Overlooked Clues of Ancient History for Uploading

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Overlooked Clues of Ancient History

S.N.Mahalingam

Superintending Engineer Tamilnadu PWD (Retd)

A generation which ignores history has no past and no future

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Depuis la prhistoire et jusqu' nos jours l'Inde a t en rapport

constant avec le monde mditerranen. Qu'il s'agisse de commerce,

de religion, d'art, de philosophie, on ne peut comprendre l'histoire

de l'Europe ni celle de l'Inde sans tenir compte des changes entre

ces deux mondes.

-Alain Danilou

[Note:Following the presentation of a paper Ancient Roots of Indians .in 7th InternationalWaves Conference WAVES 2008 June 27 29, University of Central Florida,. USA I have

presented in absentia the following papers: Overlooked Clues of Ancient History and Indus

Seals and Human Evolution: International Conference on Indian History, ICIH 2009] .The

first paper Overlooked Clues of Ancient History is presented here for the benefit of research

scholars.] ABSTRACT

A person with Telugu as mother tongue found himself as an alien in Tamilnadu and searched for

his roots. He found it as a town by name Santhri in Haryana. This search revealed the whole

community might have had its origin in Indus valley region. Further

Search indicated their presence in the State of Arrapha. As a bonus the ancestry of Nagarathar

and hence Tamils traced to ancient Nagar and present day Tel Brak of Syria.

Incidentally based on the surnames pointed to the ancestral place of families, ancestral place ofthree Rishis of Sapta Rishis have been identified in addition to the heritage of Kautilya Chanakya.

He cannot help but to touch the Aryan question, prevalence place names in the name of Rama and

its variants distributed throughout the world. Sami is a popular name of persons in southern states

of India. The existence of a tribe by that name in Scandinavia and about xxx places spread over

the globe has to be pointed out. This article is similar to a FIR of a police Station and has to be

investigated further by specialists of the related disciplines and so the author has not made any

attempt to present any theory but only presented the findings.


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Genesis

A person with Telugu as his mother tongue felt alien in the land of Tamils that is Tamilnadu, in

spite of his love of Tamilnadu, its language, culture and its heritage. In fact he took active part in

the pure Tamil movement in his school days. He was always thinking about his roots, the country

of his ancestors and this thought was lurking in his subconscious mind. He read, in his school

days the works on ancient Indian history, Indus civilization, Lemuria or Kumarikkandam etc.

Years later, he had an opportunity to serve in Algeria, a former French colony where he had to

interact with the local Arab population. At a certain point of time he was introduced to a staffmember as Mr.Benegala. In Algeria, generally people were introduced to strangers only by their

family name or surname. Only intimate family members and friends will call them by their given

name or name proper. He was surprised, as he was reminded of the illustrious ICS officers,

Benegal Narasinga Rau and Benegal Rama Rau. The word Benegal indicated their surname.

Later he came to know of Syam Benegal a famous cinema director.

A few months later he had to meet a local engineer who belonged to a tribe called Kabil which

has a distinct language called Kabili. The area they live in large numbers is also called as Kabili.

In the course of conversation he came to know that the Algerians surname was Kadi a surnameof a Telugu devangar family in Salem. He also informed that one of the ministers of that country

who belonged to their tribe visited a village in north India where a language similar to Kabili was

spoken. The above information hibernated in the persons subconscious mind.

At the fag end of his service in India, one of his colleagues informed about the existence of Hindi

speaking devangar community in Chanderi town in Madhya Pradesh. Then he thought whether

this could be his ancestral town. After retirement he passed his time by reading French books on

religion, history and philosophy of which the works of Alain Danilou, an Indologist impressed

him and kindled his passion for trying to know the hitherto unknown areas of history.

Root traced and further developments


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In the year 2006 by chance he typed santhri, his surname, in Google search. To his astonishment

he found a town by name Santhri in Haryana State tourist site. When he opened the link he found

the name of another town by name Karnal. Suddenly he thought why not this town Santhri be the

town of his ancestors. The family name of his friend is Karna and why not Karnal corrupted into

Karna or vice versa. Another name Bhirrana is found to be a Harappan site in Haryana. Then he

remembered another family of his friend arappa. Why not the name arappa be the corrupt form ofHarappa? But in Haryana no one appear to speak Telugu. The population at Haryana speaks only

Hindi or Haryanovi the local dialect.

The Telugu Devangar community is found dispersed throughout the Southern States. But most of

their family names do not match town and village names in the Southern States. By chance I

found the existence of a village called Santhri in Haryana. This is one of the family names of

Telugu Devangar caste. On further search, two more family names were identifies with names of

towns in the north. Of course it is not possible to get matches for every family name because the

place names as well as family names are subject to change due to various circumstances.

