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To substantiate their thesis, after establishing the Vedas as the key to

understanding the world-view of ancient India, the authors concentrate in the

first half of the book on demolishing the myth of the Aryan invasion and

proceed to present the advanced Harappan civilization citing major tectonic

changes as the cause of the abandonment of Mohenjo Daro and Harappa. In the

second part, they discuss the cultural and spiritual legacy of ancient India to

highlight not only the profound spirituality but also how ritual gave birth to

science, particularly mathematics and astronomy. The work concludes with a

presentation of the perennial wisdom of the Vedas, asserting its relevance for

saving mankind from rushing lemming-like to its own destruction and for

enabling man to realise the potential that lies at the core of his being.

The authors have to be complimented for pointing out that the prevalent belief

regarding the age of the Vedas as between 1200 and 1000 BC is based purely upon

an ad hoc pronouncement by Max Muller despite his admission in his last work

[1900] that the date could as well be 1500 as 15,000 BC! They proceed to show

how the word “Aryan” has been twisted to provide a racial connotation that it

never had (notably by Gordon Childe), paving the way for fascist racism. In

Darius’ cuneiform inscription of 520 BC he alludes to making “the writing of a

different sort in Aryan, which did not exist before”, thus giving it a

secondary meaning of language. Colin Renfrew has recently reasserted this.

Originally the word “arya” referred to a quality of character: nobility, and

“arya-varta” meant the abode of noble people. This book is one of the first to

highlight the little known metal artifact carbon-dated to 3700 BC of a head

with moustache and hair coiled with a tuft on the right that has been given the

name, “Vasishtha Head”, now reposing in the Hicks Foundation for Cultural

Preservation in San Francisco. Pointing out the remarkable accuracy of the

weights found in the Harappan sites that follow a binary system up to 12,800

units, and the meticulous geometric layout of the towns, they bring home how

scholars have neglected this evidence of scientific knowledge on part of

Neolithic humanity. They list as many as 17 arguments to disprove Mortimer

Wheeler’s melodramatic scenario of Aryan hordes destroying these cities. The

Rig Veda celebrates the seven rivers, specially Sarasvati, which precedes the

mythical Aryan invasion of 1200 BC by many centuries. Astronomical

configurations are mentioned that could have occurred only between 2000 and

6000 BC. The Brahmanas and Aranyakas also belong to t!

he third millennium BC.

Most important is the fact that the archaeologically established chronology for

the cities shows them abandoned far before the alleged attacks in 1500-1200 BC.

Just as tectonic changes led to the sudden collapse of the Akkadian empire after

Manishtusu (2307-2292 BC), the death of the Bronze Age city of Tiryns in Turkey

and of Troy (level VI) and the devastation of the Minoan civilization in Crete

in about 1250 BC, so the Indian plate pushing into Asia was responsible for the

abandonment of sites like Mohenjo Daro following the drying up of the Sarasvati

River and its tributaries (the river had changed its course at least four

times) and the emergence of the Kashmir valley. That is why the Indians

migrated eastwards to the Yamuna-Ganga valley, a hint of which is in the

Shatapatha Brahmana (1900 BC) that speaks of the conquest of the swampy area

east of the Ganga by Mathava Videgha. The Vedic people were also seafaring

merchants, as there is mention of sea travel in many hymns, !

and not just cattle breeding nomads as the invasion model asserts. Seals dated

to about 2400 BC found in the Middle East substantiate this. The standard

weights of Harappa were used in Bahrain (Dilmun), an inscription in Harappan

script has been found on the Oman coast and it is possible that the

Mesopotamian Meluha refers to Harappa. The authors very convincingly aruge that

the allegedly separate Vedic and Harappan cultures are actually the same

Indus-Sarasvati civilization and its script is the origin of the Brahmi lipi.

The excellent analysis of data from the Neolithic site of Mehrgarh points out

the use of the potter’s wheel, bow drills and domestication of cattle in the

early fourth millennium, much before the so-called invasion. There is a direct

development from Mehrgarh to Mohenjo Daro and the Rig Veda. The arguments could

have been even stronger if the authors had cared to consult K.D. Sethna’s very

important book, Karpasa in Prehistoric India (Biblia Impex 1984). Cotton finds

mention in the earliest Sutras but is absent from the Vedas, Brahmanas,

Aranyakas. Hence, if the Rigvedic people came after the Harappans, how can they

be ignorant of cotton? Similarly, rice is not known to the Rigveda and the

Avesta, while it is present in several Harappan sites within and outside the

Indus valley. Therefore, the Rigveda has to precede the Harappan Culture.

