aryan heritage.
Going backwards from the Mitanni data:
a) The Mitanni must have arrived in
West Asia at least a few hundred years before their recorded presence. At any
rate, even if one assumes they had stepped into West Asia on the very day their
presence was first recorded, they must still have left their ancestral area
where they developed the common cultural elements (Haryana to Afghanistan) before 2000 BCE at the very minimum.
b) This means that the culture
depicted in the New Books of the Rigveda was flourishing in this area (Haryana
to Afghanistan) before 2000 BCE at the very minimum.
It was already a fully developed culture by that time, hence we find it among
the Mitanni.
c) This means that the beginnings
of the fully developed culture of the New Books go back far beyond 2000 BCE,
and the totally different culture of the Old Books goes even further
back. I take the date of the beginning of composition of the Old Books and their
hinter-period beyond 3000 BCE. How far can someone wanting to squeeze the date
to as late a point of time as possible go: did the date of composition
of the New Books start in 2000 BCE, and the date of composition of the Old
Books with their totally different culture in 2010 BCE?
It must be noted that it is impossible
to ignore all this recorded data and claim that the Vedic Indo-Aryans entered
India after 1500 BCE.
In short, the
culture found as the fading "remnants" of an ancestral culture
among the Mitanni people in Syria-Iraq from at least 1750 BCE (as per
scientifically dated records) is a culture which developed during the period of
composition of the five New Books of the Rigveda, and is completely missing in
the five Old Books.
Note:
This dating is
further confirmed by the references in the Rigveda to certain technological
innovations which took place in the second half of the third millennium BCE,
which are likewise completely absent in the Old Books:
Spoked wheels were invented (supposedly somewhere around
Central Asia) in the second half of the third millennium BCE. Likewise, the “Bactrian
camel was domesticated in Central Asia in the late 3rd mill. BCE”
(Witzel). The following is the distribution of references to camels and
to spokes in the Rigveda, all exclusively in the New Books:
V.13.6; 58.5.
I.32.15; 141.9; 138.2; 164.11,12,13,48.
VIII.5.37; 6.48; 20.14; 46.22,31;
77.3.
X.78.4.
6. The Geography of the Old
Books: And what is the geography of the Old Books of the Rigveda in the
period definitely long before 2000 BCE (and actually as far back as 3000
BCE)? Does it show that the culture of the Old Books (ancestral to the
culture of the New Books, the Avesta and the Mitanni) was located somewhere
between the Steppes and Central Asia, or at least in Central Asia?
On the contrary, the
geographical data of the Old Books is restricted to the area to the east of the
Sarasvati river in Haryana (for more precise details see my books and
other blogs):
a) The places, lake and
animals of the East (east of the Sarasvatī, in Haryana and further east)
are found in all the Books, both the Old Books and the New Books:
Old Books (25 hymns,
28 verses, 31 names):
VI.(5
hymns, 5 verses and names).
III.
(7 hymns, 9 verses, 12 names).
VII.
(4 hymns, 4 verses and names).
IV.
(5 hymns, 5 verses and names).
II.
(4 hymns, 5 verses and names).
New Books
(63 hymns, 73 verses, 77 names) :
V.
(6 hymns, 7 verses and names).
I.
(16 hymns, 19 verses, 22 names).
VIII.
(9 hymns, 11 verses and names).
IX.
(14 hymns, 17 verses and names).
X. (18 hymns, 19 verses, 20 references).
But the places, lakes, mountains and
animals of the West (west of the Indus, in Afghanistan) are completely missing in the Old Hymns in the Old Books and are
found only in the New Hymns in the New Books. In fact they are missing even in
the New Family Book 5:
Old Hymns in the
Old Books (0 hymns, 0
verses and names).
New Hymns in the
New Books (57 hymns, 72
verses, 73 names):
I.
(18 hymns, 21 verses and names).
VIII.
(13 hymns, 17 verses, 18 names).
IX.
(8 hymns, 12 verses and names).
