The debate over the Origin of the Vedics

Editorial Comment (March 17,2006)

If one asks an average Indic whether he has any comments on the debate regarding the origin of the Vedics, his first reaction might be that he was not aware there was a debate and as far as he could recall the Vedics populated an area roughly contiguous with present day Haryana and Uttaranchal. In other words (it is my suspicion that ) this topic is not exactly one that  occupies center stage in the streets and living rooms of  Mumbai and Kolkatta .However, this remains a subject with far reaching implications for the future of India. One example being the dialog that is taking place in India over the  perceived inequalities among various classes  of Indic society today, their causes and how they should be handled.  One other point should  be made regarding the consequences of such a hypothesis . The colonial overlord thereby made the implication very clearly that they were just the latest in a long line of conquerors and had as much right to be present as the descendants of the Vedics ,who would after all be now be regarded as conqueror much as the Normans  conquered England

Ever since Friedrich Max Mueller first postulated this hypothesis, it has been a major preoccupation of  a fairly large section of linguists, historians, philologists, religious clergy and other academic scholars in Europe  and now even in America.. The reasons for this are not difficult to fathom. It was Sir William Jones who first noticed that there appeared to be a common origin of some commonly used words like father (Pater, Latin, pitr, Sanskrit), mother and brother   . Soon it became apparent that even well known names of Gods in Greek and Roman Mythology such as Zeus (Dyaus ,Sanskrit) and Jupiter (Dyaus Pitr, Sanskrit) had their origin in Sanskrit. This was a major revelation especially to the linguistic and historian community in Europe at that time, because it was a paradigm change in the manner in which they viewed the Indian subcontinent and the origins of their own language. How did this commonality in literally hundreds of words come about ? The simplest explanation at that time (and even today) was that there was a significant migration of people accompanied by invasions that was the primary engine for the spread of language. Even though Sanskrit was palpably the more ancient language in this group of languages, they immediately dismissed the notion that there was any kind of migration from the Indian subcontinent. Thus was born the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT).  The main flaw in the theory and there are many more described for example in the many links and books in this section (for instance my summary in The South Asia File) , the main flaw  is that there is absolutely no record of such an invasion or even a migration in any of the vast literature of the Vedics.

This theory and its far reaching implications  has escaped the notice of the Indic population in general, preoccupied as they were with the more mundane necessities  of making a living and the more immediate task of nation building.

The invasion theory of Indian History was first postulated by Hegel (1831) that India lacked historical agency and that India was a cultural cul de sac from which nothing worthwhile ever emanated. The Aryan Invasion Theory (which has now morphed into Aryan Immigration or Influx Theory), based largely on linguistic conjectures and postulates is a narrative that was force fitted to Hegel’s postulate. In one brilliant master stroke, the Brits killed several birds with one stone.

What were the Basic Postulates of AIT – that a race of nomadic Aryans came thundering across the passes of the Hindu Kush mountain range on horse drawn chariots and overcame the sedentary urban civilization of the Indus river valleys who happened to belong to the Dravidian race and then shortly thereafter in short order decided to compose the entire gamut of Vedic Literature from the Vedas, puranas, the smritis, the Brahmanas the Upanishads and the Itihaas of India. If this is was what really happened, the transformation from Central Asian Nomads to the intellectual speculations inherent in the Vedic literature must surely rank as one of the most rapid transformations in human history
See for instance http://www.boloji.com/architecture/00002.htm


 

So what was once purely a preoccupation of the Europeans over their roots has now been transformed into a debate on the  origin of the Vedics with large scale implications on the history  of India. It is important to note that the writing or more  precisely the rewriting or revising of Indian History was largely in the hand of the English since they were the colonial overlords and they retained control of the language of command and control, namely English ,by making it  the official language of India. The engineering of this paradigm shift, was a major coup for the British administrators of colonial India and is described in greater detail in our essay The South Asia File. So successful was this endeavor, that today most of the prescribed English language textbooks in India mention the AIT as fact and not as an unproven hypothesis. What is even sadder is that a significant proportion of the population in India have internalized this version of history and are vociferous in debating in favor of it. The debate has been well documented by  Edwin Bryant. We will touch upon several aspects of the debate in this section