Family name Identified village

Santhri Santhri in Haryana

Karna Karna(L) in Haryana

Bhirrana

Banalu

Bhirrana in Haryana

Banalu in Punjab

Arappa (H)arappa

This could indicate that the ancestors of the Telugu Devangar community might have been one of

the linguistic groups of the Indus Civilization.

Another interesting fact is that there is another branch of Devangar community who speak

Kannad. Both communities have the same culture but only their mother tongue is different.

Thewir community deity is the same by name Sowdeswari or Sowdambika and they celebrate the

same community festivals in addition to the hindu festivals. They appear to have ben moving

together as wherever you find the telugu speaking community you find the Kannada speaking

community also in the same town but in a different locality. For instance in Sale, Tamilnadu,

telugu speaking devangars settled in the northern bank of a river whereas the Kannada speaking


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community is settled on the southern bank. So both the community might have moved together

to the south in the distant past on an uncertain age.

There are more than one hundred Telugu speaking castes living in Tamil Nadu. They also might

have had their origin in the north and migrated to the south around 1000 BCE, when the people

fled the Indus Valley. According to historians, The Brahui speech in Baluchistan is the only

Dravidian dialect in the North and may be regarded as the sole surviving fragment.

A similar study of family names of Saurastra community, Nattuk Kottai Chettiar community may

throw more light on the History of India that will form entirely another study to connect the South

India to Mesopotamia region. Only fragmentary facts were presented as a deeper probe could be

made only by specialists.

Further leads

One of the customs prevalent in Haryana is also followed by this Devangar community. They

have the Gothra and marriage within the same gothra is not allowed. The problem arises

because families having different surnames may have the same gothra and comes to the fore only

just before the marriage ceremony. In such cases, when the marriage becomes unavoidable, by a

simple ceremony, the bride is arranged to be adopted by a family having different gothra. In one

known case the families with the surnames, Santhri, Raga and Angapa have the same gothra: anold man of Santhri family has revealed this just before his death.

Interesting information presented itself when this person by chance referred a French book of

stories for children. The book was published by one George G. Harrap & Co, Ltd. To his mind it

occurred that the Harrap could be a family name. It is a British publishing house with branches

in Europe. He thought whether it could be a corrupted form of Harapp(a). This with the comment

of Sir John Marshall that the town planning of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro resembled that of

Lancashire and Manchester of England. This statement was found in a 6th standard book,

Chronicle of History and Civics which forced him to think whether the ancestor of Harraps couldbe a migrant from the Indus Valley and he are other co-migrants could be the architects of

Manchester and Lancashire. May be this also needs a deeper probe?

Surnames of Rishis?


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He tried his method of using the surnames to find the ancestry of the following of the Sapta

Rishis perhaps the august audience may find in interesting. The results are as follows:

Rishi Ancestral place?

Atri ATRI TE Italy

Marisi Gissi CH Italy : and also Lebanon

Krath

u

Krathuse-Ikast, Ringkobing, Denmark

Perhaps only the above Rishis were known by their surnames and the others by their proper

names?

A similar exercise for Kautilya, perhaps the surname of Chanakya, pointed his ancestry to

Kautiala in Finland having Latitude 61.533 and Longitude 24.25 a town named Khutayleh in Irak,

Latitude 34.388 and Longitude 41.147, also shown by the search engine.

A letter by the author was published in the magazine Madras Musings, October, 1 15, 2007

which is reproduced below:

Persian Pallavan.

The dynasties of the kingdoms were known by different names, Mauryas, Pallavas, Pandyas, etc.

None of the text books reveal why they were called by such names.

The French TV channel TV 5 Monde ran a feature film on Sha of Iran, Reza Pahlavi. The name

Pahlavi sounded to me like Pallava. So collected the following details from the Internet.

1. Pahlavi: a middle Persian language spoken in Pre-Islamic Iran from 3rd Century BCE to

9th Century CE during the rule of Sassanian dynasty. Naresh and Vishtam (a corrupted

form of Vishnu? Narasimha and Simha Vishnu of Pallava dynasty) are names of persons

of that period. Pahlavi are the royal house name. Pahlavan is a village on Azarbayjan-e-

Gharbi in Iran. Could Pallavan be a corrupted form of Pahlavan? Will the historians

probe further?

Reading this letter in the magazine, a reader sent a Xerox copy of a report that appeared in theNew Indian Express on Ram about the work of Lalith.. Pathak details are given below.

The New Indian Express column published on 20-07-1888, Ram only a historical figure, says

expert gives the following account:


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Some documents on West Asian and Egyptian history bring to light that king Dasrath of

Sanskrit speaking Aryan race succeeded his father Shurtarna to the Maitanian throne in

north Syria in BC 1365.

