Harappan Civilization and Aryan Theories - David Frawley Page 15

7/31/2019 Harappan Civilization and Aryan Theories - David Frawley Page 15

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THE HARAPPA / VEDA DISCUSSION (2002)

Michael WitzelHarvard University


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The HinduOpen Page

Historical divide: archaeology and literature

Tuesday, Jan 22, 2002

N.S. RAJARAM

Indology grew out of attempts to interpret Indian sources from Europeanperspective. Its legacy is archaeology without literature for the Harappans and aliterature without archaeology for the Vedic Aryans. Any rewriting of history mustbegin by bridging this unnatural gulf.

INDOLOGY, WHICH prominently includes history of the Vedic Age, is the result of ahistorical accident. In 1784, Sir William Jones, an English jurist in the employ of theBritish East India Company, began a study of Sanskrit to better understand the legaland political traditions of the Indian subjects. As a classical scholar, he was struck by

the extraordinary similarities between Sanskrit and European languages, especiallyLatin and Greek. He went on to observe: "... the Sanscrit language, whatever be itsantiquity, is of wonderful structure, more perfect than Greek, more copious thanLatin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them astronger affinity, both in the roots of the verbs and in the forms of grammar, thancould possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologercould examine them all three without believing them to have sprung from the samesource."

Though he was not the first European to recognise this connection that honourbelongs probably to Filippo Sassetti, a Florentine merchant living in Goa twocenturies earlier Jones was the first to express it in scholarly terms. With thisdramatic announcement Jones launched two new fields Indology and comparativelinguistics, notably Indo-European linguistics. To account for this similarity, somescholars postulated that the ancestors of Indians and Europeans must at one timehave lived in the same region and spoken the same language. They called this theAryan language and their common homeland the Aryan homeland. Following the Nazimisuse of the word Aryan as a race, and the atrocities that accompanied it, the termhas fallen into disfavour. The preferred term today is Indo-European. According tothis theory, the ancestors of the Indians who used Vedic Sanskrit to compose theVedas and other related literature hailed from a land outside India. Their originalhomeland has been placed in locations from Germany to Chinese Turkestan, that is,everywhere except India where the Vedic language and its literature have found thefullest expression and endured the longest.

This is the background to the famous Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) that hasdominated Indian history books for over a century. Based on various arguments, butstrongly influenced by biblical beliefs, scholars like F. Max Mueller assigned a date of1500 BC for the Aryan invasion and 1200 BC for the composition of the Rigveda, theoldest member of the Vedic corpus. The Bible is said to assign the date October 23,4004 BC for the Creation and 2448 BC for the Flood. This was in the backgroundwhen he gave 1500 BC as the date of the Aryan invasion. Max Mueller himself in aletter to the Duke of Argyle, then acting Secretary of State for India, asserted: "Iregard the account in the Genesis (of the Bible) to be simply historical." In his


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defence, it must be recognised that he was by no means dogmatic about histheories. Towards the end of his life, in response to some critics, Max Mueller wrote:"Whether the Vedic hymns were written in 1000, 1500 or 2000 or 3000 BC, nopower on earth will ever determine."

Mismatch

What is remarkable in all this is the fact that the foundations of ancient Indianhistory were being laid by scholars who were not historians but linguists. In keepingwith the political conditions of the age the heyday of European colonialism itwas inevitable that colonial and Christian missionary interests should have intrudedon their work. Even Max Mueller, during the first half of his career, saw it his duty toadvance the interests of Christian missionaries, though, towards the end of his life,he became a convert to Vedanta. In addition, most of them had no scientificbackground witness their belief in the Biblical Creation Theory. There was also noarchaeology to guide them.

All these were soon to change. Beginning about 1921, Indian and British

archaeologists working under Sir John Marshall revealed the existence of the ancientcities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro in the Punjab and Sindh. Further excavationshowed that they were part of a vast civilisation spread over most of North India andeven beyond. This is now famous as the Indus Valley or the Harappan civilisation.They were flourishing in the period from c. 3100 BC to 1900 BC, or more than athousand years before the postulated Aryan invasion. Scholars from a wide range ofdisciplines including literature, archaeology, architecture and even mathematics,began to study the archaeological remains for clues to the identity and nature of thecivilisation.

At first sight, the discovery of the Harappan civilisation, spread over the samegeographical region as described in the Vedic literature, seemed to invalidate theAryan Invasion Theory. The natural conclusion seemed to be that Harappanarchaeology represented the material remains of the culture described in the Vedicliterature. But for reasons that are too complex to detail here, prominent historianssoon rejected the idea of the Vedic identity of the Harappan civilisation. They insistedthat the Harappans were a pre-Vedic (and non-Vedic) people who were defeated bythe invading Aryans and forced to migrate en masse to South India, later to beknown as Dravidians, speaking languages that are supposedly unrelated to Sanskrit.Through this device, historians sought to preserve the Aryan Invasion Theory andreconcile it with the existence of a much older civilisation in the Vedic heartland. Inthis exercise it should be noted that a theory postulated by linguists in the previouscentury prevailed over archaeological evidence.

No evidence of invasion

This soon ran into contradictions. Archaeologists found no evidence of any invasionor warfare severe enough to account for the uprooting of such a vast civilisation. Onthe other hand, the decline of the Harappan civilisation could be attributed to naturalcauses in particular, ecological degradation due to the drying up of vital riversystems and also floods. It is now known that a major contributor was a severe 300-year drought (2200 1900 BC) that struck in an immense belt from the Aegean toChina. Recent research has shown that the rainfall in some areas diminished by asmuch as 20 per cent. The Harappan was one of several ancient civilisations to feel


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the impact of this ecological catastrophe; others similarly affected were AncientEgypt and Mesopotamia to the west and China to the east.

The theory of Harappans as Dravidians has also proved to be far from satisfactory.The Harappans, who were supposed to be the original Dravidian speakers, were aliterate people. There are some four thousand examples of their writing from sites

like Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro, Lothal, Kalibangan and others, as well as dozens inWest Asia. Yet, the earliest examples of South Indian (or Dravidian) writing use aversion of the Brahmi script, which originated in North India. This leaves us in theextraordinary situation where the migrating Harappans took their language but notthe script that they had themselves invented. And they waited more than a thousandyears to begin their writing, borrowing from a North Indian script for the purpose.

In the light of all this, the situation regarding the primary sources of ancient Indiamay be summarised as follows: no satisfactory explanation has been found toaccount for the separate existence of Harappan archaeology and the Vedic literature,both of which flourished in the same geographical region. On the one hand, there isHarappan archaeology, the most extensive anywhere in the world, but no Harappan

literature. On the other, there is the Vedic literature, which exceeds in volume allother ancient literature in the world combined several times over, but no Vedicarchaeological remains. So we have archaeology without literature for the Harappansand literature without archaeology for the Vedic Aryans. This is all the more puzzlingconsidering that the Harappans were a literate people while we are told that theVedic Aryans knew no writing but used memory for preserving their immenseliterature. This means only the literature of the illiterates has survived.

In the light of this incongruity, one may say that as long as this gulf betweenarchaeology and literature remains unbridged, there can be no such thing as history.Neither the Harappans nor the Vedic Aryans have a historical context, but onlyarchaeological and literary sources hanging as loose ends. So the first step in anywriting (or rewriting) of ancient history should be a systematic programme to

rationally connect Harappan archaeology and the Vedic literature. These are theprimary sources; the theories that are now in textbooks are secondary, based on theperceptions of scholars of the colonial era. More seriously, they contradict thearchaeological evidence.

Vedic-Harappan connection

Fortunately some progress is being made in accounting for both Harappanarchaeology and the Vedic literature, though, to a large extent, it owes to the workof outsiders. Some Vedic scholars have noted that Harappan remains are repletewith sacred Vedic symbols like the swastika sign, the `OM' sign and the sacredashvattha leaf (Ficus Religiosa). No less dramatic is the discovery of the American

mathematician and historian of science, A. Seidenberg, tracing the origins ofEgyptian and Old Babylonian mathematics to Vedic mathematical texts known as theSulbasutras. As Seidenberg observed: " ... the elements of ancient geometry foundin Egypt (before 2100 BC) and Babylonia (c. 1900 1750 BC) stem from a ritualsystem of the kind observed in the Sulbasutras." This means that the mathematics ofthe Sulbasutras, which are Vedic texts, must have existed long before 2000 BC, i.e.,during the Harappan period. This is clear also from a technical examination ofHarappan archaeology, which displays skill in town planning and geometric design,showing that Harappans must have had access to the Sulbasutras. This gives a


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scientific link between Vedic literature (Sulbasutras) and Harappan archaeology. (TheSulbasutras should not be confused with popular books on Vedic mathematics. Theseare modern works that have little to do with the Vedas).

All this shows that progress can be made in explaining Harappan archaeology andthe Vedic literature if one is prepared to follow a multidisciplinary, scientifically

rigorous approach. The present incongruous situation of mismatch betweenarchaeology and literature is attributable to two factors. First, an attempt topreserve a theory created on the basis of insufficient evidence before anyarchaeological data became available. Next, the fact that even this theory and thefoundation that it rests on were created by linguists and other scholars whoseunderstanding of science and the scientific method left much to be desired.