 

 

 

Contents

• Point Counterpoint

What follows is a the expression of slightly different points of view on this highly charged topic

First a column by Rajiv Malhotra in Hinduism today Spring 2006 edition

While there has been much heat generated on this topic, a successful campaign must realize that it is long term and is up against very heavily intellectually armed opponents. Hence there must be a long term study and discussion by serious scholars on our side, just as there has been within the other side for several decades. This is like cricket practice to make the home team stronger. In this spirit I recommend the following 3 books to those wanting to understand the racist/Eurocentric origins of the Aryan theories in the west. Each of these books is from a credible author and academic publishing house, and not from anyone linked with politics of Hinduism or Indian nationalism - this is important. Yet these books give hard facts to support our case and each is the result of a decade of sweat and toil on the author's part.

1) Maurice Olender, "The Language of Paradise: Race, Religion, and Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century." Harvard University Press. 1992.

2) Thomas R. Trautmann, "Aryans and British India." University of California Press. 1997.

3) Edwin Bryant, "The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate." Oxford University Press. 2004.

It could also be a good strategy to gift this set to future state  education boards, as attachments to our position paper, and to quote from these in a proper manner. This would raise the barrier to counterattacks, as it would not be a simple matter to assert
guilt-by-association against alleged "Hindu Nationalists." One should argue that this debate has serious contenders on BOTH sides, and hence it is best left out of the classrooms of 11-year old Americans and their naive teachers.

Personally I think it is wiser to refute the Aryan migration (yes, migration is just as harmful as invasion) theory WITHOUT trying to replace it with an alternative out-of-India theory. That way you don't arm the opponents with an opportunity to attack. What matters is
REMOVING the prevailing Aryan theory, and in fact explaining it as the result of 19th century European racism and nationalism that culminated in Nazism. For a theory to be refuted it is not required that one must supply an alternative theory - v important point, so lets avoid over-ambition. It is okay to let it at this stage be moved to neutral territory, as something of a mystery in which further archeological research is required because current knowledge is simply inadequate. This is a sound agnostic position for an educator to take.

In short, my position is as follows:
1) Aryan theory (invasion or migration) was invented by 19th century racist European intellectuals for political reasons.
2) It was never argued in proper intellectual fashion and was simply assumed, with generation after generation adding more layers of white supremacist suppositions.
3) Archeological data discovered in the 20th century data started to contradict this.
4) Many sound scholars such as the authors of the above listed books have come out to refute this old theory.
5) Many Indians came out to build alternative theories which are India/Hindu centric, and these have been attacked as counter chauvinism.
6) The hard data does not support either kind of chauvinism - the Aryan theory must not be taught as some kind of fact, while at the same time no out-of-India alternative should replace it. The gaps between textual evidence and archaeological evidence has simply not been bridged at this stage. This is a very sound and defensible position.
 

and my reply

Rajiv, since you have been kind enough to include me in your mailing list on such an important issue, it behooves me to give you the courtesy of a reply, especially when on those rare occasions i find myself in disagreement with you.

 

It is not the diagnosis  (which even the most rabid supporter of the Aryan Migration does not have the courage ,much less the data to dispute)  that i take issue with but the remedy or strategic response and the reasoning behind it. In addition to your diagnosis i might point out that the sole leg to stand on for the Aryan tourist theories is the POSTULATION (not a fact but a hypothesis based upon layers of linguistic postulates -which are in turn represented as fact-on the nature and velocity with which languages diffuse and change) that there once existed a PIE with a Urheimat ,for want of  a better phrase LIES ANYWHERE BUT IN INDIA. BTW, as an aside ,as far as the classroom textbooks are concerned we were even lucky to have gotten acknowledgement that there is a controversy.

 

But apart from the lack of merit in the Aryan Tourist theory I have the following points to make for you to ponder (probably not for the first  or even the last time surely).