X. (18 hymns, 22 verses and names).
b) The place names of the Rigveda,
further show an east to west expansion from the Old Books to the New
Books:
The river names of the Rigveda,
likewise, also show this east to west expansion:
In short, the Old Books were composed
in the East, well to the east of the Sarasvati, and far from Central
Asia, which only entered the geographical horizon of the Rigveda in the New
Books.
The evidence of the Rigvedic data
shows that long before 2000 BCE, in the period of the Old
Books, the Vedic Aryans were originally located in the areas of Haryana and
further east. The east-to-west expansion shown by the above data-graphs is
actually described in the historical narrative in the Rigveda: the activities
of the ancestors of Sudās (in order of lineage: Bharata, Devavāta, Sṛñjaya,
Divodāsa) are all located in Haryana. The expansion in the period of Sudas
(following his own earlier activities in Haryana) shows him first crossing the
two easternmost rivers of the Punjab westwards with his army. Then he fights an
alliance of ten western tribes on the banks of the third river, and his enemies
are described as fighting from the region of the fourth river. Later, in the
period of his descendants Sahadeva and Somaka, the Vedic Aryans expand as far
west as beyond the Indus.
Note: it is in this period, long before 2000
BCE, that we find the Vedic Aryans originally not even familiar with the
northwestern parts of India into which they were yet to expand, let alone with
Central Asia or areas further west. They do not refer to any linguistically
non-Indo-European entities anywhere in their vicinity. And the local rivers
all have Indo-Aryan/Indo-European names.
In the face of this overwhelming
evidence that the oldest parts of the Rigveda hark back to a period long
before 2000 BCE (actually even going as far back as 3000 BCE), and that the
Vedic beginnings were in Haryana in the east, what is the value of these
"genomic" claims by "scientists" who speak of "the populations that almost
certainly were responsible for spreading Indo-European languages across much of
Eurasia" moving southwards from an earlier habitat in
Central Asia and first entering India during "the 2nd millennium BCE"?
Can genomists prove in the face of
all the recorded historical evidence to the contrary, on the basis of
"scientific genomic evidence", that Columbus discovered America in
the 4th century BCE or alternately in the nineteenth century CE, and that the
Europeans started colonizing the Americas at that point of time? What would be
the value of such "genomic" claims which fly in the face of
recorded history? Would anyone take them seriously, let alone treat them as
invalidating the presently accepted ideas about the date of the
colonization of the Americas by Europeans?
Further, it is also being claimed that
the "genomic" Revelations have "confirmed" the linguistic
and textual interpretations of the Indologists and AIT protagonist scholars. A
leftist writer Prabir Purkayastha in an article on a site
"newsclick.in" on 9/4/2018 writes: "For the historians there
should be a sigh of relief. The painstaking work that they have done with
archaeological and textual evidence is very close to the new genetic evidence"!
But we have already seen above what the archaeologists have to say about the
AIT, and what the textual evidence shows!
The fact is that the extremely lop-sided
and faulty linguistic and textual interpretations of the Indologists and AIT
protagonist scholars have already been completely overturned and disproved by newer and
more complete analyses: by in fact the linguistic and textual analysis presented
in my books (and blogs). So much so that the AIT scholars have now fully
conceded defeat in the fields of linguistics, archaeology and textual
data analysis and have fled from the debate. Hence these desperate attempts
by motivated "scientists" to completely abandon these three academic
disciplines and shift the debate to the totally irrelevant (to the AIT/OIT
debate) field of "genomics". After Copernicus announced his discovery
that it was the earth which moved around the sun and not vice versa, there must
have been many church "scientists" who made "discoveries"
which confirmed the old Church view that it was the sun which moved around the
earth, and thereby allowed the geocentric "scholars" to heave "a
sigh of relief"! But that did not stop the ultimate vindication of
Copernicus' discovery. The cowardly campaign by these "genomic"
scientists to "confirm" old and completely discredited dates for the
Rigveda can have no value so long as they studiously skulk away and avoid
addressing the real evidence for the dating of Rigveda and the Vedic period,
which completely shatters their "scientific" humbug.