Correcting past errors

Several historians have rightly expressed concern that history may soon be writtenby individuals who lack the necessary knowledge of the historical method. But farmore serious is the fact that what is found in textbooks today is based on theories

created by men and women who had no qualifications to write about them. They arebased not on the primary sources, but explanations that seek to fit the data to aparticular Nineteenth century worldview the Eurocolonial. The immediate taskbefore Indian historians is to get back to the fundamentals, ignoring the authority ofscholars from the past, no matter how great their reputations. Sri Aurobindosuggested that the problem lies in the failure of Indian scholars to developindependent schools of thought. In his words: "That Indian scholars have not beenable to form themselves into a great and independent school of learning is due totwo causes: the miserable scantiness of the mastery in Sanskrit provided by ouruniversities, crippling to all but born scholars, and our lack of sturdy independencewhich makes us over-ready to defer to European (and Western) authority."

This is not to suggest that we should either deny or reject the findings of Westernscholarship. Only we should not accept them uncritically as authority figures. Theywere products of their time and environment and the resulting weaknesses should berecognised. Their contributions remain substantial, but cannot be treated as primaryknowledge. No less a person than Swami Vivekananda once said: "Study Sanskrit,but along with it study Western sciences as well. Learn accuracy, ... study and labourso that the time will come when you can put our history on a scientific basis... Howcan foreigners, who understand very little of our manners and customs, or ourreligion and philosophy, write faithful and unbiased histories of India? ...Nevertheless they have shown us how to proceed making researches into our ancienthistory. Now it is for us to strike out an independent path of historical research forourselves, ... It is for Indians to write Indian history."

His advice holds as good today as it did a century ago when he gave it to a group ofstudents. The recovery of history must begin with a thorough study of the primarysources. The first step is to close the unnatural gap between archaeology andliterature.

N.S. RAJARAM

(The writer is the author with David Frawley of the book Vedic Aryans and theOrigins of Civilisation)


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The HinduOpen Page

Tuesday, Jan 29, 2002

Indus Civilisation and Vedic society

MICHAEL WITZEL

The Open Page write-up by N.S. Rajaram (Historical divide: archaeology andliterature, January 22) is a serious misrepresentation of the results of various fieldsof scholarship. Certainly, the writing of ancient Indian history "must begin with athorough study of the primary sources. The first step is to close the unnatural gapbetween archaeology and literature." However, such study, which is not altogethernew, has to begin without prejudices of any kind, such as Rajaram's wrongpresuppositions. There is little overlap between the archaeology of the IndusCivilisation (its script cannot be read yet) and early Vedic texts. For a good reason.

The oldest Vedic text, the Rigveda, is full of quick, spoked-wheel horse-drawnchariots (invented around 2000 BCE), and obviously, of domesticated horses (firstclearly identified in the Kachi Plains of the Indus, at 1700 BCE), but it does not yetknow of iron (introduced in the northwest around 1200/1000 BCE).

Annoying details

Clearly, the Rigveda must fall between these dates. However the Indus (Harappan)Civilisation is dated by all archaeologists between 2600 (not 3100!) and 1900 BCE.No wonder there is geographical but not a temporal overlap between the two.Further, in spite of recent rewriters of history, whatever the pastoral Rigvedadescribes does not fit the fully developed cities of the Harappan Civilisation: theseare two different worlds. How to explain this `gap' is another matter, with whichscholars still struggle. Whether the decline of the Indus Civilisation was due todrought or a number of separate, coinciding, and self-reinforcing reasons is stillundecided. Rajaram, however, simply overlooks such annoying details by adducingvarious isolated features in mono-lateral fashion, features which do not add up andare in fact to be contradicted by the various sciences that he evokes against merestudents of the humanities (such as me). For the details, such as on geometry,astronomy, archaeology, Puranic king lists, language, etc., see EJVS 7-3 (inElectronic Journal of Vedic Studies, http://users.primushost.com/ india/ejvs/).

That the Harappans lost their script and language and took over an Indo-Aryanlanguage (now developed into Punjabi, Sindhi, etc.) has parallels in other areas.Witness the descendants of the great Maya Civilisation who mostly speak Spanish

now and have long lost their script. Their civilisation was disintegrating on its ownwhen the Spanish arrived, who did not have to resort to the same brutal methodsthey used in Mexico and Peru. Civilisations do die when under strains of varioussorts.

Why then such a "simple" solution, a "systematic programme to rationally connectHarappan archaeology and the Vedic literature"? No Aryans were needed for thedemise. The earliest Aryan-like culture in the subcontinent may be the GandharaGrave Culture of N. Pakistan (starting around 1700 BCE), well within the time frame


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mentioned above. The "Aryans", perhaps Pathan-like seasonal pastoral migrantsfrom Afghanistan, merely exploited a new opportunity in the then less agriculturalIndus Valley, and set off a wave of acculturation based on their more effectivepastoralism. No Hun-like "invasion" (the model of the 19th century scholars) isneeded, though one has to take into account a whole range of processes, frompeaceful acculturation to forceful take-over, in the various parts of the Northwest. As

history teaches, one size does not fit them all.

Unilateral points

The several unilateral points and the new theories built on them by Rajaram arequickly destroyed by the various sciences, such as his pre-Indus Rigveda withchariots and horses in the subcontinent before their time. Any linguist will tell himthat the Indo-Aryan languages (from Punjabi to Sinhala and Bengali), Dravidian(Tamil, Telugu, etc.), Munda (Santali, etc.) belong to three completely differentfamilies that share only loan-words from Sanskrit or Prakrit, just like all Europeanlanguages have theirs from Latin. Still, no Kannada or Santali speaker willunderstand a Punjabi, just as little as a Portuguese can make out anything from

Finnish or Basque. But then, linguistics is a `petty conjectural science' as he likes tosay.

All his "proofs" (the ubiquitous swastika, the `literate' Harappans, seafaring Rigvedicpeople, the age of the Sulbasutras, Vedic literature as larger than "all other...ancientliterature...combined...", etc.) disappear once one takes a closer look (details in EJVSvol. 7-3, 2001, as above). Again, the Harappans must not "have had access to theSulbasutras" the Egyptians built their giant pyramids or a completely new, well-planned town such as Amarna, without their help, having learned from trial anderror. To what extent Rajaram must go to make the overlap between Vedic andHarappan, is exposed in Frontline, Oct. 13 and Nov. 11, 2000:

http://www.flonnet.com/fl1720/fl172000.htm

The historical background is wrong as well. Indology is not an "attempt to interpretIndian sources from [a] European perspective" , instead, it is an attempt to let thesources speak for themselves, irrespective of later Indian or Europeaninterpretations. In other words, just like Sinology, Egyptology, etc., it is a work inprogress. Even poor old Max Mueller is misrepresented again. His history is notderived from the Bible. Anybody who actually reads his letters (not just excerpts) willsee that he was, as a young man, an opportunist who wrote one "Christian" letter tohis pious donor and a completely "non-Christian" letter upon the death of youngsister... to his own mother.

To put Indology down to "Eurocolonial attitudes" is much too facile, in fact, pure

propaganda. Non-Western scholars (say, of Japan) do not agree with Rajaram's "newhistory" either see: "Was there an Aryan invasion at all" (in Japanese language):Kokusai Nihon Bunka Kenkyu Senta Kiyo. (Nihon Kenkyu) 23, March 2000.

MICHAEL WITZELDepartment of Sanskrit, Harvard University
http://www.flonnet.com/fl1720/fl172000.htmhttp://www.flonnet.com/fl1720/fl172000.htm


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The Hindu

Open Page

Tuesday, Feb 05, 2002

Vedic-Indus debate: save Indian civilisation today

If the BJP and the VHP want to ensure that modern Indian civilisation is creative anddynamic, it will not be through historical debate. They should call for an immediate

halt to English-medium education at all levels and the insidious class division itcreates, and promote dynamic modern civilisational creativity in the Indian people's

languages.

The Open Page discussion on Indus and Vedic society by N. S. Rajaram (January 22)and Michael Witzel (January 29) is not finished. Rajaram's main thesis seems to bethat the Indus Civilisation was a direct linear antecedent to Vedic society andclassical Indian civilisation. Witzel is correct that this is too facile and appears to be

an argument driven by ideology.

But neither Rajaram nor Witzel discusses language much, except that Rajaramridicules the claim that the Indus Civilisation had a Dravidian-type language sayingthat it is strange that the people would have lost their script. He suggests, withoutevidence, that it was Indo-Aryan speaking. Witzel is correct in saying that thepopulation of the Indus Valley lost their language and script and took over an Indo-Aryan language which has now developed into Punjabi, Sindhi, etc.

Scholars who have devoted many years to the study of the Indus script mostly agreethat all indications are that it was Dravidian-like. This is the conclusion of scholars inFinland, Russia, England, Czech Republic, the U.S., Pakistan and India. Some earlier

ones, like Father Heras, and recently Finnish scholars, have spent decades studyingthe 600 script symbols, their possible grammatical positions, and the culturalassociations. It is a minority of people who are themselves speakers of Indo-Aryanlanguages, who assert that the Indus people must have spoken a language like thatof their own!

