FW: Aryan invasion - interesting review

[CAMP: Sen, Amitava]

Hello:

In the light of the message below, a very interesting article on Aryan 
Invasion, I have a very basic question:

What is the commonly accepted theory now on Aryan Invasion, or 
Indo-European/Aryan origin of Vedic society? Lately I have heard and read 
varying accounts and theories on this invasion. Revisionist historians seem 
to having a ball in rewriting Vedic history and the invasion.

Is there anyone on this list who can provide some insight on this issue?

By the way, can anyone point me a bookstore where I can buy these books?

Thanks

Amitava
 ----------
>From: indology-request
To: Members of the list
Subject: Aryan invasion - interesting review
Date: Tuesday, June 04, 1996 5:27AM


The February 9, 1996 issue of Frontline (vol. 13, no. 2), a magazine from
the house of The Hindu, has an extremely well-written book review by Shereen
Ratnagar, Prof. of archeology at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. The books
she is reviewing here are titled "Aryan Invasion of India" (1993) and "The
Politics of History" (1995) by one Navratna S. Rajaram, published by Voice 
of
India, New Delhi.

This reviewer has addressed some of the assumptions that have gone into the
revisionist history, and also denounced the motivations behind it. The most
hard-hitting portion of the review examines the "Vasishta's head" that was
originally published in the Journal of Indo-European Studies, vol 18, by
H. H. Hicks and R. N. Anderson. The important points she makes about this
article are -

1. The metal head was not found in any archeological site, nor in a stratum
with other dateable finds. She does not say where it was found. Does anyone
here know?

2. The carbon sample used for radioactive dating came from "a small quantity
of carbon deposits on the inside surface". Obviously, the date found is not
of the head directly, but of other material, the environment of its source
being unknown.

3. Hicks and Anderson do not give the exact composition of the head anywhere
in their article, it seems. It is "copper-based" in one place, "brass"
elsewhere and also "with a high silver content" somewhere else. The author 
of
the books being reviewed calls it "copper-based natural (?!!) brass".

Ms. Ratnagar makes the highly legitimate criticism that if the metal head is
indeed brass, then it must contain zinc, which is seen only from later 
periods
than copper is first seen, because of technical difficulties in smelting
zinc.
If the material is indeed brass, the earliest date for it is close to 100
BCE.

4. An inscription on the head is cited as the source for identifying the 
metal
head as Vasishta's. Hicks and Anderson say that the inscription dates from 
the
13th-14th cent. AD. However, they do not provide a photograph or copy of the
inscription in their article itself. Assuming that the head itself was made 
in
a period close to 3000 BCE, it must be taken on trust that it was correctly
identified by those who made the inscription on it at such a late date. The
more probable explanation is that the head itself was cast by those who made
the inscription, which brings the date of "Vasishta's head" to the 13th 
cent.
AD.

5. Hicks and Anderson are said to sloppy in their referencing, attributing
books to the wrong authors. Ms. Ratnagar uses the words "appears tainted by
dishonesty".

Much is made of the hair-style as being unique to Vasishta's family. What is
amusing is that the reviewer provides a picture of a modern eka-mukha lingam
from Brindavan, next to the picture of Vasishta's head. The resemblance is
so striking, as to make any conclusions from artistic/stylistic grounds
completely unreliable.

All of this is startling news to me. Are there any other solid researches 
into
"Vasishta's head"? Have there been follow-up studies to the original one by
Hicks and Anderson? From a scientist's point of view, the deficiencies 
pointed
out in their work seem serious. For example, Ms. Ratnagar says that the 
radio-
carbon dating in the original article did not cite a laboratory reference. 
Who
did the experiments, and where? Hicks and Anderson should be held 
accountable
to disclose this information. Even with this, the fact that the dating 
relies
on indirect evidence makes it prone to error. I don't know if Hicks and
Anderson
were purposely being dishonest - such charges of dishonesty are very serious
and are not made lightly in the world of scientists and engineers. But there
do seem to be glaring deficiencies in the original work, if Ms. Ratnagar is
right.

There are other interesting arguments in the review, which I won't go into
here. But it is interesting to note that Ms. Ratnagar says that nobody
seriously subscribes to the "invasion" theory any more. And she is right in
saying "we must not throw the baby out with the bathwater", when deriving
the ultimate ancestry of Vedic from some proto-Indo European tongue. She 
also
says that it is unjustified to infer about language purely from 
archeological
artefacts - which seems highly reasonable, in the absence of decipherable
inscriptions on the artefacts.

S. Vidyasankar

ps. The same issue of Frontline has an article by E. M. S. Namboodiripad,
about r.gvedic chanting, from a typically Marxist perspective. Mr.
Namboodiripad
enjoys the double privilege of having learnt the r.gveda as a youngster, and
then graduating into a leader of Indian communists in his political career.
If nothing else, it catalogs one man's disillusionment with having to learn
the veda by rote, without understanding a word of it. Never mind that he
contradicts himself, within the space of two paragraphs, regarding the
political
identity or otherwise of the Indian people(s).