IV. The New "Genomic"
Thesis
The
international consortium of "genomic scientists", committed to "confirming"
and "proving" the discredited AIT (the team includes old suspects
like Tony Joseph who has been conducting an active political campaign on this
issue in the Indian media in the last few years, and this team has been at it
for years trying to drum up a "genetic" case for the utterly
discredited theory - a new case every time), claims that the Rigveda was
composed by "Aryan" invaders who were part of an "expansion
of pastoralist[s
…] from the Steppe to Turan in the Middle Bronze Age (2300-1500 BCE)" and that these "Steppe communities integrated
farther south throughout the 2nd millennium BCE" leading to "the formation of present-day
South Asians". The
very dates they claim - which are absolutely vital for them in order to fit in
with the linguistic fact that the twelve branches of Indo-European languages
were together in the Original Homeland till 3000 BCE as well as the well
attested presence of established Indo-Aryan speakers all over northern India as
far east as Bihar well before 600 BCE - prove their thesis to be completely
impossible:
Let us
examine the mind-bogglingly impossible scenario that the "scientists"
postulate. According to them, the Indo-Aryans:
a) moved
southwards from Turan (Central Asia) into the Punjab region "throughout the 2nd millennium
BCE" (i.e. definitely
well after 2000 BCE),
b) then moved
through the area of the declining Harappan civilization without
leaving even the faintest traces in the archaeological record - so
much so that archaeologists strongly dispute this alleged invasion/migration in
the second millennium BCE,
c) and yet
affected such a complete transformation in the entire area (without
leaving any memories of it among either the conquerors or the conquered)
that even invasionist scholars are struck by it: "What is relatively rare is the adoption
of complete systems of belief,
mythology and language from neighbouring peoples […] Yet, in South Asia we are
dealing precisely with the absorption of not only new languages but also of an
entire complex of material and spiritual culture, ranging from chariotry and
horsemanship to Indo-Iranian poetry whose complicated conventions are still
actively used in the Ṛgveda. The old Indo-Iranian religion, centred on the
opposition of Devas and Asuras, was also adopted, along with Indo-European
systems of ancestor worship.” (WITZEL 1995a:112),
d) and, what
is more, transformed even the names of the local rivers into Indo-Aryan ones, leaving
not a trace of the original names - a situation absolutely unparalleled in
world history, as we have already noted earlier: “in northern India rivers in
general have early Sanskrit names from the Vedic period, and names derived from
the daughter languages of Sanskrit later on […] This is especially surprising in the area
once occupied by the Indus Civilisation where one would have expected the
survival of older names, as has been the case in Europe and the Near East. At
the least, one would expect a palimpsest, as found in New England with the name
of the state of Massachussetts next to the Charles river, formerly called the
Massachussetts river, and such new adaptations as Stony Brook, Muddy Creek, Red
River, etc., next to the adaptations of Indian names such as the Mississippi
and the Missouri” (WITZEL 1995a:105-107),
e) and
then, moved eastwards across
the Sarasvati into the area of Haryana and eastern Uttar Pradesh, and effected "an almost complete Indo-Aryanization in
northern India"
(WITZEL 1995a:106) to the extent that
by the time they composed the Old Books of the Rigveda, not a trace was
left in the area of any linguistically non-Indo-European (specifically
Dravidian or Austric) entity, and they themselves had already completely
forgotten their entire extra-territorial history and the western territories
through which they moved eastwards,
f) after
which they started expanding "back" westwards into the Punjab and Afghanistan (as recorded in the Rigveda), in the process developing
the completely new culture of the New Books of the Rigveda: the
proto-Iranians and proto-Mitanni were also with them during this historical process
as shown by the common data,
f) then after
this completely new culture of the New Books was fully crystallized, the
proto-Mitanni migrated westwards from this area all the way into Iraq and Syria
by 1750 BCE taking this culture with them, and established their
historically attested and scientifically dated empire around 1500 BCE, by
which time they, in turn, had completely forgotten their own migration history,
had adopted the local Hurrian language, and were only left with Vedic elements
that linguists describe as the "remnants" (WITZEL 2005:361)
and "the residue of a dead language in
Hurrian" of a "symbiosis that produced the
Mitanni
[which] may have taken place centuries earlier” (MALLORY 1989:42).