Linguistic evidence

The evidence that the Indus language was Dravidian-like is overwhelming, bothcircumstantial and linguistic. First, there are the Brahui people, over a million wholive in east-central Baluchistan. This writer has looked into the matter himself whilein Baluchistan; the language is certainly Dravidian at its core. How did it get there?Nobody has seriously suggested that the Brahuis moved there from peninsular India;rather Brahui language and culture got isolated in those hills while major changestook place in Sindh and Punjab plains.

And we should note the place names of Dravidian origin over Pakistan and westernand central India. Many place names have the ending aar (river), or include thewords mala (mountain), kandh (hill), kotta (wall or fort), besides of course uur, puraand others. Rajaram would do well to study the Dravidian Etymological Dictionary


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which compiles the vocabularies of some 20 Dravidian languages, and note thegeographic implications.

The word uur (town) almost certainly goes back to the earliest civilisations inMesopotamia one of the numerous indications that the basic features of civilisation(i.e. urban life) in the Indus region diffused there from what are now Iraq and Iran.

Probably Dravidian languages also had antecedents to some extent in those regions.This is the thesis of a book Dravidians and the West(Lahovery), and though it makesbolder assumptions than would be allowed by the strict procedures of many historicallinguists, nevertheless it presents overwhelming suggestions. If it is accepted thatthe hundreds of native American languages branched off from three main stems(Greenberg), and if similar efforts showing that all the languages of North Asia andEurope could have branched off from a few prototype languages, then the abovesuggestions about the origin of Dravidian languages should also be accepted.

Rajaram thought it was strange that the Indus people lost their script. There isnothing historically strange in that the script was already weakened as the IndusCivilisation people established their many settlements in Gujarat about 2000 BC. But

several of the symbols, such as swastika, fish and trident, were retained in cultureand scratched onto pottery. It is absolutely clear (F. Southworth) that Marathi,though classified now as an Indo-Aryan language, is built on a Dravidian-underlyingstratum. This is true to some extent for Gujarati and Sindhi also, and for that matterPunjabi and all western Indo-Aryan languages, which are universally acknowledgedby historical linguists to have considerable Dravidian influence in phonetics,vocabulary and syntax.

It is clear also that Dravidian languages diffused over much of Madhya Pradesh there are the place names, besides many ("tribal") peoples who still speak Dravidianlanguages and whose historical traditions say they moved from western to centraland east-central India. Dravidian languages diffused from Maharashtra throughKarnataka and Tamil Nadu, while Telugu had branched off the language tree

somewhat earlier.

Language displacement

It is nothing unusual in history that Indo-Aryan speech overwhelmed Dravidian inwestern South Asia. Such tendencies are everywhere. Semitic languagesoverwhelmed other language groups over much of the Near East about 2000 BC, butthis doesn't mean that the pre-Semitic people were killed off; rather they were oftenabsorbed into different political-economic systems. Semitic speech lateroverwhelmed Egypt, then most of North Africa, because it was thought to be thevehicle of advancement. This is the usual stuff of history.

In Pakistan, the Burushaski language is related to none other, isolated in the highHunza valley. It might be a relic of both pre-Dravidian and pre-Indo-Aryan speech inPunjab. The Dardic languages, including Kashmiri, are apparently descended fromthe first wave of Indo-European speech to enter South Asia, but these then gotisolated in the Himalayas during the diffusion of Indo-Aryan. Indo-Aryan itself gotoverwhelmed in western Pakistan by the later arriving Persian-related languagessuch as Pashto and Baluchi. These changes may happen by invasion, but also bydribbles of more mobile or more politically powerful people moving in or by their


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cultures being considered so modernising that the existing inhabitants lose theirlanguage.

A different language displacement was going on in eastern India. Underlying Bengaliis a Munda-type language, of which Bengali today retains many linguistic and culturalevidences. There is absolutely no evidence that Dravidian speech underlies Bengali,

Oriya, or Assamese (Grierson, writing on this a century ago, was wrong). The Mundalanguages (Mon-Khmer group) reflect diffusion of cultures from Southeast Asiathousands of years BC which had mastered horticulture (rice, bananas, turmeric,taro, etc.) and therefore enabled humans to proliferate and diffuse into eastern andcentral Ganga plains and east-central India with all their cultigens prior to thediffusion there of both Dravidian and Indo-Aryan.

And in Southeast Asia, it was only a thousand or so years ago that Burmese, Thaiand Lao languages from South China overwhelmed the Mon-Khmer languages inmost of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, not to speak of Vietnam where it happened inthe south only a couple centuries ago. And before diffusion of the Mon-Khmer, theMalay languages had been more widespread. Most Southeast Asian people today

accept that various underlying streams have formed their cultures and languages.

So the people of India today should gladly acknowledge, as Witzel says, thatDravidian, Munda and Indo-Aryan are distinct underlying streams and the 4th oneis the Tibeto-Burmese stream in the north and east. Classical Indian Civilisation hadcreative achievements, which are remarkable enough, without a bogus claim that itis exclusively descended from the Indus Civilisation.

The real issue

The real issue now is not rewriting history, but how to reinvigorate Indiancivilisational creativity in modern concepts. What is to be done about the fact that sixIndian languages have more native speakers than French, but in these languagesthere is hardly anything produced that makes a worldwide mark in modern conceptsand science.

I want to emphasise that practically no people in world history have made a lastingcivilisational mark using the language of a minority elite; either the language of thepeople develops as the vehicle of modernisation (like all of the languages of Europewhen they threw off Latin, and like Korean in recent decades) or that language fadesas a minority elite and then the bulk of the people adopt an outside language formodernisation.

The people of India should have made the choice 50 years ago. A firm decision thenshould have been taken that the people's languages are the vehicles of

modernisation, and to be used as the medium of modern education at all levels.Then all modern currents of thought, science, and creativity would flow through thewhole population as happens in all the European and East Asian languages today.The genius of civilisation would flow from the whole population, with far less classdivision.

If the BJP and the VHP want to ensure that modern Indian civilisation is creative anddynamic, it will not be through historical debate. They should call for an immediatehalt to English-medium education at all levels and the insidious class division it


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creates, and promote dynamic modern civilisational creativity in the Indian people'slanguages.

CLARENCE MALONEY

The Hindu

Open Page

Tuesday, Feb 19, 2002

Theory and evidence

N.S. RAJARAM

A historical theory must account for all the evidence and not selectively accept andignore data. Further, a man-made theory cannot substitute for primary data.

ALBERT EINSTEIN once said: "A theory must not contradict empirical facts." He wasspeaking in the context of science, especially how historians of science often lackedproper understanding of the scientific process. As he saw it the problem was: "Nearlyall historians of science are philologists (linguists) and do not comprehend whatphysicists were aiming at, how they thought and wrestled with these problems."When such is the situation in physics where problems are clear-cut, it is notsurprising to see issues in a subject like history being much more contentious. This isparticularly the case when trying to understand the records of people far removedfrom us in time like the creators of the Vedic and Harappan civilisations. As a resultof some recent historical developments like European colonisation and Westerninterest in Sanskrit language and linguistics, several myths and conjectures, throughthe force of repetition, have come to acquire the status of historical facts. It is timeto re-evaluate these in the light of new evidence and more scientific approaches.

When we come to these myths, none is more persistent than the one about "Nohorse at Harappa." This has now been supplemented by another claim that thespoke-wheel was unknown to the Harappans. The point of these claims is thatwithout the horse and the spoke-wheel the Harappans were militarily vulnerable to

the invading Aryan hordes who moved on speedy, horse-drawn chariots with spoke-wheels. This claim is not supported by facts an examination of the evidence showsthat both the spoke-wheel and the horse were widely used by the Harappans. (Theidea seems to be borrowed from the destruction of Native American civilisations bythe Spanish and Portuguese `conquistadors'. The conquistadors though never usedchariots).

As far as the spoke-wheel is concerned, B.B. Lal, former Director General of theArchaeological Survey of India, records finding terracotta wheels at various Harappan


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sites. In his words: "The painted lines (spokes) converge at the central hub, and thusleave no doubt about their representing the spokes of the wheel. ... another exampleis reproduced from Kalibangan, a well-known Harappan site in Rajasthan, in whichtoo the painted lines converge at the hub. ... two examples from Banawali (anotherHarappan site), in which the spokes are not painted but are shown in low relief" (TheSarasvati Keeps Flowing, Aryan Books, Delhi, pages 72-3). It is also worth noting

that the depiction of the spoke-wheel is quite common on Harappan seals.

Horse and Vedic symbolism

The horse and the cow are mentioned often in the Rigveda, though they commonlycarry symbolic rather than physical meaning. There is widespread misconception thatthe absence of the horse at Harappan sites shows that horses were unknown in Indiauntil the invading Aryans brought them. Such `argument by absence' is hazardous atbest. To take an example, the bull is quite common on the seals, but the cow isnever represented. We cannot from this conclude that the Harappans raised bulls butwere ignorant of the cow. In any event, depictions of the horse are known atHarappan sites, though rare. It is possible that there was some kind of religious

taboo that prevented the Harappans from using cows and horses in their art. Morefundamentally, it is incorrect to say that horses were unknown to the Harappans. Therecently released encyclopedia The Dawn of Indian Civilisation, Volume 1, Part 1observes (pages 344-5): "... the horse was widely domesticated and used in Indiaduring the third millennium BC over most of the area covered by the Indus-Sarasavati (or Harappan) Civilisation. Archaeologically this is most significant sincethe evidence is widespread and not isolated."

