ON THE USE OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES IN RECONSTRUCTING ARCHAIC FORMS OF ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION (original) (raw)
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This paper argues against the Dravidian, Vedic and Paramunda Indus theories, and shows why Dravidian languages, Sanskrit or Paramunda languages could not have been candidates for the Indus Valley Civilization which flourished from 2600 BC to 1900 BC in the North-West of India and Pakistan. Supporters of these three hypotheses are welcome to provide a systematic refutation of all the points raised in this paper. This paper adopts a multi-disciplinary approach, drawing conclusions from many different fields of science. Quotes of several mainstream scholars of repute are presented in support of the conclusions arrived at in this paper. An alternative hypothesis of the identity of the Harappans is also presented towards the end of the paper.
1. The Indus Valley Civilization Preview
What came to be called Hinduism was an amalgamation of beliefs and practices from several sources. This chapter focuses on the first of the two major contributors: the indus Valley Civilization. in subsequent chapters we will focus on the second: the indo-aryans. The discovery of the indus Valley Civilization in the nineteenth century revealed a sophisticated and long-forgotten ancient culture that appears to have contributed to the development of the hindu traditions. in this chapter, we examine the architectural ruins and artifacts left by this civilization and contemplate their import for its inhabitants and for subsequent hindu history. This examination reveals that indus Valley religion focused on maintaining ritual purity and appropriating divine powers to assist in reproduction and the maintenance of life. Finally, we introduce the indo-aryans with a brief discussion of their relationship to the dwellers of the indus Valley.
Origins of the Vedic Religion and Indus-Ghaggar Civilisation
The highly debated issue of the Aryan or proto-Indo-European language speaker’s homeland is still nowhere near to any resolve. The European and Indian scholars have been proposing drastically opposite theories to prove either Eurasia or India as the homeland. Sometimes they dramatically stretch the timelines leaving one wondering as to how the scholars can play around with the archaeological proofs and indications provided by ancient scriptures just to derive suitable meanings to meet their needs. In his book, Mr. Sonawani attempts to have a look at the ‘homeland’ scenario. While doing so, he takes cognizance of all the theories forwarded by the scholars so far from fresh angle and postulates that; 1. The Indo-European language group theory is based upon migrations of the proto Indo-European language speakers from some homeland. The author challenges the hypotheses’ of such migration and using the available archaeological, anthropological and scriptural evidences goes on to prove that there were no massive migrations from any place since 10,000 BC which may have caused substantial impact on other cultures. Using the archaeological evidences, he proves that the people all over the globe started settling down by 15,000 BC with the invention of early agriculture. The process was gradually completed by before 10,000 BC. Therefore, it is out of the question that the so-called PIE speakers started migrating from the hypothetical homelands at about 2000 BC or 5000 BC and impacted the linguistic and cultural features of other civilisations, as postulated by the scholars. 2. The author further proves that the early humans were foragers during the period ranging from 60,000 BC till 15,000 BC when they already had learnt to move around in the known territories and developed geographical consciousness. By then they had already shared, developed rudimentary languages having common features. These rudimentary languages took separate paths after he settled down in the respective regions. However, the early vocabulary and grammatical traits survived, which is why there are some similarities even today in the territories in question. These similarities are owed to the early human life and not to the movement of so-called Proto-Indo-European people. 3. Author proves that from all the results pouring in from the geological explorations at Ghaggar basin, and from the careful analysis of Rig Vedic/mythological descriptions of the Saraswati River, the Ghaggar river cannot be at all equated with the Rig Vedic Saraswati. 4. Mr. Sonawani, in this book, proves that many personalities, including Zarathustra and his patrons, were contemporary to the early phase of Rig Vedic compositions and have been mentioned in both the Rig Veda and the Avesta. This sheds light on the possible date of the Rig Veda and Gathas of the Avesta. Further, the author proves, with in depth analysis of numerous scriptural and archaeological evidences, that the Rig Vedic geography is that of nowhere else but Helmand valley, Southern Afghanistan. Using references from the Rig Veda and the Avesta, he has proved that most of the identifiable tribes mentioned were and still are located in Iran, Afghanistan and north-east India( now Pakistan), and are speaking the descendent languages even today. 5. The author also proves that the indigenous Vedic Aryan theory is unfounded since there is no slightest affinity between the Vedic and Indus culture. He explains diligently that, how, even if Rig Vedic period is stretched back substantially, i.e. from presently accepted period of about 1500 BC, to as back as 3000 BC or even far before, any association of the Vedic people with Indus-Ghaggar Civilisation is improbable. 6. Since Indus-Ghaggar Valley have not experienced any intruding immigrants from minimum of 7000+ BC, there is no any genetic or archeological proof to prove any foreign influx since then. Therefore, there is total absence of any proofs to prove the migration of so-called Vedic Aryans from India to West. The vital questions raised by Mr. Sonawani are: How the Vedic religion was introduced to India? How it found space here to become a major sect in the later course of time? The revelations, supported by substantial proofs may help us change the traditional perspective of our ancient socio-cultural and religious history. 7. Importantly, the author points out at the sever social harm caused by the supremacist views taken by the European and Vedicist scholars over the last two hundred years to solve non-existent mystery of origin, either of the Aryan race or of the PIE language. 8. This book explains the roots of the original Rig Vedic language and how it was gradually modified in ancient times to suite the changed linguistic environments, while providing the internal proofs from the Rig Veda and from the observations of Indian as well as European Sanskrit scholars. As a result, the myth of the Vedic dialect being mother of Sanskrit and other Prakrit languages crumbles. Rather the author of this book has referred to almost all the living and dead renowned scholars whose works have been related with a wide range of topics such as the myth of the Aryans or the PIE speakers hypotheses, archaeology, geology, linguistics, anthropology to religion. Mr. Sonawani stresses through this book that distorting the human history to prove that some humans are superior over others, racially or linguistically, is not the way to solve the puzzles of our ancient past. “Origin of the Vedic Religion and Indus-Ghaggar Civilization” is an attempt to help us look back at our past with clean and unprejudiced vision.