The people were called Hurrians and claimed themselves to be Ikshakus which meant

a representative sent by god to rule over people who arrived in West Asia about BC

1800.

But the Maitanian kingdom of the Sanskrit speaking Aryan race lasted only around one

hundred years from BC 1465 to BC 1355, the study said, adding it appears that the term

Hari and Hari OM in Indian scriptures is the remnant of Hurrians in Maintanni.

The expert is reported to be Prof. Lalit P. Pathak and the title of his work is Indian

names West Asian origin

This provoked a log on to the internet for browsing the information on hurrians and in this

process some new facts presented itself for an analysis and were presented as follows.

Aryans

For instance, the Bible talks a lot about God but does not offer proofs for the existence of God. It

rather assumes the existence of God and then proceeds to establish not the basis but the

consequence of such belief. The same paradigm may be tried in establishment certain events in

ancient history. One such event could be the Aryan question.

Roman script is widely used in almost all the European languages. Each language has its own

way of pronouncing the letters. Regional variations are also there to make it a bit complicated.

One such example is the name Kandasami written using English pronunciation. But it will be

Candasami if French pronunciation is used. In the pronunciation of the letter h is also a classiccase. In some languages it is silent and in other languages there are specific rules for the

pronunciation depending upon its place in a word. In reading ancient scriptures it is all the more

difficult. In some cases one letter may be mistaken for the other.

Suppose assuming that the letter h has been misread instead of a and in that case the name

hurrians will become aurrians in the source language and this will be Aryans in English but

Aryens in French. So the people who were called as hurrians could be in fact Aryans.

Prof. Pathak has dealt with the name of Ram and so it may be worthwhile to supplement

additional information that came across while investigating the roots. The name of Ram has not

occurred in any literature of Hurrians or Hittites or any people during prehistoric period. It is amystery how it suddenly appeared as the title of Egyptian kings.

On RAM

According to Paul Johnson (1999), the last king of eighteenth dynasty Hortemheb had no heir and

he arranged for the succession to pass to another general from the delta, the vizir of lower Egypt,

(Menpeh.tir' ), who took the throne as Ramesses I founder of the nineteenth dynasty. It was his


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son Sethos I, and grandson Ramesses II, who built the Asian empire to something approaching to

its old splendour.

The history of Egypt is dotted with the invasions from Asia and invasion of Asian states by

Egypt. So there should have been cultural exchanges between the two. Probably the legend of

Ram could have been known to them due to their contact with their neighbours. As vizier of

Lower Egypt, Ramesses, having known the popularity of Ram would have adopted it as his title

Ramesses I.

The Rams name is popularly adopted in Scandinavian countries as Ramussen. The antiquity of

that name has to be investigated.

A review of the literature on prehistory different spellings was used in denoting the same name.

For example, the Egyptian kings noted above were spelt as Rames and Ramesses. It is the same

with the name of the kingdoms also, for example Maintanni and Mitani indicate the same

kingdom. So there is no guarantee that the word to denote the Aryans could have been correctly

spelt and given as Hurrians.

The following information of the genealogy of the kingdom of Indraprastha which was ruled by

Indians for 124 generations for a period of 4157 years, 9 months and 14 days between the event

of Mahabharata and the beginning of the Mughal era in 1193 AD was given in http-www-

hindunet_org-hindu_history-medieval-kings_chron.htm. There was only one king by name

Ramchand had the name of RAM during the whole period of about four millenniums whereas

about 11 Egyptian kings were named after Ram as Ramesses during the period from 1320 BCE

to 1085 BCE. (Paul Johnson, 1999).

Consider a variant of Ram spelt as ROM then there is a Romulus who found the city of Rome, the

house of Romanov to the dynasty of which belonged the last Czar of Russia and a country

Romania. Perhaps there will be more such cases if one searches persistently. Can this be taken as

indicative that the name of Ram was not so popular in India during prehistoric period whereas it

was more popular in the West Asia, North Africa and Europe? More questions and fewer

answers!

Further information from internet:

Internet sites on Hurrians gave information that a Hurrian kingdom called kingdom ofArrapha

also benefited from the demise of Babylonian power in sixteenth century BC. Compare the name

of Harappa of Indus Civilization and this Arrapha. Do they not appear similar? What could be the

relation between these two names? Also compare the surname arappa of Telugu Devangar

community. Again a mystery?