This is not the full story. Sir John Marshall, Director General of the ArchaeologicalSurvey when Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro were being excavated, recorded thepresence of what he called the `Mohenjo-Daro horse'. Giving salient measurements,comparing it to other known specimens, he wrote: "It will be seen that there is aconsiderable degree of similarity between these various examples and it is probable

the Anau horse, the Mohenjo-Daro horse, and the example ofEquus caballus of theZoological Survey of India, are all of the type of the `Indian country bred', a smallbreed of horse, the Anau horse being slightly smaller than the others." (Mohenjo-Daro and the Indus Civilisation, volume II, page 654). It is important to recognisethat this is much stronger evidence than mere artefacts, which are artists'reproductions and not anatomical specimens that can be subjected to scientificexamination.

Actually, the Harappans knew the horse and the whole issue of the `Harappan horse'is irrelevant. In order to prove that the Vedas are of foreign origin, (and the horsecame from Central Asia) one must produce positive evidence: it should be possible toshow that the horse described in the Rigveda was brought from Central Asia. This is

contradicted by the Rigveda itself. In verse I.162.18, the Rigveda describes thehorse as having 34 ribs (17 pairs), while the Central Asian horse has 18 pairs (36) ofribs. We find a similar description in the Yajurveda also.

This means that the horse described in the Vedas is the native Indian breed (with 34ribs) and not the Central Asian variety. Fossil remains of Equus Sivalensis (the`Siwalik horse') show that the 34-ribbed horse has been known in India going backtens of thousands of years. This makes the whole argument based on "No horse atHarappa" irrelevant. The Vedic horse is a native Indian breed and not the Central


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Asian horse. As a result, far from supporting any Aryan invasion, the horse evidencefurnishes one of its strongest refutations.

All this suggests that man-made theories (like "No Harappan horse") and those inlinguistics cannot be used to override primary evidence like the Vedic Sarasvati(described below) and the dominant oceanic symbolism found in the Vedas. To see

this we may note that South Indian languages like Kannada and Tamil haveindigenous (desi) word for the horse kudurai suggesting that the horse has longbeen native to the region. The same is true of the tiger (puli and huli) and theelephant (aaney). Contrast this with the word for the lion simha and singam that are borrowed from Sanskrit, indicating that the lion was not native to the South.A man-made theory in linguistics, because it is not bound by laws of nature, can bemade to cut both ways. It cannot take the place of evidence.

Primary evidence

In any field it is important to take into account all the evidence, especially evidenceof a fundamental nature. This can be illustrated with the help of what we now know

about the Vedic river known as the Sarasvati. The Rigveda describes the Sarasvati asthe greatest and the holiest of rivers as ambitame, naditame, devitame (best ofmothers, best of rivers, best goddess). Satellite photographs as well as fieldexplorations by archaeologists, notably the great expedition led by the late V.S.Wakankar, have shown that a great river answering to the description of theSarasvati in the Rigveda (flowing `from the mountains to the sea') did indeed existthousands of years ago. After many vicissitudes due to tectonic and other changes, itdried up completely by 1900 BC. This raises a fundamental question: how could theAryans who are supposed to have arrived in India only in 1500 BC, and composedtheir Vedic hymns c. 1200 BC, have described and extolled a river that haddisappeared five hundred years earlier? In addition, numerous Harappan sites havebeen found along the course of the now dry Sarasvati, which further strengthens theVedic-Harappan connection. As a result, the Indus (or Harappan) Civilisation is more

properly called the Indus-Sarasvati Civilisation.

The basic point of all this: we cannot construct a theory focusing on a few relativelyminor details like the spoke-wheel while ignoring important, even monumentalevidence like the Sarasvati river and the oceanic symbolism that dominates theRigveda. (This shows that the Vedic people could not have come from a land-lockedregion like Afghanistan or Central Asia). A historical theory, no less than a scientifictheory, must take into account all available evidence. No less important, a man-made theory cannot take the place of primary evidence like the Sarasvati river or theoceanic descriptions in the Rigveda. This brings us back to Einstein "A theory mustnot contradict empirical facts." Nor can it ignore primary evidence.

N.S. RAJARAM


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The HinduOpen Page

Tuesday, Mar 05, 2002

Harappan horse myths and the sciences

The horses found in the early excavations at Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa do notcome from secure levels and such `horse' bones, in most cases, found their way intodeposits through erosional cutting and refilling, disturbing the archaeological layers.

In the Open Page of February 19, N.S. Rajaram posits a truism "A theory must notcontradict empirical facts," but he then does not deliver on the `empirical facts.' As ascientist, he must suffer to be corrected, bluntly this time, by a mere philologist andIndologist. Philology, incidentally, is not the same as linguistics, as he says, but thestudy of a civilisation based on its texts. In order to understand such texts, one mustacquire the necessary knowledge in all relevant fields, from astronomy to zoology. Itis precisely a proper background in zoology, particularly in palaeontology, that isbadly lacking in Rajaram's, the scientist's, account. Instead, it is he, and not hisfavourite straw man, the Indologist, who has created some new "myths andconjectures ... through the force of repetition." Let us deconstruct them one by one.

Harappan horses?

To begin with, he claims that "both the spoke-wheel and the horse were widely usedby the Harappans." He quotes S.P. Gupta, without naming him, from a recent book(The Dawn of Indian Civilisation, ed. by G.C. Pande, 1999). According to Gupta thehorse (Equus caballus) "was widely domesticated and used in India during the thirdmillennium BC over most of the area covered by the Indus-Sarasvati (or Harappan)Civilisation. Archaeologically this is most significant since the evidence is widespreadand not isolated." Nothing in this assertion is correct, even if or rather because

it comes from an archaeologist and inventive rewriter of history, S.P. Gupta. Forexample, the horses found in the early excavations at Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa donot come from secure levels and such `horse' bones, in most cases, found their wayinto deposits through erosional cutting and refilling, disturbing the archaeologicallayers.

Indeed, not one clear example of horse bones exists in the Indus excavations andelsewhere in North India before c. 1800 BCE (R. Meadow and A. Patel 1997, Meadow1996: 405, 1998). Such `horse' skeletons have not been properly reported fromdistinct and secure archaeological layers, and worse, they have not been comparedwith relevant collections of ancient skeletons and modern horses (Meadow 1996:392). Instead, well recorded and stratified finds of horse figures and later on, of

horse bones (along with the imported camel and donkey), first occur in the Kachiplain on the border of Sindh/E. Baluchistan (c. 1800-1500 BCE), when the matureIndus Civilisation had already disintegrated.

Even more importantly, the only true native equid of South Asia is the untamablekhur (Equus hemionus, onager/half-ass) that still tenuously survives in the Rann ofKutch. Both share a common ancestor which is now put at ca. 1.72 million years ago(while the first Equus specimen is attested already 3.7 mya.). The differencesbetween a half-ass skeleton and that of a horse are so small that one needs a


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trained specialist plus the lucky find of the lower forelegs of a horse/onager todetermine which is which, for "bones of a larger khur will overlap in size with thoseof a small horse, and bones of a small khur will overlap in size with those of adonkey." (Meadow 1996: 406).

To merely compare sizes, as Rajaram does following the dubious decades old

Harappan data of Marshall, and then to connect the long gone "Equus Sivalensis"with the so-called "Anau horse", resulting in the "Indian country" type, is justanother blunder, but Rajaram, the scientist, is not aware of it.

Proper judgment is not possible as long as none of the above precautions are taken,and when as is often done just incomplete skeletons or teeth are compared, allof which is done without the benefit of a suitable collection of standard sets ofonager, donkey and horse skeletons. Rajaram and his fellow rewriters of history thusare free to turn any local half-ass into a Harappan horse, just as he has already done(see Frontline, Oct./Nov. 2000) with his half-bull.

Further, the archaeologists claiming to have found horses in Indus sites are not

trained zoologists or palaeontologists. When I need to get my teeth fixed I do not goto a veterinarian or a beauty salon. Typically, S.P. Gupta (1999) does not add anynew evidence, and just repeats palaeontologically unsubstantiated claims that are, toquote Rajaram, "myths and conjectures... through the force of repetition."

The Siwalik equid

In addition, Rajaram conjures up another phantom, the Siwalik horse: "fossil remainsof Equus Sivalensis (the `Siwalik horse') show that the 34-ribbed horse has beenknown in India going back tens of thousands of years." Standard palaeontologyhandbooks (B.J. MacFadden, Fossil Horses, 1992) would have told him that theSiwalik horse, first found in the northern hills of Pakistan, is not just "going back tensof thousands of years" but is in fact 2.6 million years old. However, it has long diedout during the last Ice Age, as part of the late Pleistocene megafaunal extinction ofabout 10,000 years ago (i.e. at the end of the Late Upper Pleistocene, 75-10,000y.a.: it is reportedly found in middle to late Pleistocene locations in the Siwaliks andin Tamil Nadu, and recently, as a "Great Indian horse" in Andhra, 75,000 y.a.). Butthere is, to my knowledge, no account of a Siwalik horse that even remotelyapproaches the date of the Indus Civilisation nor does Rajaram quote anyauthority to this effect.