International Journal of Philosophy and Social Sciences, 2012
This paper is meant to read together with the paper ‘The reconfirmation and reinforcement of the Indus script thesis: a logical assessment and inquiry as to the elusive and enigmatic nature of this script‘, which was published in the ICFAI Journal of History and Culture in January 2011. In the aforementioned paper, we had clearly shown that the Indus script used in the Indus Valley civilization which flourished from 2600 BC to 1900 BC, was a logo-syllabic script. In this paper, we show that the case for the lost manuscript hypothesis has never been stronger than it has been in the past one decade. This hypothesis has had many adherents even in the West even earlier when very little of the Indus had been excavated, but few will now deny that no other scenario is likely. This hypothesis was earlier based on hunches, now its adherents can base it on science and valid epistemology. The Indus Valley Civilization has always amazed legions of archeologists since the 1920’s and has been taught to students all over the world: it can now take its pride of place among old world civilizations. This paper also introduces Logo-syllabic thesis B as opposed to the older logo-syllabic thesis A and lays bare the differences between the two. We insist that only approaches such as those detailed in this paper can be applied for the study of the Indus script given the low quantum of archaeological data in relation to the total known size of the IVC. (This ratio is the lowest for all known civilizations). This paper is meant to be read after ‘Syncretism and Acculturation in Ancient India; a new nine phase acculturation model explaining the process of transfer of power from the Harappans to the Indo-Aryans’ which was published in two parts in the peer-reviewed ICFAI journal of History and culture in January 2009 and January 2010. This paper detailed methods to reconstruct the languages spoken in the IVC. The present paper was published in the International Journal of Philosophy and Social Sciences (IJPSS), Vol II, No 2, 2012
Preview What came to be called Hinduism was an amalgamation of beliefs and practices from several sources. This chapter focuses on the first of the two major contributors: the indus Valley Civilization. in subsequent chapters we will focus on the second: the indo-aryans. The discovery of the indus Valley Civilization in the nineteenth century revealed a sophisticated and long-forgotten ancient culture that appears to have contributed to the development of the hindu traditions. in this chapter, we examine the architectural ruins and artifacts left by this civilization and contemplate their import for its inhabitants and for subsequent hindu history. This examination reveals that indus Valley religion focused on maintaining ritual purity and appropriating divine powers to assist in reproduction and the maintenance of life. Finally, we introduce the indo-aryans with a brief discussion of their relationship to the dwellers of the indus Valley. 15
Indus Script is based on spoken dialects of Proto Indo European inferred from Robin Bradley Kar
Note: Robin Bradley Kar concludes that people of Sarasvati Civilization spoke dialects of Proto-Indo-European. I infer that the Indus Script Corpora of 8000+ inscriptions are rendered in such dialects. Hence, the Corpora constitutes mlecchita vikalpa, cipher writing by mleccha,Meluhha-speakers, who spoke dialects of Proto-Indo-european. The Corpora of Inscriptions in Indus Script are wealth accounting ledgers, metalwork catalogues. S. Kalyanaraman Sarasvati Research Centre On the Proto-Indo-European Language of the Indus Valley Civilization (and Its Implications for Western Prehistory) The Sindhu-Sarasvati Civilization: New Perspectives (Essays in Honor of Dr. S.R. Rao) (2014) Posted: 6 Aug 2012 Last revised: 22 Nov 2017 Read the full article in the book cited below: https://www.amazon.in/Sindhu-Sarasvati-Civilization-Perspectives-Shikaripur-Ranganatha/dp/8124607435 Robin Bradley Kar University of Illinois College of Law Date Written: August 4, 2012 Abstract Many of our attempts to understand the basic causes and conditions of legal, social, political and economic development in the West have been shaped by a particular view of human prehistory, which places the origins of certain key traditions in ancient Greece, Rome and Israel. The developments in ancient Greece and Rome are, moreover, typically pictured as phylogenetically distinct from some of the very first human transitions from hunter-gatherer forms of life into larger-scale urban civilizations that have been found in the archaeological record. Although the so-called "Indus Valley" Civilization (a.k.a. the "Harappan" or "Sindhu-Sarasvati" Civilization) represents one of the very first such successful transformations in our natural history as a species, and although the Indus Valley Civilization long predates similar developments in ancient Greece, Rome or Israel, most scholars deem these early developments irrelevant to Western prehistory because of a specific linguistic proposition: they believe that the Indus Valley Civilization spoke a non-Indo-European language and that its traditions are therefore phylogenetically unrelated to the larger family of Indo-European civilizations that show up in the subsequent historical record (first in ancient Persia, Greece, Rome and India - and then much later in Western Europe and Russia). If this traditional linguistic assumption is wrong, however, then many of our modern attempts to understand the basic causes and conditions of Western development are being shaped by a fundamental misunderstanding - and often to their detriment. This article argues that, despite