Will any
sane person credit this above story, which tries to condense millennia of
history and alleged historical changes within a century or less? Clearly one of
the three key elements in this story are wrong:
1. Either
the Mitanni date and data are wrong (but unfortunately for any possible claims
of this kind, this is the only real and securely and scientifically dated
material evidence in this whole debate).
2. Or the
date of the Rigveda as proved by me to be going back to around 3000 BCE, and certainly long before
2000 BCE is wrong
(but this evidence is so massive and unidirectional and final that no-one has
the guts to take up the challenge to even try to examine and disprove it. It is
a complete presentation of the data, and such data cannot be fabricated).
3. Or the
"genomic" thesis of the "international team of scientists"
is wrong. Well, unless the "genomic" scholars or their compatriots in
the field of textual analysis can prove the above date of the Rigveda wrong by
providing counter-data (which is impossible, since this data is the only data
available), then the "international team of scientists" is
pathetically and pitifully wrong.
One
Example of the detailed records of the Indo-European migrations: Before evaluating the worth of this
so-called "genomic" evidence in the "Aryan" debate, one
more point must be noted: the migration of the Indo-European branches from the
Indian Homeland is not a matter of pure conjecture concerning faceless and
nameless groups of prehistoric people to be identified now only by the names of
their (presently named) Indo-European branches: the migrations of the
historical speakers of the other eleven branches from India is recorded in the
Puranas and the Rigveda, and the whole history is corroborated by massive
textual, linguistic and archaeological evidence, and nothing contradicts or
disproves it. All this massive evidence is given in my books and blogs.
Here I will give only one small piece of the evidence as a sample:
As per the
established linguistic analysis, seven branches had migrated from the Homeland
(wherever it was located) in the following order: Hittite (Anatolian),
Tocharian, Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic
and Slavic. Finally only five branches were left in the Homeland: “After the dispersals of the early PIE
dialects […] there were still those
who remained […] Among them were the
ancestors of the Greeks and Indo-Iranians […] also shared by Armenian; all these languages it seems, existed in an
area of mutual interaction.” (WINN 1995:323-324). The five branches which share many
linguistic features missing in the earlier seven are Albanian (not
mentioned in the above quote), Greek, Armenian, Iranian
and Indo-Aryan.
However, the data in the Rigveda regarding the
dāśarājña battle and the expansionary activities of Sudās (Book
7), shows this area to be in the Punjab. Sudās, the Vedic (Indo-Aryan/Pūru)
king enters the Punjab area from the east and fights this historical battle
against a coalition of ten tribes (nine Anu tribes, and one tribe of the
remnant Druhyu in the area), and later these tribes start migrating
westwards.
The Anu tribes (or the epithets used
for them) named in the battle hymns are:
VII.18.5 Śimyu.
VII.18.6 Bhṛgu.
VII.18.7 Paktha, Bhalāna, Alina, Śiva,
Viṣāṇin.
VII.83.1 Parśu/Parśava, Pṛthu/Pārthava,
Dāsa.
(Another
Anu tribe in the Puranas and later tradition is the Madra).
These tribal names are primarily
found only in two hymns, VII.18 and VII.83, of the Rigveda, which
refer to the Anu tribes who fought against Sudās in the dāśarājña battle or "the Battle
of the Ten Kings". But see where these same tribal names are found in
later historical times (after their exodus westwards referred to in VII.5.3
and VII.6.3). Incredibly, they are found dotted over an
almost continuous geographical belt, covering the five last branches
(which, according to the linguistic analysis, remained in the Homeland before
the last stage of migrations), and covering the entire sweep of areas
extending westwards from the Punjab (the battleground of the dāśarājña battle) right up to southern and
eastern Europe:
Afghanistan: (Avestan) Proto-Iranian: Sairima (Śimyu),
Dahi (Dāsa).
NE Afghanistan: Proto-Iranian: Nuristani/Piśācin
(Viṣāṇin).