Nevertheless, in order to bolster his claim for the antiquity of the "Vedic horse (as) anative Indian breed", he connects this dead horse with the Rigvedic one, which isdescribed as having 34 ribs (Rigveda 1.162.18). But, while horses (Equus caballus)generally have 18 ribs on each side, this can individually vary with 17 on just one or

on both sides. This is not a genetically inherited trait. Such is also the case with theequally variable (5 instead of 6) lumbar vertebrae, as found in some early domestichorses in Egypt (2nd. mill. BCE) and in the closely related modern Central AsianPrzewalski horse (which shares the same ancestor, 620-320,000 years ago, with thedomestic horse/Equus ferus).

As for the number 34, numeral symbolism may play a role in this Rigveda passagedealing with a horse sacrificed for the gods. The number of gods in the Rigveda is 33or 33+1, which obviously corresponds to the 34 ribs of the horse, that in turn is


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speculatively brought into connection with all the gods, many of whom arementioned by name (Rigveda 1.162-3). But this is mere philology, not worthy of"scientific" study...

In sum, even S. Bokonyi, the palaeontologist who sought to identify a horse skeletonat the Surkotada site of the Indus Civilisation, stated that "horses reached the Indian

subcontinent in an already domesticated form coming from the Inner Asiatic horsedomestication centers" just as they were imported into the ancient Near Eastabout 2000 BCE. Any zoological handbook would have told the scientist Rajaram thesame (MacFadden 1992).

In addition, the identification the Surkotada equid as horse by S. Bokonyi is disputedby R. Meadow and A. Patel (1997). Even if this were indeed the only archaeologicallyand palaeontologically secure Indus horse available so far, it would not turn theIndus Civilisation into one teeming with horses (as the Rigveda indeed is, a fewhundred years later). A tiger skeleton in the Roman Colosseum does not make thisAsian predator a natural inhabitant of Italy. In short, to state that the "Vedic horse isa native Indian breed and not the Central Asian horse" is just another fantasy of the

current rewriters of Indian history.

Nevertheless, Rajaram even repeats some of his own "myths and conjectures,(which) through the force of repetition, have come to acquire the status of historicalfacts," namely the old canard that "depictions of the horse are known at Harappansites, though rare" a case of fraud and fantasy that has been exploded more thana year ago in Frontline (Oct./Nov. 2000). Apparently, he thinks, along with otherpoliticians, that repeating an untruth long enough will turn it into a fact.

Spoke-wheeled chariots

Rajaram, in dire need of `Rigvedic' horse-drawn chariots for the Harappan period,then introduces spoked wheels into the Indus Civilisation: "terracotta wheels atvarious Harappan sites. ... The painted lines (spokes) converge at the central hub,and thus leave no doubt about their representing the spokes of the wheel."

The handful existing specimens of such terracotta disks may indeed look, even to atrained archaeologist, like a spoked wheel especially when he wants to find Aryanchariots, just like Aryan fire altars, all over the Indus area. But, they may just as wellhave been simple spindle whorls, used in spinning very real yarn, not wild Aryantales. Further, "spoked wheel patterns" occur in cultures that never had the wheel,such as pre-Columbian North American civilisations. In other words, all of this provesnothing as long as we do not find a pair of these "spoked wheels" in situ, along witha Harappan toy cart. Normally, the wheels of such toy carts are of the heavy, fullwheel type (that is made of three interlocked wood blocks).

Rajaram then asserts, for good measure, that the "depiction of the spoke-wheel isquite common on Harappan seals." This refers to the wheel-like signs in Harappanscript. Unfortunately, these "wheels" can easily be explained as unrelated artisticdesigns (like in the N. American case). Worse, they mostly are oblong ovals, notcircles. A Harappan businessman using a cart with such wheels would have gottenseasick pretty soon. They are unfit for travel and for the discerning reader'sconsumption.


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Instead, the rich Rigvedic materials dealing with the horse-drawn chariot and chariotraces do not fit at all with Indus dates (2600-1900 BCE) and rather put this text andits chariots well after c. 2000 BCE, the archaeologically accepted timeframe of theinvention of the spoke-wheeled chariot in the northern steppes and in the Near East.Again, Rajaram's fantasised "Late Vedic" Indus people have scored a "first": theyinvented the chariot long before archaeologists can find it anywhere on the planet!

"Aryan" chariots

There is no need to go deeply into his building up the straw man of Aryan invasions(i.e. immigration of speakers of Indo-Aryan), involving a need to "prove that theVedas are of foreign origin." No one today maintains such a theory anyhow. Instead,the Rigveda is a text of the Greater Punjab, indicating a lot of local acculturation butusing a language and poetics that go back to the earlier Indo-Iranian period inCentral Asia (c. 2000 BCE).

Equally misleading is his caricature: "without the horse and the spoke-wheel theHarappans were militarily vulnerable to the invading Aryan hordes who moved on

speedy, horse-drawn chariots with spoke-wheels." As has been mentioned here afew weeks ago, nobody today claims that the Indo-Aryan speakers arrived on thescene when the mature Indus Civilisation still was flourishing and destroyed it, it inwhatever fashion. Instead, there is a gap of some centuries between the twocultures, as the descriptions of ruins and simple mud wall/palisade forts (pur) in theRigveda indicate. Vedic texts tell us that the pastoralist Indo-Aryan nobility foughtfrom chariots, and the commoners on horseback and on foot, with the local people(dasyu) of the small, post-Harappan settlements who, like the Kikata, are said noteven to understand "the use of cows." Next to warfare there also was peacefulacculturation of the various peoples in the Greater Punjab, as is shown by theRigveda itself.

As for a chariot use, a brief study of ancient Near Eastern warfare would have donethe `historian' Rajaram some good. It is clear to even a superficial reader that afterc. 1600 BCE the Hyksos, Hittites, etc., used such chariots, not just for show andsport but also in battle, such as in the famous battle of Kadesh between the Hittitesand Egyptians in 1300 BCE. Chariots were in fact used as late as in Alexander'sbattle with Poros (Paurava) in the Punjab, or by the contemporary Magadha armywith its 3,000 elephants and 2,000 chariots. Why then all this diatribe about the"Aryan" use of chariots in favourable, flat terrain? (Not, of course, while "thunderingdown the Khyber Pass"!)

Foray into linguistics

Mercifully, Rajaram has spared us, this time, his usual assaults on the "pseudo-

science" of linguistics, and instead tries his own hand at it, and teaches us someDravidian: kudirai `horse,' which should prove that the horse has been native toSouth India forever. However, his foray into linguistics is incomplete and misleading.

First, Tamil kutirai, Kannada kudire, Telugu kudira, etc. have been compared bylinguists, decades ago, with ancient Near Eastern words: Elamite kutira `bearer', kuti`to bear.' The Drav. words Brahui (h)ullii `horse' and Tam. ivuLi are derived from`half-ass, hemion' (T. Burrow in 1972). Both words, far from being `native SouthIndian', thus were coming in from the northwest.


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Second, other Indian language families have such `foreign' words as seen in Munda(Koraput) kurtag, (Korku) gurgi, kurki, (Sabara/Sora) kurtaa, (Gadaba) krutaa,which are all derived from Tibeto-Burmese, for example Tsangla (Bhutan) kurtaa,Tib. rta. We know that Himalayan ponies have always been brought southwards bysalt traders and with them, of course, their names. There also is the independentand isolated Burushaski (in N. Pakistan) with ha-ghur, cf. Drav. gur- in Telugu

guRRamu, Gondi gurram, etc., and the Austro-Asiatic Khasi (in Shillong) kulai, Amwikurwa', etc., all of which again point to a northern origin. (For details see: EJVS5-1, Aug. 1999, http://users.primushost.com/india/ejvs, or: International Journal ofDravidian Linguistics, 2001).

Far from magically proving, with one Dravidian word, that the "native Indian horse"has been found in the South since times immemorial, the "man made theory" oflinguistics --just as the hard facts of palaeontological science rather indicate thatthe words for `horse' were imported, along with the animal, from the (north)western(Iranian) and northern (Tibetan) areas. Genetics now add another facet. Thedomesticated horse seems to have several (steppe) maternal DNA lines (Science291, 2001, 474-477; Science 291, 2001, 412; cf. Conservation Genetics 1, 2000,341-355), which fits in very well with the several northern Eurasian words for itmentioned above. The Eastern Central Asian words must be added; they all probablyderive from Proto-Altaic *mori (as in Mongolian morin, Chinese ma, Japanese uma,and as surprisingly also found in Irish marc, English mare).

The Harappan "Sarasvati"

The case of the Vedic Sarasvati river (the modern Sarsuti-Ghagghar-Hakra) iscomplex and cannot be dealt with in detail (see, rather, EJVS 7-3, section 25). Itmust be pointed out, however, that the Rigvedic Sarasvati is a river on earth, a`river' in the sky (Milky Way), and a goddess, and as such Sarasvati is described insuperlative terms, once as flowing `from the mountains to the sea' (samudra).However, this word has several meanings that must be kept apart: `confluence,

lake, mythical ocean surrounding the earth'; the sky, too, is called a `pond'! Tocommingle all of this as samudra `Indian Ocean' is bad philology.