 

1. The first point to make is that there is no middle ground here. For once it is not a reductionist argument to say that this is primarily a binary proposition. Either the Vedics migrated out of India or the Proto Europeans migrated in all the way to the heart of the Vedic civilization namely the upper reaches of the Saraswati Yamuna Gangetic Doab, which they would have had to do before it dried up (recall that during Balaramas pilgrimage that the Saraswati was no longer a mighty flowing river, but only gets scant  mention in the Great Bharata epic. This places it before the beginning of the Kaliyuga 3100 bce. There is simply no other way to explain the cognate nature of the large group of languages

 

Furthermore, if one postulates that the entire corpus of the Vedas awaited the arrival of the blessed Lithuanians (who qualify under the general rubric of anywhere but India theory), then their migration should date back even further to the 5th or 6th millennia bce. But these are relatively minor specks of 'dal mein kuch kala hai' for our erudite adversaries to bother about. I personally have little interest in postulating a OIT, as all I desire is that the narrative of our heritage and Civilizational ethos be wrested back from an assorted gaggle of individuals all with a vested interest in retaining this theory. See my essay on The South Asia File where i flesh out the narrative and the motives of the Brits (it need not take the intelligence of a CVRaman to figure this out). But my point is that given  the stakes were and are so high, and that it is primarily a binary  issue , there remains no face saving fallback position for our esteemed opposition and hence the obstreperous stonewalling. Conclusion, they will never back down from this purely binary proposition, because the alternative is ignominy and ridicule. Confucius may have brought attention to the all too common failing of face saving, but it is the denizens of the west that have perfected it to a fine art, especially when the antagonists are the impoverished and teeming millions of  a former colony

 

2. This leads me to the second point. To imply that any attack on the postulates of the tourist theory classifies me ipso facto as rabid right wing chauvinist, presumably one of the much reviled genus called Hindutvavadi is definitely a reductionist argument and to hold that up as an eventuality even for the sake of argument, is exactly what our opposition would have us do . This is the oldest trick in the book practiced to perfection first by the Romans who first used the locals to enforce their rule, and then by a succession of imperial powers till Britain did the same in India with at most 100,000 of their country men. Basically the proposition is very simple either you are for us, in which case you are reasonable and we will throw in a dog bone that you are almost one of us , by virtue of being a indo European, or you are against us in which case we will brand you an extremist and (trumpets please) the ultimate insult a Hindutvavadi a term which our esteemed professor has picked up from his Marxist allies in India. Never mind that a Hindutvavadi was Prime Minister of the worlds largest democracy for five years, elected to the highest executive position in the land. Were it not a malicious charge made by people incapable of getting elected to dog catcher , I would find it droll that I would be classified as such. Not that I find it pejorative because then, I am in the same company as KD Sethna, my  distinguished contemporary and fellow alumni from St.Xaviers College, Mumbai who wrote those 2 landmark books (listed as a footnote) which set the ball rolling towards unraveling the great hoax of the  Migration Invasion Acculturation Tourist Theory. We must recognize that the Quest for the origin of the so called Aryan is primarily a preoccupation of the West in search of their own roots and their inability to come to terms with the glaring fact that Sanskrit had a developed grammar and described an evolved Civilizational ethos far ahead of anything comparable in the West and has little to do with the heritage of India

 

There are other points to be made, but I wanted to highlight today the futility of a strategy ,premised on a ‘log kya kehenge’ syndrome, because this is precisely what our opposition want us to do. It is my humble opinion that every once in a while one must take a stand. This is one of those instances. Once again, I couldn’t care less about alternatives to the ATT, other than as an academic curiosity. However, there is too much at stake here, Too much mischief has sprung from this one postulate (the miscasting  and misnaming of the caste system, the north south divide, the misdating of the chronology starting from Sir William Jones and reinforced by Max Mueller}. In fact this challenge provides us a once in a rare occasion to shake the shibboleths and assumptions of the west  and initiate a paradigm change in the way the west would view us and equally importantly have us look at our selves.

 

With kind regards,

 

Kaushal

 

Books by KD Sethna

 

Sethna, K.D.,(1992) The Problem of Aryan Origins, Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi

http://www.boloji.com/history/033.htm    (the second book is reviewed here)

Response from RM

• References on AIT

• AIT Debate in IF

• Decline and Fall of AIT