Pakhtoonistan (NW Pakistan), South Afghanistan: Iranian: Pakhtoon/Pashtu (Paktha).
Baluchistan (SW Pakistan), SE Iran: Iranian: Bolan/Baluchi (Bhalāna).
NE Iran: Iranian: Parthian/Parthava (Pṛthu/Pārthava).
SW Iran: Iranian: Parsua/Persian (Parśu/Parśava).
NW Iran: Iranian: Madai/Mede (Madra).
Uzbekistan: Iranian: Khiva/Khwarezmian (Śiva).
W. Turkmenistan: Iranian: Dahae (Dāsa).
Ukraine, S, Russia: Iranian: Alan (Alina),
Sarmatian (Śimyu).
Turkey: Thraco-Phrygian/Armenian: Phryge/Phrygian
(Bhṛgu).
Romania, Bulgaria: Thraco-Phrygian/Armenian: Dacian
(Dāsa).
Greece: Greek: Hellene (Alina).
Albania: Albanian: Sirmio (Śimyu).
The
above named Iranian tribes are also the ancestors of almost all other
prominent historical and modern Iranian groups not directly named above
(check the encyclopedias and wikipedia on this point), such as the Scythians
(Sakas), Ossetes and Kurds, and even the presently Slavic-language
speaking (but formerly Iranian-language speaking) Serbs, Croats,
Poles, Slovaks and Ukrainians!
The
earlier migrations of the seven earlier branches are recorded in the Puranas, which
describe the migrations of the Druhyu tribes who first migrated
northwards into Central Asia:
"Indian
tradition distinctly asserts that there was an Aila outflow of the Druhyus
through the northwest into the countries beyond, where they founded various
kingdoms" (PARGITER
1962:298).
"Five Purāṇas
add that Pracetas’ descendants spread out into the mleccha countries to the north beyond India and founded kingdoms
there" (BHARGAVA
1956/1971:99).
"After a time, being overpopulated, the
Druhyus crossed the borders of India and founded many principalities in the
Mleccha territories in the north, and probably carried the Aryan culture beyond
the frontiers of India" (MAJUMDAR 1951/1996:283).
But now back to the "genomic evidence":
The very fact that the "genomic
evidence" is being tailor-made to fit into the geography and chronology of
the conventional AIT theory which dates the Rigveda to 1500-1200 BCE,
when the scientifically dated Mitanni records prove that the culture of the New
Books of the Rigveda, which the ancestors of the Mitanni kings brought into
West Asia, had developed in the Haryana-Afghanistan area long before 2000 BCE, and that the older Old Books go back to at least 3000 BCE
in Haryana, automatically and immediately debunks the contention that the
"genomic evidence" has anything to do with the movement of the
Indo-European languages.
But the fact is that languages have no direct
connections with DNA, genes, genomes and haplogroups at all. Languages
spread in ways which do not have anything to do with the spread of DNA and
genetic features. For example:
a) The English language today is spoken by
millions and millions of people all over the world: large numbers of Americans
of native-American-Indian and African origin speak only English and do not know
their original ancestral languages. In our own country it is one of the major
languages of communication between different language speakers (this article is
being written and read in English, for example), and likewise in other large
parts of Asia and Africa: but would it be possible to be able to trace the
history of the spread of the language by analyzing the DNA and genomes of all
these different people?
b) The Sinhalese people to the south of India
speak an Indo-European language which often contains Indo-European words of
even more archaic vintage than the Vedic language (e.g. watura for
"water"). But are the Sinhalese people genetically closer to
Kashmiris, Maharashtrians and Assamese, or Iranians, Greeks and Scandinavians,
than to their neighboring Dravidian-language Tamil speaking neighbors?
c) The Santali-Mundari people of east-central
India speak Austric languages related to the Austric language of Vietnam (e.g.
"one, three, four" in Santali is "mit,
pa-ia, pon-ia" and in Vietnamese "mot, ba,
bon"). Are the Vietnamese and the Santals genetically closer to
each other than the Vietnamese are to their neighboring Sino-Tibetan language
speaking Laotians and Burmese or the Santals are to their non-Austric
neighbors?