In addition, far from emptying into the Rann of Kutch then, the Harappan Sarasvati(`having lakes'), disappears as Hakra in the dunes around and beyond Ft. Derawarin Bahawalpur, after showing signs of a delta (playa) and of terminal lakes, just likeits Iranian namesake in the Afghani desert, the Haraxvaiti (Helmand) with its Hamunlakes.

Further, simple satellite photographs also do not show when a river dried up, as theGhagghar-Hakra has indeed done several times in its different sections in recentmillennia. This was shown in detail for the Indus and Vedic periods by the former

director of Pakistani archaeology, Rafique Mughal, in his book Ancient Cholistan(1997). Rajaram again is simply wrong as a scientist in asserting that the riverconveniently "dried up completely by 1900 BC." Reality is much more complex.

Actually, much of this has been known since Oldham and Raverty (1886, 1892).(Thus, I myself have printed a Sarasvati map, based on a lecture of 1983, before theoverquoted satellite photos of Yash Pal et al. were published in 1984). However, weneed many more close observations such as Mughal's, with archaeologically vouched


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dates for the individual settlements along the various sections and several courses ofthe river.

Finally, the "oceanic descriptions" of the Rigveda imagined by Rajaram and manyother rewriters of history (such as S.P. Gupta, Bh. Singh, D. Frawley) are based,again, on bad philology: their "data" are taken from Vedic mythology, floating in the

night time sky, and the like! Or was Bhujyu abducted on another first, a Vedicairship?

MICHAEL WITZEL

Harvard University

The HinduOpen Page

Tuesday, Mar 12, 2002There is an urgent need to jettison from our textbooks the unproved statements on

Indian civilisation and consign them to academic polemics, and keep the powermongering self-seeking Taliban politicians out of educational field.

THE READERS have been following closely the debate on Harappan civilisation,published in The Hindu in its Open Page. The latest article by Michael Witzel (March5) seems to be taking a partisan view. Archaeologists have found certain artefactsand scholars are trying to infer the meaning of the findings and in the processexpress divergent views. Such debates are welcome to advance our knowledgeacademically, no matter where it comes from. Unfortunately, Witzel's present articlereads personal rather than an academic presentation. For example, he ridicules theother writer N.S. Rajaram personally by repeating his name time and again, withpersonal digs in every mention. Witzel is not free from the same fault that heattributes to Rajaram, as in the example of horse in Harappan sites. He states thehorse bones found in the early excavations at Mohenjodaro and Harappa do notcome from secure levels, and such horse bones "found their way into depositsthrough erosion cutting and refilling, disturbing the archaeological layers." Neitherdoes he say how he arrived at this conclusion nor has he cited any report in supportof his view.

What ever the case may be, it only shows that horse bones were actually found inthe excavations at Harappan sites. In order to justify his stand he writes that

Marshal's Harappan data are "dubious and decades old." One cannot throw away thedata presented by Marshal as it is the earliest available archaeological report and it isnot possible at this point of time to say suddenly that Marshal has not reported thatlayers that were eroded and disturbed in places where horse bones have been found.One may ask Witzel to state on what basis he says that the layers that yielded horsebones in more than one site as at Mohenjodaro and Harappa were eroded anddisturbed and the bones got mixed up? Does he want us to believe that in both thesites, the same layers yielding horse bones got mixed up in eroded layers? There are


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three major excavations conducted at Mohenjodaro and Harappa namely by Marshal,Mackey and Mortimer Wheeler.

Reports of excavations

George F Dales, who was the last in the series to investigate the sites, published his

findings "Some unpublished, forgotten or misinterpreted features on Mohenjodaro" inthe book Harappan Civilisation, published by the American Institute of IndianStudies, 1982. He has stated that the reports of all the three great excavationsincluding that of Wheeler are "incomplete and suffer from serious losses." Dalesstates that there is "no end to speculation that these claims have aroused but it isimpossible to reach objective conclusions with the published details." It is not at allpossible to assess that the layers were disturbed unless other factual evidences areshown to approve the disturbed conditions.

Michael Witzel also states that conclusions cannot be arrived at with incompletebones. Yes. However there cannot be two sets of standards in dealing with thematter. For example, he questions the views of Rajaram, but does not show whether

R. Meadow, whose conclusions he supports, based his views on "a full skeleton or fullsets of onager, donkey, or horse skeletons." Further it is known that there are veryrare examples where the full skeletons of animals have been found in excavations.Are we not aware that most of the reconstructions of dinosaurs are based not on fullskeletons? Archaeologists reconstruct several cultures with broken pottery. At oneplace he admits that clear examples of horse bones are found in Harappan civilisationafter 1800 BCE, which still falls in the late Harappan period. Witzel has a dig atarchaeologists that they are not zoologists or palaeontologists to comment on animalbones. This would apply equally to Witzel who is not a trained archaeologist tocomment on this science. No archaeologist is expert in all fields but certainly consultsexperts before expressing his comments on which he has no expertise.

Problems are complex

To sum up Witzel's arguments proceed on the following lines: (1) No horse bone hasbeen found in Harappan sites. (2) When pointed out that they are found in someinstances, it is said they are only fragments and not full skeletons. (3) When pointedout they were found in more than one site it is said the layers in which they werefound ought to have been eroded ones or disturbed. (4) When pointed out that thereports of horse bones were not by present day archaeologists but by the earlypioneers it is said that those are dubious and decades old. (5) When pointed out theywere reported by archaeological excavators then comes the argument thatarchaeologists are not trained zoologists and palaeontologists to comment on horsebones (though by the same argument no credence can be placed on Witzel's opinionas he is neither an archaeologist nor a palaeontologist). Such arguments are brought

under reductio ad absurdum by logicians. More examples of wilful rejections of pointscan be cited throughout the article but suffice to say that for an unbiased reader, thewhole article reads purely a personal attack on an individual writer and exhibitscertain amount of impatience to listen to other view. This does not mean that I agreewith either of the views on the Aryan problem except stating that we are yet not in aposition to go with either of the views for lack of evidence and would prefer to waitfor further discoveries.


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The debate has undoubtedly focused on one aspect of Harappan civilisation: theproblems are complex and the data available are inadequate to come to anyconclusion. The vital question that is not in the debate by the general reader is thatin the past 50 years of India's independence, the unproved inferential views of thesescholars, some of which have been proved totally wrong as in the case of "the totalmassacre of the Harappans by the invading barbaric Aryans", are fully incorporated

in our school textbooks, right from the third or fourth standards. Wheeler dramatisedthis theory vehemently that invading Aryans destroyed the Harappan civilisation andwithin ten years he was proved totally wrong by new finds of several Harappan sitesspread in space and time. And yet millions of children of India have beenindoctrinated and brainwashed with these views for the past five decades, and thathas caused immense damage to scientific knowledge. Is there any one party in Indiatoday which will repent for this incalculable damage? Are we justified in continuing tobrainwash our generations of children? Is it not time that we remove these fromschool books and confine such debates to post-graduate community of the countryand our children are told only the factual history. A perusal of the books would showenormous imbalances in representing regional and dynastic histories. It may beseen, for example, that South Indian history receives inadequate representation. Therule of the Pallavas, Cholas or Chalukyas that lasted for over four hundred years

each and had glorious achievements in all fields gets summary representation, whencompared with Mughal rule and the Colonial rule that did not last even half thatperiod. South India has witnessed exemplary democratic institutions at the villagelevel for several centuries in the medieval period that is yet to be brought to thenotice of the children. Surely there is no proportionate representation.

While the Western history gets exalted position in all fields, the history of South EastAsia like Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and even China does noteven get a cursory mention. There is clearly an urgent need to jettison from thebooks the unproved statements on Indian civilisation and consign them to academicpolemics, keep the power-mongering self-seeking Taliban politicians out ofeducational field, and seek a proportionate place for Indian civilisation in our

textbooks. In fact Witzel has agreed to the need to revise Indian history in his earlierarticle, which should be entrusted to a body of unbiased and balanced academic bodyfree from racial, religious or political bias.

R. NAGASWAMY

Former Director of Archaeology,Tamil Nadu


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The HinduOpen Page

Tuesday, May 21, 2002

Horses, logic and evidence

MICHAEL WITZEL

We can certainly agree to rewrite sections of ancient Indian history, but this has tobe done on the basis of new facts, not of new myths or of incomplete archaeologicalor zoological data. It is the duty of scholars to point out such new myths before theyenter the new textbooks.

The recent discussions (Open Page, January-March 2002) on the supposed totaloverlap, or rather, the incidental connections between the Harappan (Indus)Civilisation and the Vedic texts have been submerged by current political events.

