It is also unfortunate that flippant comments are made without even reading the book of BB Lal referenced. The motivations are obvious. Any book which claims to question the received wisdom of Aryan invasion or migration is branded upfront as coming from 'nationalistic/chauvinistic Hindutva exploits.' With such a preconceived view, how is a debate possible with the 'specialists'?
Any book by any Indian author is generally viewed as 'amusement' on the anti-hindu hate group and is not dealt with the seriousness to get at a fair reconstruction of the mists of the past to unravel proto-history, expected from an 'specialists' which the group claims itself to be.
The group description reads: "This group is mainly intended for premodern specialists. All can join, but professionals get priority in posting: amateurish posts won't be sent on to the List...The List was specifically designed to encourage critical discussion of major unresolved issues in premodern studies."
I have read through the exquisitely produced book by BB Lal with colorful illustrations and rendered in mellifluent prose with evidences collated from archaeology and referencing a number of studies which were intended to promote the theme of Aryan invasion/migration into ancient India.
Let me start with some excerpts from the book;
"Preface. Isn't it an occasion to congratulate the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), a Government of India organization which is entrusted with the task of preparing textbooks for school-going children, to have finally come out of its shell and admit that the theory of 'Aryan Invasion' of India is untenable (Textbook in History for Class XII, Themes in Indian History, Part 1, New Delhi, Janury 2010, p.18)? But the engrained mindset for resisting the whole truth persists, as reflected by the following statement on p. 28 of the same book: 'There were sevral developments in different parts of the subcontinent during the long span of 1500 years folowing the end of the Harappan Civilization. This was also the time during which the Rigveda was composed by people living along the Indus and its tributaries.' The Rigveda refers to the river Sarasvati a number of times, which means that it was an active river during that period. Combined evidence of archaeology, radiocarbon method of dating, hydrology and other allied sciences has established that the Sarasvati dried up around 2000 BCE (see p. 122). Thus, the Rigveda has got to be earlier than 2000 BCE. How much earlier? It is anybody's guess. However, at least a 3rd millennium BCE horizon is indicated...There is yet another aspect which needs to be highlighted. The Rigveda also gives a very good idea of the territory occupied by the Rigvedic peope. Verses 5 and 6 of Sukta 75 of Mandala X refer to the entire area lying between the Ganga-Yamuna on the east and the Indus and its western tributaries on the west. It was the very area that was occupied by the Harappan Civilization during the 3rd millennium BCE, viz. the time of the Rigveda. Clearly therefore, the Harappans are none other than the Vedic people themselves. Furthr, C-14 dates for Bhirrana, a site in the upper Sarasvati valley, show that the roots of the Harappan Civilization go back to 6th-5th millennium BCE (p.55), which implies that the Harappans/Vedic people were deeply rooted in the Indian soil. To call them aliens is a sheer travesty of truth. How long shall we continue to blindfold ourselves? (Emphasis in the original)" (pp.vii-viii).
BB Lal proceeds to marshall his evidences and in Chapter 3 discusses the 'Aryan immigration' alternative with the following remarks: Even though vanquished, he would argue still -- Oliver Goldsmith's Village School Master. Argue they must, because it is their sacred duty to fight for their committed 'cause', namely that the Aryans must have come from outside. Thus, failing to sustain the 'Aryan Invasion' theory, two eminent scholars from India go in for an alternative. They postulate an 'Aryan Immigration'. Thus, Professor Roila Thapar, a well-known historian, came out with the alternative theory by avowing (1989-91:259-60): 'If invasion is discarded then the mechanism of migrtion and occasional contacts come into sharper focus. The migrations appear to have been of pastoral cattle breeders who are prominent in the Avesta and the Rigveda.' Faithfully following her, in fact elaborating her new thesis, Professor RS Sharma, another noted historian, asserted (1999:77): 'The pastoralists who moved to the Indian borderland came from the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex of BMAC which saw the genesis of the culture of the Rigveda.' (pp.29-30).
BB Lal then presents his evaluation of the BMAC on topics such as town-planning and other architectural remains, sculptural art, metal objects, BMAC vis-a-vis the Aryans, Parpola's Bactria sword compared with Fatehgarh sword which is simply a part of the Gangetic Copper Hoards and provides his emphatic conclusion: "Even a beginner in archaeology would straightaway say that the single BMAC specimen cannot be the parent of the Gangetic Copper Hoard Culture. On the other hand, it is the BMAC specimen which must have been taken there from the Gangtic region. Enough of BMAC immigrants, please!" (pp.32-33).