At the most, after a piece of history is all cut
and dried from more pertinent recorded historical sources,
"DNA" evidence can be searched out which fits in with the proved and
established historical narrative: such as for example that the American
continent, already populated by native Americans, was colonized By Europeans in
the last few centuries, and that large batches of Africans were also
transported to the Americas by the Europeans, thus possibly leading to
interesting studies on the genetic, genomic and DNA composition of the present
day "Americans". However, although the present gang of
"scientists" claim to have done just such studies which confirm
earlier linguistic and textual studies on the "Aryan" presence in
India, the fact is that they are fitting their jacket onto the wrong studies - studies
which have been thoroughly disproved on the basis of newer and more detailed
and comprehensive studies on the linguistic and textual data.
It must be noted that genetic studies are as
scientific as they are believed to be when it pertains to tracing genetic
lines. Human beings have been migrating from every conceivable area to every
other conceivable area and in every possible direction since the dawn of
history. Certain areas, indeed, like Central Asia, are seething hotbeds of ethnic
to-and-fro migrations, and India has seen countless migrations and invasions in
the last many thousand years: we have Scythians, Greeks, Kushanas, Hunas, Arabs, Turks, Afghans,
Ethiopian slave-soldiers and Persians invading, we have other Persians and
Syrian Christians taking refuge in India, and none of them retained their
language, and all of them assimilated into the local populations and adopted
the local languages, but their foreign genes remain in the genetic record.
As almost all the invasions and migrations took place from the northwest into
northern India (although coastal areas also have their high share of foreign
interactions), naturally any foreign genes are more likely to be found in
greater proportions in the north than in the south; and as invaders are more
likely to mix with the elites in the conquered societies, these genes are more
likely to be found among "upper"-castes or ruling classes than among
the "lower"-castes or isolated jungle or hill tribes. That this
phenomenon is being invested with linguistic "Aryan" connotations and
caste implications is testimony to the motives behind the whole enterprise.
Needless to say, the real or alleged genetic compositions of present day
Indians belonging to different castes or regions is irrelevant to the
linguistic question.
In short:
1. Racial
movements allegedly traced on the basis of genomes and haplogroups cannot
help us trace the history of the Indo-European language migrations.
2. The date
of the earliest part of the Rigveda goes back to beyond 3000 BCE in a purely
"Indo-Aryan" Haryana; and the later expansion of the geographical
horizon of the Rigveda, to cover the area up to Afghanistan
in the west, not only identifies the Vedic people with the Harappans but also
makes this area the PIE Homeland (since, as per the linguistic consensus, all
the twelve Indo-European branches were together with each other in the PIE
Homeland till around 3000 BCE). And the whole migration history of the other
eleven branches from this Homeland is recorded history. All this makes any
talk of "Indo-Aryans" invading northwestern India in 1500 BCE,
and composing the Rigveda after that, purely a hallucination of these
politically determined academicians.
But even if we
were to assume for the sake of argument that (a) all this evidence should be
completely ignored or blanked out, (b) that the "migration" of
"genomic" features should be treated as the migration of languages,
and (c) that the Rigveda should be religiously dated after 1500 BCE; even then,
the "genomic evidence" should specifically identify certain
specific haplogroups as "Indo-European", and should show on the
basis of secure scientific evidence that:
1. These
"Indo-European" haplogroups were found only in the Steppe area, and
nowhere else, till around 3000 BCE.
2. They are
found in chronologically clear trails from 3000 BCE onwards leading into
Central Asia (two distinct trails for the linguistically distinct Tocharians
and "Indo-Iranians" respectively), Europe (the Italic, Celtic,
Germanic, Baltic and Slavic branches), southeastern Europe (the Albanians and
Greeks, with the Armenians) and Anatolia (the Hittite/Anatolian branch)
respectively in the "linguistically predicted" time frames.
3. The
"Indo-Iranian" haplogroups, in particular, appear in Central Asia
(through an identifiable trail of genomic specimens) only around 2000 BCE or
so, and then appear in the area of the Indus area only in the period after 1500
BCE - being completely missing in that area before then.