However, one grand claim follows another with regard to India's ancient past, andthese are frequently supported by certain politicians. This ranges from the Gulf ofCambay finds (where one piece of wood, found in swift currents, is used to date thesite to 7500 BCE!) to the usefulness of the study of astrology, now introduced atmany universities. Most recently, the Ministry of Defence has approved a study ofIndia's Machiavelli (Kautilya's Arthas'aastra, a multi-layered text of c. 300 BCE to100 CE) for matters of conventional, biological and chemical warfare. In thisintellectual climate it is not futile to add my notes of late March on theHarappan/Vedic question (see http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/witzel/Har-veda.htm), now slightly updated.

Rewriting craze

This certainly is not the end of the important discussion of the current ethnocentric"rewriting" craze, a phenomenon that has begun already with the "reinterpretation"of Vedic texts by Dayanand Sarasvati in the 19th century (s'veta dhuuma `whitesmoke' = locomotive). Indeed, the phenomenon should be studied in much moredetail, and also comparatively, by drawing in similar developments in other cultures,Asian (http://www.umass.edu/wsp/methodology/antiquity/index.html), or other.However, to conclude the interrupted discussion on imaginary Indus horses, Iresubmit the following contribution.

The vexed question of the `Harappan horse' does not seem to go away. I am glad tosee that my last paper in Open Page (March 5, 2002) has elicited a strong reaction,this time (March 12) from a professional archaeologist, R. Nagaswamy, the former

Director of Archaeology, Tamil Nadu. He has narrowed down the long debate aboutthe Indus and Vedic civilisations to the question of horses in the archaeologicalrecord, about which more below.

To begin with, Nagaswamy and I certainly agree about the need of `rewriting'ancient Indian history from time to time. This is a normal procedure in historiographywhen new data have been discovered that result in the need for new interpretations.
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/witzel/Har-veda.htmhttp://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/witzel/Har-veda.htmhttp://www.umass.edu/wsp/methodology/antiquity/index.htmlhttp://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/witzel/Har-veda.htmhttp://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/witzel/Har-veda.htmhttp://www.umass.edu/wsp/methodology/antiquity/index.html


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I also agree that this "should be entrusted to an unbiased and balanced academicbody free from racial, religious or political bias" as well as to individual, well preparedscholars who can contribute their insights. Certainly, we can also agree that "SouthIndian history has received inadequate representation" so far. However, it will bedifficult to "confine such debates to post-graduate community of the country and ourchildren are told only the factual history." What is factual history? And how does one

decide this? Obviously, interpretation of various types of data is involved here, andthe results of such discussions printed in history books will be based on extensivedebate and a certain amount of scholarly consensus.

Interpretations

We both would also agree that such interpretations should not be long discardedones, e.g., those of M. Wheeler ("Indra stands accused" referring to the destructionof the Indus cities). However, they should also not be such as the recent fantasies ofN.S. Rajaram (et al.), whose "decipherment" of the Indus script and allinterpretations that flow from this are a priori wrong because he uses the wrongdirection of the script, a direction that was securely established decades ago by the

former Dir. Gen. of Archaeology, B.B. Lal (see I. Mahadevan, at the Indian HistoryCongress, Dec. 2001, and in EJVS 8-1,http://users.primushost.com/india/ejvs/issues.html).

"Digs" at the writings of persons such as Rajaram thus have their well-justifiedreasons. Especially so, as he had recently been appointed by the Minister of HRD asa member of the ICHR, a position he turned down after strong disapproval in theIndian press. Such appointments spell the end of scientific history writing and openthe door to Raamraaj fantasies galore.

Second, there is the vexed question of the "Harappan horse". Though merely being aphilologist and something of a linguist, I have read the relevant scientific literature,and I have additionally asked some scientist colleagues, just to be 100 per cent sure.For my last piece in Open Page I consulted archaeologists and archaeozoologists,upon whose advice I have changed two or three sentences. I showed my piece, forexample, to my colleague at Harvard, R. Meadow. He is both an archaeologist and anarchaeozoologist (one who studies animal bones from archaeological sites). Inaddition, he happens to be a Director of the Harappa Archaeological ResearchProject, where he has been digging for more than a decade; he also knows first handmany other early sites, e.g., Mehrgarh and Pirak in Baluchistan. Amusingly, it isexactly the very sentence that the archaeologist Nagaswamy criticised that Ichanged based on input from the Harappan archaeologist R. Meadow, namely thathorse bones are likely to have "found their way into deposits through erosion cuttingand refilling, disturbing the archaeological layers." Nagaswamy complains that"neither does he say how he arrived at this conclusion nor has he cited any report in

support of his view." Unfortunately my references for this were cut by editors; hereare the details: R. Meadow in: The Review of Archaeology, 19, 1998, 12-21; R.Meadow in: D.R. Harris (ed.) The Origins and Spread of Agriculture and Pastoralismin Eurasia.1996, 390-41. UCL Press, London; R. Meadow and A. Patel in: South AsianStudies,13, 1997, 308-315. Here for Nagawamy then are the references to the stillelusive "Harappan horse."

If Nagaswamy had read such relevant technical literature himself he would haveseen why the archaeozoological situation is as bad as I described it. But since he has
http://users.primushost.com/india/ejvs/issues.htmlhttp://users.primushost.com/india/ejvs/issues.html


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not, he perfectly exemplifies the case I made, namely that archaeologists do notnecessarily know enough of archaeozoology, and their judgments thereof can beflawed. For example, the volume edited by G.M. Pande, The Dawn of IndianCivilisation (Delhi 1999) mentions many times just "horses," without any furtherspecification of equid type or any discussion. But, this kind of statement is believedat face value, as I have seen, by both the general and scholarly public.

Unfortunately Nagaswamy has also not checked the archaeological sources wellenough. When he says that "there are three major excavations conducted atMohenjodaro and Harappa namely by Marshal, Mackey and Mortimer Wheeler...George F. Dales, who was the last in the series to investigate the sites..." (1982),apart from contradicting himself within a few words, he simply overlooks decades ofexcavations at Harappa (and elsewhere!), excavations that have been reported inarchaeological publications and even in a recent generally available synthesis by J.M. Kenoyer, Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilisation, Oxford University Press1998.

All of this should perhaps not surprise. As far as I can see, R. Nagaswamy has

proficiently published on Tamil literature, culture, and archaeology, including evenone excavation report (about Vasavasamudram), written together with AbdulMasjeed in 1978. This lacuna may be the reason why he resorts to a discussion of"logic" instead.

However, the evaluation of archaeological/archaeozoological detail cannot bereduced to "logic" by comparing various sentences from my paper, as he does: "Sucharguments are brought under reductio ad absurdum by logicians". Instead, to state itclearly one more time: what we need is absolute security (to the degree scientificallypossible) with regard to identification of the bones themselves, radiocarbon datesdirectly on the bones in question, and a detailed understanding of the archaeologicalcontext from which they come. It is evidence that counts, not a "logic game".Nagaswamy even distils from my paper that "it only shows that horse bones were

actually found in the excavations at Harappan sites." But, this is precisely what wasand still is under discussion! Even if we accept the identifications as true horse ofmaterial from the old excavations (and this still needs to be rechecked by specialistsusing the original material), we lack the other two pieces of information contextand direct date that are necessary to securely interpret the cultural meaning ofthose identifications.

Context and stratification

As scholars know, archaeology just as palaeontology (or linguistics) is all aboutlocation, context, and stratification. An isolated horse skeleton, complete or not, justshows that a horse was present in that location at some time in the past. As an

example, a nearly complete camel bone (humerus) was found at Harappa about ametre below the surface together with artifactual remains that could be assigned byarchaeologists to the last part of the "mature" Harappan period (ca. 2200-1900 BC).A direct radiocarbon date on the bone itself, however, came out to be 690 CE, morethan two thousand years later (Meadow 1996 & 1998): a clear case of a depositeffected "through erosion cutting and refilling." If, in addition, that find is notrecorded in detail and actually reported in print (a common lack in Indianarchaeology of the past few decades, as recently bemoaned by officials and in thepress a few weeks ago) it is almost worthless just as in linguistics a modern


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Sanskrit word like kendra "centre" could go back to a formation based on the modernEnglish `centre' or could be derived from a Greek word (kentron), which is the case,as it is already attested by Varahamihira at 550 CE. The levels are clear here.

But bones from old and not well recorded excavations (Nagaswamy himself quotessome doubts in Dales' review of Indus excavations!), bones that in addition have not

been radiocarbon dated and may not have been correctly identified throughcomparison with modern specimens, just do not provide suitable evidence. Thealleged find of a horse or camel bone at Harappa without details of the identification,the context, and a direct date then is open to question: yesterday's Afghan or Sikhsipahi's half-horse can be turned into tomorrow's full Harappan horse... In sum, inthe sciences we cannot work with data that do not conform to strict procedures andmethods, such as those delineated above.

Third, as for the discussion of various equids (true horse, ass, half-ass/onager),Nagaswamy complains that I do "not show whether R. Meadow ... based his views ona full skeleton or full sets of onager, donkey, or horse skeletons." Again Meadow(and I, quoting him) has explained fully in his 1996-1998 papers why such detailed

comparison is necessary, and that good collections of modern specimens, necessaryto compare such finds, are only just now being established in South Asia itself.