BB Lal reviews the evidence of flora supposedly supporting the 'Aryan immigration' thesis and concludes: "...there is no case to hold that the authors of the Rigveda belonged to a cold climate." (p.40) and identifies the River Sarasvati during the Rigvedic times with the now-dry river which goes by the names of the Sarasvati-Ghaggar in Haryana and Ghaggar in Rajasthan (both in India) and by the names of Hakra in Cholistan and the Nara in Sindh (both in Pakistan) and not with the Helmand of Afghanistan. (p.48).
BB Lal continues with archaeological evidences of fortified cities and pit-dwellings attested in Banawali and other sites, Bhirrana, Kalibangan presenting a chronological horizon, with the roots of the civilization going back to the 6th-5th millennnia BCE. (Chapters 6 and 7).
BB La summarizes his findings:
1. The Aryan Invasion of the Indian sub-continent is a total myth (Chapter 2).
2. Equally mythical is the postulate that the Aryans were 'immigrants', if not 'invaders' (Chapters 3 and 4).
3. The Rigvedic river Sarasvati is not the Helmand of Afghanistan but is to be identified with a now-dry river, which is known as the Sarasvti-Ghaggar combine (Chapter 5)
4. In the basin of this Sarasvati there evolved a remarkable civilization. To begin with, the people dwelt in pits, in the 5th millennium BCE, and progressed through various stages to reach a high level of civilization when they built fortified cities in the 3rd millennium BCE (Chapter 6)...
...
7. Rigvedic people are neither 'invaders' nor 'immigrants' but indigenous. (pp.124-125)
I would like to ask of Michael Witzel and other members of his yahoo e-group to first read BB Lal's evidences and logical conclusions derived and present contra viewpoints; hopefully, such a scholarly, unmotivated academic approach will help arrive at the truth of the roots of Sarasvati-Sindhu (Hindu) civilization.
Sottovoce: I have deliberately called the civilization as Sarasvati-Sindhu as against the mainstream designation of 'Harappan Culture' used by archaeologists. This designation can also be debated in the context of the language the Vedic people spoke as brought out in my works on Indus script decipherment, reading the inscriptions rebus as Meluhha (Mleccha) metalwork catalogs. Just as BB Lal concludes that Vedic and Harappan were two sides of the same coin, I have concluded that Chandas and Meluhha (Mleccha) are two sides of the same Indian sprachbund coin.
Sure, Michael Witzel is entitled to his opinions in Aryan migration into ancient India and the roots of Proto-Indo-European in the Steppes. I would only request, in the interest of progressing the 'indological' studies, not to prejudge contrary opinions as Hindutva zealotry. After all, any hypothesis to be tenable in academic discourse, should also be falsifiable (pace Karl Popper). Michael Witzel may also like to counter the views -- on the same topic of identity of ancient Hindus -- of Nicholas Kazanas and BS Hari Shankar mentioned at:
http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2015/02/the-rigvedic-people-invadersimmigrants.html
http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2015/02/unmasking-motives-of-aryan.html
S. Kalyanaraman
Sarasvati Research Center
February 22, 2015
Annex
Source: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/indo-eurasian_research/conversations/messages/16871
Sunday Amusement: BB Lal and migration
Witzel, Michael
Feb 15 8:36 AM
As it is Sunday, some amusement.
Among the current wave of nationalistic/chauvinistic Hindutva exploits --including members of the current Indian Government--the octogenarian former director of Indian Archeology, B.B. Lal, has produced still another indigenist book:
The Rigvedic People 'Invaders'?/'Immigrants'? or Indigenous?: Evidence of Archaeology and Literature.
Delhi : Aryan Books International, Febr. 2015.
"Author Overview:
For several decades it has been orchestrated that there was an ‘Aryan Invasion’ of India which destroyed the Harappan Civilization. However, as shown in this book (pp. 10 ff.), there is no evidence whatsoever of any invasion or of the presence of an alien culture at any of the hundreds of Harappan sites. While one is glad to note that the ‘Invasion’ theory is dead, it is a pity that it is being resurrected in a new avatar, namely that of ‘Immigration’, of people from the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex of Central Asia, who, the proponents think, were nomadic Aryans. This book advances cogent arguments to demonstrate that this new theory too is totally wrong (pp. 19 ff.).