But this is
not the kind of "genomic" evidence being presented. The whole case is
a kind of "trust us, we are scientists, and we know what happened"!
On the
contrary:
a) The
entire AIT, or caste history of India, is sought to be "confirmed" or
"proved" on the basis of the very general (with various factors
breezily clubbed together in conveniently selected contexts) DNA analysis of a
few scattered individuals from the remote past, or stray selected specimens
from selected castes.
b) All kinds
of (sometimes actually mutually contradictory) conclusions are sought to be
drawn from three individual specimens from Central Asia, which have been
labeled as "Indus periphery".
c) There
are actually no specimens from the actual Indus/Vedic area in the relevant
period: the much-publicized and long-awaited DNA results of the almost
5000-year-old specimen from Rakhigarhi in Haryana are unfortunately yet to see
the light of day.
d) Genetic
data of modern specimens of people from India, which is known to be a
kind of melting-pot of all the possible races of the world (there is a picturesque rhetorical quote to this effect
from Swami Vivekananda, quoted by me in my second book, see TALAGERI 2000:401),
are cited to show that "Aryans" invaded India in 1500 BCE.
Further, note
the following statements in the "report" which really go against
their basic thesis:
1. “…there is no
evidence that the main BMAC population contributed genetically to later South
Asians.”(Abstract).
“The
absence in the BMAC cluster of the Steppe_EMBA ancestry that is ubiquitous in
South Asia today—along with qpAdm analyses that rule out BMAC as a substantial
source of ancestry in South Asia (Fig. 3A)—suggests that while the BMAC was
affected by the same demographic forces that later impacted South Asia (the
southward movement of Middle to Late Bronze Age Steppe pastoralists described
in the next section), it was also bypassed by members of these groups who hardly mixed with BMAC people and instead
mixed with peoples further south.”
“In
fact, the data suggest that instead of the main BMAC population having a
demographic impact on South Asia, there was a larger effect of gene flow in the
reverse direction, as the main BMAC
genetic cluster is slightly different from the preceding Turan populations in
harboring ~5% of their ancestry from the AASI.”.
All the 4 samples
from Shahr-i-Sokhta in Eastern Iran also show South Asian admixture. In other
words, based on the evidence given in the paper, there was a very large genetic
contribution of South Asia in both the BMAC as well as in the Helmand
civilization of which Shahr-i-Sokhta is a principal site. In fact, in both the
Bronze Age Eastern Iran and Central Asia, the principal cattle is the Zebu
cattle which is Indian in origin and there are besides many other lines of
evidence suggesting Indus civilization influence in both these regions.
2. “… samples from
three sites from the southern and eastern end of the Steppe dated to 1600-1500
BCE (Dashti-kozy, Taldysay and Kyzlbulak) show evidence of significant admixture
from Iranian agriculturalist-related populations, demonstrating northward gene
flow from Turan into the Steppe…”.
An article in the Indian Express of 16/4/2018, "The Long Walk:
Did the Aryans migrate into India? New genetics study adds to debate. Co-authored by 92 leading scientists,
it offers new insights into makeup of the Indian population. Will it settle or
again trigger the contentious debate?" by Sowmika Ashok and Adrija
Roychowdhury quoting Tony Joseph, tells us: "Essentially, Joseph points
out, the study shows that there are no “pure” people anywhere — except perhaps
in some very isolated and remote places such as some of the Andaman and Nicobar
islands. 'We are all mixed. Almost all parts of the world have seen repeated
mass migrations that have deeply impacted their demography and India is no
exception. The genetic studies should be liberating in a way because it should
make us aware that we are all interconnected.'"
It also quotes David Reich, the
scientist who heads this gang of politically-committed "scientists",
as follows, in the context of a previous study: "The ANI are related to
Europeans, central Asians, Near Easterners, and people of the Caucasus, but we
made no claim about the location of their homeland or any migrations. The ASI descend
from a population not related to any present-day populations outside India. We
showed that the ANI and ASI had mixed dramatically in India. The result is that
everyone in mainland India today is a mix, albeit in different proportions, of
ancestry related to West Eurasians, and… more closely related to diverse East
Asian and South Asian populations. No group in India can claim genetic purity.".