Fourth, when true horses are indeed found, finally, in the Kachi Plain of EastBaluchistan (part of the Indus Valley) at c. 1800 BCE, this does not make themHarappan, as Nagaswamy maintains: "...1800 BCE, which still falls in the lateHarappan period". A study of the Pirak data would show that these sites are post-mature-Harappan and have a very different material culture inventory than theearlier Harappan sites in the same area. To lump all cultures from 3500 to 1500 BCEtogether as "Harappan" (or even as "Sarasvati" well before its actual first namingin Sanskrit!) is not correct, and opens the door to all sorts of unscholarly rewritingsof ancient history, in other words, to new myth making.

In sum, in my recent Open Page article, I intentionally preferred to err on the side ofcaution: Advised by specialists, I specified the conditions that are necessary toidentify horses, and I did not simply follow the conclusions of various writers as tothe nature of one set of bones or the other. To repeat it one final time: we need thebones in contention (1) to come from well stratified deposits the formation of whichis understood, (2) to be carefully identified with the reasons for their identificationpublished in detail, and (3) to be directly radiocarbon dated if possible. At thepresent time, these conditions have not been met well, and all conclusions must beexplicitly preliminary or else they can only be called speculative or misleading. If thisstance is called "taking a partisan view", then I may gladly be called partisan. Thiscertainly is better than to find, with Rajaram et al., horses (or "fire altars") all overthe early subcontinent (see Frontline, Oct./Nov. 2000). Such writers see horses

everywhere. To sum it up once more, we can certainly agree to rewrite sections ofancient Indian history, but this has to be done on the basis of new facts, not of newmyths or of incomplete archaeological or zoological data. It is the duty of scholars topoint out such new myths before they enter the new textbooks.

MICHAEL WITZEL (assisted by Richard Meadow)

Harvard University


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The Hindu

Open PageTuesday, Jun 18, 2002

Vedic literature and the Gulf of Cambay discovery

It is sad to note how intellectuals in India are quick to denigrate the extent andantiquity of their history, even when geological evidence like the Sarasvati River or

archaeological evidence like the Harappan and Cambay sites are so clear.

THE RECENT find of a submerged city in the Gulf of Cambay, perhaps as old as 7500BC, serves to highlight the existence of southern sources for the civilisation ofancient India. The Gulf of Cambay find is only the latest in a series that includesLothal (S.R. Rao), Dholavira (R.S. Bisht) and others in Gujarat. These discoverieshave been pushing the seats of ancient Indian civilisation deeper into the southernpeninsula. We should not be surprised if more such sites are discovered in SouthIndia, especially the coastal regions, for the south has always played a significant ifneglected role in ancient India going back to Vedic times.

I have argued for such a coastal origin for Vedic civilisation in my recent book RigVeda and the History of India. This is largely because of the oceanic character ofVedic symbolism in which all the main Rig Vedic Gods as well as many of the Vedicrishis have close connections with samudra or the sea. In fact, the image of theocean pervades the whole of the Rig Veda. Unfortunately many scholars who putforth opinions on ancient India seldom bother to study the Vedas in the originalSanskrit and few know the language well enough to do so. The result is that theirinterpretation of Vedic literature is often erroneous, trusting out of date andinaccurate interpretations from the Nineteenth century like the idea that the Vedicpeople never new the sea!

Literary evidence

The Rig Veda states that "All the hymns praise Indra who is as expansive as the sea"(RV I.11.1) Agni wears the ocean as his vesture (RV VIII 102.4-6). The Sun is calledthe ocean (RV V.47.3). Soma is called the first ocean (RV IX.86.29). Varunaspecifically is a God of the sea (RV I.161.14). These are just a few examples of outof well over a hundred references to samudra in the Rig Veda alone, includingreferences to oceans as two, four or many (RV VI.50.13). This is obviously thepoetry of a people intimately associated with the sea and not of any nomads fromland-locked Central Asia or Eurasia.

Vedic seer families like the Bhrigus are descendants of Varuna, the God of the sea asthe first Bhrigu is called Bhrigu Varuni Bhrigu, the son of Varuna. The teachings ofVaruna to Bhrigu are found in the Taittiriya Upanishadand Taittiriya tradition of theYajur Veda, which has long been most popular in South India. The recent find at seain the Gulf of Cambay is near Baroach or Bhrigu-kachchha, the famous ancient city ofthe very same Bhrigus.

These oceanic connections extend to other important Vedic rishis as well. In the RigVeda, Agastya, who became the main rishi of South India, has twenty-five hymns in


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the first book of the Rig Veda and is mentioned in the other books as well. He is theelder brother of Vasishta who himself has the largest number of hymns in the text(about a hundred), those of the seventh book. Both rishis are said to have been bornin a pot or kumbha, which may be a vessel or ship (RV VII.33.10-13). Vasishta isspecifically connected to Varuna who was said to travel on a ship in the sea (RVVII.88.4-5). Both Vasishta and Agastya are descendants of Mitra and Varuna, the

God of the sea.

Vishvamitra in the Rig Veda (IIII.53.16) mentions the sage Pulasti, who wasregarded as the progenitor of Ravana and Kubera and whose city, Pulasti-Pura waslocated in ancient Sri Lanka. He is mentioned along with Jamadagni, anothercommon Rig Vedic sage and the father of Parshurama, the sixth incarnation of LordVishnu, before Rama and Krishna, whose main sphere of activity was in the south ofIndia.

Manu himself, the Vedic primal sage and king, is a flood figure and the Angirasas,the other main seer family apart from the Bhrigus, join him in his ship according toPuranic mythology. Southern peoples like the Yadus and Turvashas were said to

have been glorified by Indra (RV X.49.8) and are mentioned a number of times inthe Rig Veda as great Vedic peoples. So we have ample ancient literary evidence forthe Vedic seer and royal families as connected with the ocean and southern regions.

The Cambay site is in the ancient delta of the now dry Sarasvati River, one branch ofwhich flowed into the Gulf of Cambay, showing that this site was part of the greaterSarasvati region and culture, which was the main location for Harappan cities in the3300-1900 BCE period. Such an ocean front was important for maritime trade for theinland regions to the north. In this regard, important Vedic kings like Sudas weresaid to receive tribute from the sea (RV I.47.6).

When the Greeks under Alexander came to India in the Fourth century BCE, theGreek writer Megasthenes in his Indika, fragments of which are recorded in severalGreek writings, mentioned that the Indians (Hindus) had a record of 153 kings goingback over 6400 years (showing that the Hindus were conscious of the great antiquityof their culture even then). This would yield a date that now amounts to 6700 BCE, adate that might be reflected in the Gulf of Cambay site which has been tentativelydated to 7500 BCE. So the old Vedic-Puranic king lists may not be that far off afterall!

Material evidence

A few scholars, like Witzel in the United States in spite of such massive evidenceas the Sarasvati River and its intimate connection to Vedic literature still try toseparate Vedic culture from India and attribute it to a largely illiterate and nomadic

culture that migrated into India from the northwest of the country in the post-Harappan period (after 1500 BCE). Ignoring all other evidence that connects theVedic and Harappan, they point out the importance of the horse in the Rig Veda andargue that not enough evidence of horses has been found in Harappan sites to provea Vedic connection. They fall back upon this one shot argument to ignore any otherevidence to the contrary.

However, one should note that these invasionists or migrationists are even moredeficient in horse evidence to prove their own theory. There is no trail of horse bones


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or horse encampments into ancient India from Afghanistan during the 1500-1000BCE period that is required for their theory of Aryan intrusion. In fact, there is nosolid evidence for such a movement of peoples at all in the form of camps, skeletalremains or anything else.

Those who claim that Vedic culture must have originated outside India because of its

lauding of the horse are even more lacking in horse evidence. The real problem isnot `no horse at Harappa' but `no horse evidence, in fact no real evidence of anykind, to prove any Aryan migration/invasion'. It has been convincingly shown thatwhat the Rig Veda with its seventeen-ribbed horse (RV I.162.18) describes is anative Indian breed and not any Central Asian or Eurasian horse that has eighteenribs.

The Rig Veda mentions many Indian animals like the water buffalo (Mahisha), whichis said to be the main animal sacred to Soma (RV IX.96.6), which does occurcommonly on Harappan seals. The humped Brahma bull (Vrisha, Vrishabha), anothercommon Harappan depiction, is the main animal of Indra, the foremost of the VedicGods. Elephants are also mentioned.

Most of the animals depicted on Harappan seals are mythical, not zoologicalspecimens anyway. Most common is a one-horned animal that is reflected in theone-horned boar or Varaha of the Mahabharata and the boar incarnation of LordVishnu. Many other Harappan depictions are of animals with multiple heads or half-animal/half-human figures. This is similar to the depictions in Vedic imagery whichlargely consist of mythical animals of this type. For example, Harappan seals portraya three-headed bull-like animal. Such an animal is described in the Rig Veda(III.56.6).

A smokescreen

The horse issue is meant as a smokescreen to avoid facing the facts of the SarasvatiRiver and the many new archaeological sites in India. These show no such break inthe continuity of civilisation in the region as an Aryan invasion/migration requires,including the existence of fire altars and fire worship from the early Harappan period.Vedic and Puranic literature itself records the shift of the centre of culture from theSarasvati to the

Documents

Harappan Civilization and Aryan Theories - David Frawley Page 15