In the foregoing presentation it has been shown the probability of the presence of Telugu

devangar community that represents Telugu linguistic group of Dravidian family. The Indus

civilization is a multi-ethnic society so certainly other linguistic groups should have been presentfor which data could not be procured. One possible group that could have been represented the

Tamil language may be that of Nattuk Kottai Chettiar community of Tamilnadu. They also feel

that they were not native to Chettinad and their ancestral place is elsewhere.. Because they were

also called as Nagarathaar they feel that their ancestral place Nagara could be Kancheepuram as
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arraphahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrapha


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some Sanskrit poet has written Nagareshu Kanchi. But for that there appears to be no evidence

that it is called as Nagara. In the near past they had settlements only in an area called Chettinad

located in Pudukkottai, Sivagangai and Madurai districts of Tamilnadu. Their family profession is

commerce and they were Saivites. They lived in at least two storied palatial buildings with many

rooms. The above facts and the town planning of Chettinad Towns suggest them as possiblecandidates of Tamil linguistic group in Indus Civilization as the town planning and architecture

of Indus civilization resembled Chettinad town planning and architecture.

The only place with the name Nagar in the prehistoric times is located in Irak at Tell Brak which

was called in pre-akkadian era as Nagar or Nawar (see Appendix III). Another reference to

Nagara was given by Alain Danilou as a town near the present day Jalalabad of Kabul Valley in

Afghanistan. This place was also called as Nysa or Dionysopolis by Greeks and Ptolemy called

this place as Nagara (perhaps the present Nakora in Afghanistan) in his Geography and this is

supposed to be an ancient religious place of worship by Saivites. If the analysis of surnames or

the names of communities are taken as indicative of the ancestral place, then for the Tamil group

it will be Nagar in Iraq or Nagara in Afghanistan or Harappa and for the Telugu group with

family name arappa, it will be the kingdom ofArrapha or Harappa. Does it mean the Dravidians

and their languages originated in Babylon before the pre-akkadian period? Or Indus Valley

people went to Mesopotamia to find kingdoms? Does it indicate that Dravidian influx preceded

the Aryan? Are the population that inhabited Indus Valley prior to Dravidian influx were also

invaders? Did some mysterious people inhabit Indus valley as suggested by Alain Danilou

(1983)? Again this calls for a detailed study.

Surnames generally indicate the place of origin of a family if such name is used by that family.

Suppose a place is indicated by a surname. It may be a second or third settlement of that family.

In that case it will indicate the latest settlement and not the ancient one. For instance santhri is

indicated as the ancestral place for a family. But the ancestors of that family might have come

from some other place. So some families may have surnames indicating the latest ancestral place

and some other families have the surnames indicating very ancient places of origin. May be that

is why the surname arappa indicate also the kingdom ofArrapha. Of course it requires a detailed

scrutiny. At the present status of available information it is not possible to say which of the two

places is their initial habitation..

One or two months back there was a media report in TV news about the Al Qaeda commando

attack on an isolated tribe in Irak for their refusal to embrace the benevolent and peace preaching

Islam. An appraisal of their culture, language and religious beliefs may furnish some missing

links to piece together Ancient History not only of India but also of the world.

Similar data of family names (surnames?) has to be obtained for the various linguistic groups at

least in the southern states for a detailed analysis. This could be possible only by a team and not

by a single individual and involvement of the media. The above facts have been presented based

on the information that presented itself during the course the authors search for his roots and is

brought to the notice of the enlightened historians for a deeper probe that may throw more light

on the prehistory and expand the horizon of history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arraphahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arraphahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arraphahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrapha


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The author is indebted to Alliance Franais of Madras, ICHR Southern Regional Centre at

Bangalore and Mythic Society, Bangalore for permitting him to utilize heir facilities.

References :

Alain Danilou : Histoire de l'Inde, Editions du fayard, Paris,1983:Shiva et Dionysos,

Fayard.

Anneli Airaksinen. Le peuple dont descendent tous les Scandinaves : Minorits :GEO. No.302,

Avril 2004

Mahalingam S.N. An Outline for Research in Prehistory of India, International Symposium on

Indus Civilization and Tamil Language, 15 &16-2-2007, Chennai.

Mahalingam S.N. Algerian Connection? : Madras Musings, July 1-15, 2007, Lokhavani Hall-

Mark Press, Chennai.

Mahalingam S.N. : Persian Pallavan, Madras Musings, July 1-15, 2007, Lokhavani Hall-MarkPress, Chennai.

Paul Johnson. The Civilization of Ancient Egypt, Harper-Collins Publisher, 1999.

Safi Douhi. Lincroyable Voyage des premier Hommes, GEO, No. 310, D

2004.

News Item in The New Indian Express Dated: 20-07-1998

Hurrians Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Landon, Dale E. (Indiana IUP); Hurrians and the Ancient Near East History;[The Hurrians and

the Ancient Near East History-Landaon,D_A]The Kassites, the Hurrians, and the Arameans: The Encyclopedia of World History. 2001.
http://www.bartleby.com/67/toc2.html#s2.2.6.21http://www.bartleby.com/67/toc2.html#s2.2.6.21


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Overlooked Clues of Ancient History for Uploading