Silver is known from 4000 BC only, and is not found in this Veda, which must

therefore antedate it. Sethna’s Problem of Aryan Origins (Aditya!

Prakashan, 1992) provides some more clinching arguments that the authors would

have done well to study: Harappan seals with evidence of spoked shells are

dated to 1960 BC far before the supposed invasion which Wheeler claims to have

introduced the chariot and spoked wheel; evidence of equine remains is

available dated before 2000 BC and even at Hallur in Karnataka c. 1800-1500 BC.

Therefore, the Aryans whom Asko Parpola and Wheeler would like to immigrate to

India c.1600-1400 BC cannot have introduced the horse in the Deccan centuries

before their arrival! If the horse is a conclusive sign of Aryan presence, then

it is in India long before the Harappan Civilization in Neolithic sites.

Moreover, a terracotta horse-like figurine with a saddle on its back has been

found in Balu in the Harappan urban phase. Sethna also provides evidence, going

back to much before the second millennium BC of heavy flooding of Harappan

settalements, with five floods found in Mohenjo Daro itself, ea!

ch lasting for several decades. Considerable rise in the coast-line of the

Arabian Sea is also a geological fact he cites. Hence there is no need to posit

an invading Aryan horde to demolish imaginary dams where natural forces are at

work. Further, points out Sethna, if invasion came from the north, why is it

southern Mohenjo Daro instead of northern Harappan sites that shows noticeable

decline in material prosperity? The coup de grace is administered with evidence

from undersea excavations at Dwaraka, dating the submergence to c. 1400 BC,

tallying with statements in the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa. If the

Kurukshetra war occurred around this time, surely the period of the Rig Veda

would have to be considerably anterior to it and by no means c. 1500 BC. How

could the Aryans invade just a couple of centuries before the great war?

Necessarily, therefore, the Rig Veda precedes the Harappa Culture that ended

around the middle of the second millennium BC. In their presentation of the

antiquity of the Indian Civilization the authors lose the advantage of

brilliant research by Sethna in his Ancient India in a New Light (Aditya

Prakashan, 1989) that cites convincing evidence for identifying Megasthenes’

Sandrocottus with Chandragupta of the Gupta dynasty. Megasthenes’ references

point to the Bhagavata Vaisnavite cult of the Guptas and not what the Mauryas

practised. The Mehrauli Iron Pillar inscription is by

Sandrocottus-Chandragupta-I whose term for the invading Greeks is “Vahlika”

which fills in the puzzling gap in Indian records regarding incursions by them.

Scholars have blindly accepted Fleet’s chronology of Fa-Hien as visiting during

the reign of Chandragupta II, though he does not mention any king and his

descriptions of social conditions to not tally with the Gupta regime.

Similarly, Fleet misrepresents Al-beruni’s travelogue. The Arab categorically

refers to the Gupta Era as celebrating the end and not the beginning, as F!

leet states, of a dynasty that had come to be hated. Fleet even conjectured

Skandagupta battling the Huns though there is no such reference in the Junagadh

inscription of Rudradaman-I as Sethna proves. The Ashokan monuments have

affinities not with Achaemenid art but with Mesopotamia and carry on the

tradition of the realistic treatment of the Indus seals, the hall at Mohenjo

Daro and the high polish of Harappan jewellery. Inscriptions at Mandasor of

Dattabhatta and Yasodharman are analysed by Sethna to clear many misconceptions

about the date of Ashoka whom he establishes at 950 BC, with Buddha’s death in

1168 BC and Mahavira’s in 1165 BC. This would have convincingly supported the

effort of the book under review to illuminate the dark backward and abysm of a

critical portion of our antique time.

If the thesis the three authors have presented motivates those interested in the

history of the birth of civilization to thing afresh, untrammelled by

preconceptions foisted by western scholars and their Indian followers over the

last hundred years, it will be a consummation devoutly to be wished.

– Pradip Bhattacharya

International HRD Fellow (Manchester)

Author of the entry on the Indus Civilization in the Dravidian Encyclopaedia

August 12, 2001

*In search of the cradle of civilization by Georg Feuerstein, Subhash Kak, David

Frawley Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1999, pp. xxi+341, index &; bibliography,

Rs. 395.

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