certain well-known and long-standing controversies over the issue, we are already in a good enough position to conclude - and with a very high degree of confidence - that the Indus Valley Civilization spoke dialects of Proto-Indo-European. My arguments for this conclusion will be new, and will draw upon a body of evidence that has so far been overlooked in these discussions. A growing number of people have, however, begun to acknowledge this possibility, and I will be suggesting that there are sufficient signs now of a coming paradigm shift with regard to our understanding of early human prehistory to warrant serious attention. If - as I believe - we are in the midst of such a paradigm shift, and if this paradigm shift is like any other, then we should also expect many fruitful discoveries to be emerging from this new perspective. The arguments in this article have been split into five sections. Section 1 develops a contemporary model of prehistoric linguistic expansion (the "riverine-agricultural model of linguistic expansion"), which suggests that certain major riverine topographies have played a critical role in producing all of the world's major language families - including the Indo-European language family. This model suggests that, during the height of the Indus Valley Civilization, the languages spoken in this region would have almost certainly represented one of the most important and monumental linguistic phenomena ever to have arisen within our natural history as a species. Section 2 then argues that if we assume (plausibly) that significant pockets of this language family should therefore remain in the northwestern portions of the Indian subcontinent, then the Indus Valley Civilization must have spoken dialects of Proto-Indo-European. Section 3 then considers the objection that tries to reject this last conclusion by rejecting its guiding assumption (i.e., that significant pockets of the Indus Valley Civilization’s language family should still remain in the northwestern parts of the Indian subcontinent). According to this objection, small groups of Indo-Aryan invaders or migrants from the steppes could have simply eradicated the pre-existing language (or languages) of the Indus Valley Civilization by converting the prior populations to Indo-Aryan languages beginning in about 1500 BC. In order to assess this possibility, Section 3 engages in a comprehensive examination of patterns of linguistic replacement from around the world and over the course of world history. This examination reveals an important fact: once a major linguistic phenomenon has reached equilibrium around a major riverine topography in accordance with the riverine-agricultural model of linguistic expansion, there is not one recorded case anywhere in this extensive world historical record where the language family in question has been completely replaced in one of these riverine regions by a different language family through a process of linguistic conversion. We therefore have strong empirical reasons to reject this objection. Section 4 discusses another common source of resistance to the claim that the Indus Valley Civilization might have spoken dialects of Proto-Indo-European. This objection is based on the perception that this linguistic claim carries with it certain necessary implications about Indo-European prehistory that can be hard to square with the broader body of evidence relevant to this larger topic. In order to address this concern, Section 4 embeds the linguistic claim within a broader narrative concerning Indo-European prehistory that is - I argue - actually better able to explain (or at least render coherent) this broader body of evidence than its main competitors. Hence, the current linguistic proposal - once properly construed - can be understood as the beneficiary of a much broader and more extensive form of evidentiary support. Section 5 ends, finally, with a direct response to some of Michael Witzel’s important and influential work, which purports not only to establish that Indo-European languages and cultures were first brought to the Indian subcontinent from the Eurasian Steppes sometime between 1500 to 1200 BC but also to trace with some precision the exact timing and path of the Indo-Iranian groups who (in his view) carried these languages and cultures with them. Witzel is one of the most pre-eminent Indologists alive today, and he has collected an important body of evidence relevant to these topics. I will nevertheless argue that Witzel's evidence ultimately underdetermines the choice between his traditional theory and the newer one developed here. In construing his evidence to support his theory uniquely, Witzel has therefore, in effect, mistaken a failure of theoretical imagination for a set of inferences that are required by his evidence. Once our full theoretical options have been made explicit, Witzel's evidence can, moreover, be seen to slightly favor the current theory. The choice between these two theories will, however, become even clearer once Witzel's evidence is harmonized with all of the other evidence relevant to these topics (including all of the new considerations discussed in this article). Based on this entire combined body of evidence, we now have compelling reasons to think that the Indus Valley Civilization spoke dialects of Proto-Indo-European. Suggested Citation:Kar, Robin Bradley, On the Proto-Indo-European Language of the Indus Valley Civilization (and Its Implications for Western Prehistory) (August 4, 2012). The Sindhu-Sarasvati Civilization: New Perspectives (Essays in Honor of Dr. S.R. Rao) (2014). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2124180 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract\_id=2124180