But all this is absolutely right. Certainly, no group in India can
claim genetic purity: all people represent "a mix, albeit in different
proportions, of ancestry related to West Eurasians, and… more closely related
to diverse East Asian and South Asian populations" - ironically, the
ideas of "genetic purity" lie in the hearts of those, both the
casteist-racist Brahmin defenders of the AIT as well as the pseudo-dalit
supporters of the AIT (note that Dr. Ambedkar had sharply rejected the AIT in
his writings) who are among the most gleeful in support of these "new
findings" - but this has nothing
to do with the history of the Indo-European languages.
The Indian Express article also quotes Michel
Danino: "ICHR member and guest professor at IIT Gandhinagar, Michel
Danino, said that the study is 'steeped in circularity'. 'It accepts the
Indo-European migrations into Europe and into South Asia as a fact, then
repeatedly fits the genetic evidence to this ‘fact’. This is faulty
methodology…,' he said. He pointed out that 'No ancient Harappan DNA has been
analysed, which could have provided some secure comparison for contemporary
samples in Central Asia and elsewhere.'
Danino also says that the study
assumes that South Asia was more or less empty of population in the
pre-Harappan era. 'It sweeps aside the subcontinent’s Mesolithic and Neolithic
populations which undoubtedly have substantial contributions to the South Asian
genome. It considers such Mesolithic and Neolithic populations only in the
context of Central Asia and Europe! This is one example [among others] of a
strong Eurocentric bias in the study,' he says.".
Actually, the most vital mistake which
these committed scientists make is to accept as a "fact" the date
of the Rigveda as post-1500 BCE (while ignoring the massive evidence which
shows that it goes beyond 3000 BCE), and "then repeatedly fit the
genetic evidence to this ‘fact’". The result is "garbage in
garbage out" so far as the linguistic question is concerned,
whatever the (dubious or still to be properly evaluated) value of the analysis
to actual migrations of people and mixtures of populations.
The "genomic scientists"
have only released preliminary trailers of what their "report" is
going to "prove". The full report is yet to come. And it will be
answered in full by the appropriate people. The only thing to note here is that
objectivity and honesty cannot be expected from a group of people - whatever
their academic status - calling themselves "scientists", but
working for years to a definite political objective, and refusing to deal
with the relevant evidence (in this case, the linguistic, archaeological
and textual/inscriptional data),
while proclaiming and propagating their motivated and flawed conclusions on a
war footing.
What is
worse is that, even as they ignore the latest linguistic, archaeological
and textual/inscriptional data and
evidence, their whole proof is based on the claim that the
"genomic" dates derived by them actually "fit in" with the
dates derived by linguists (but, note, strongly
rejected by archaeologists) for the alleged "Aryan" migrations
from the Steppes (and consequently with the date assigned by the linguists to
the Rigveda)! This is like a group of
committed Church "scientists" in the 1600s periodically announcing
new "scientific" discoveries which fitted in with the Church-held geocentric
view of the world, while refusing to consider or debate the contemporary works
of Galileo Galilei which proved the heliocentric case. [Galileo was tried by
the Roman Inquisition in 1633 for "heresy" and kept under house
arrest till his death in 1642. One can imagine the power of the Church "scholars"
in Europe in those days, and the clout of the works of their committed
"scientists". But what would be the status of their
"scientific" works today?].
In any
case, however many new strands of different foreign DNA and genes are
discovered to be embedded in the genetic structure of different sections of
Indians, all this has nothing to do with the question of the "Aryan
languages" in India, and of the Original Homeland and the migrations of
the ancient Indo-European tribes, since all this has already been answered: the Original Homeland of the Indo-European
languages was in northern India, and the migrations of the other eleven
branches of Indo-European languages from India is a matter of recorded history.
[I owe my main inputs above on the "genetic
evidence" to Nirjhar Mukhopadhyay and Jaydeep Rathod, and hereby express
my thanks to them for the same].
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