For all this mess, the dating of the Rigveda to 1,200 BCE by Max Muller is squarely responsible. The combined evidence of hydrology, archaeology and C-14 method of dating shows that the Rigveda is assignable to the 3rd-4th millennium BCE (pp. 118 ff.). The Rigveda (X. 75. 5-6) also tells us that the Vedic people occupied the entire territory from the Indus on the west to the upper reaches of the Ganga-Yamuna on the east. Archaeologically, during the aforesaid period and within the above-noted territory, there existed one and only one civilization, namely the Harappan. Hence, the Harappan Civilization and the Vedas are but two faces of the same coin (pp. 122-23). Further, the evidence from Kunal and Bhirrana (pp. 54-55) establishes that the roots of this civilization go back to the 6th-5th millennia BCE, indicating thereby that the Harappans were the ‘sons of the soil’ and not aliens. Thus, the Vedic people, who were themselves the Harappans, were Indigenous and neither ‘Invaders’ nor ‘Immigrants’. "
This is seriously prejudiced and mistaken in many respects, just like the allied, cottage-industry style books by Talageri, Priyadarshi, and the like. -- Just one crucial point:
A 3rd-4th mill. Rigveda and "Aryans' in India would be well before the Rigvedic horse-drawn, spoked-wheel chariot that was invented (in the steppes, c. 2000 BCE) and well before the horse was imported back into India after its demise there some 10,000 years ago in the mass faunal extinction (due to the end of the ice age).
There are no *scientifically* (paleontologically) attested horse bones in India, nor their depiction, before 1800 BCE (see last: Meadow, R. (2002) “A note on the horse in pre- and proto-historic South Asia: A comment on Kazanas,” Journal of Indo-European Studies (JIES) 30: 389-394).
Of course the language of the Rigveda is (cladistically) several steps down from Proto-Indo-European, commonly dated around 4000/3000 BCE by linguists, -- but this is not something that will sway the indigenists as they regard (IE) linguistics as a "colonialist pseudo-science". Sure, just like Uralic, Bantu, Polynesian linguistics?
For dating of the Rigvedic language in the (very) late 2nd mill. BCE, based on *written* Mitanni records (c.1400 BCE), see undersigned in the recently released Commemoration Volume R.S. Sharma. (Can send a pdf).
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Tacitus, I think, said that Germanic people thought that they were indigenous. As we can now see this was nonsense: they came from the Steppes some 2500 years before him, and were throughly mixed (Steppe individuals, male and female, 75%, and previous Mediterranean agriculturalists/Hunter Gatherers, 25%)
See the very recent paper, mentioned by Steve: Haak et al.: "Massive migration from the steppe is a source for Indo-European languages in Europe" on the "Yamnaya invasion" into Central Europe around 2500 BCE, with a *replacement* of the local agriculturalist population by as surprising 75%.
So why not a similar scenario for India??
As David Anthony pointed out during our January symposium at Harvard: the steppe Yamnaya culture changed in Central Europe into the Corded Ware culture, just as the Russian/Kazakh steppe cultures changed, when entering the Bactria-Margiana (BMAC) area, to a BMAC-type culture and then moved on south as such, while keeping their Indo-European language, spiritual culture, 3-class system, Männerbund (vrātya), etc.
(Summary for the Urals-to-Panjab move and intermediate changes in my papers:
The Home of the Aryans. Anusantatyai. Fs. für Johanna Narten zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. A. Hintze & E. Tichy. (Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft, Beihefte NF 19) Dettelbach: J.H. Roell 2000, 283-338 http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/%7Ewitzel/AryanHome.pdf (intro part)
The Ṛgvedic Religious System and its Central Asian and Hindukush Antecedents.
In: A. Griffiths & J.E.M. Houben (eds.). The Vedas: Texts, Language and Ritual. Groningen: Forsten, 2004: 581-636
Further genetic research will tell us, especially that on the (male) Y chromosome R1a1- M417- Z93.
Z93 has a Central/South Asian distribution; in India it occurs, at present, at a fairly high frequency in Upper Caste Indo-European (45%) speakers.
We need a lucky find of ancient DNA from the area… Hard science.
So are we back to massive migration or even "invasion"?
We can already predict the indigenists' uproar:nNo one but some historically attested invaders entered India for the 10 or so millennia, they think.
Cheers,
Michael