Aryan Invasion - Interesting Review

Wed Jun 5 17:19:37 UTC 1996

June 5, 1996

  Re: Aryan Invasion - Interesting Review
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Following are some old postings in Indology. The hindutva forces'
attempts at revisionism, vedic datings, statements like "all 
indus valley people were 'speaking' in Sanskrit" seem suspect to me.
Some even say Aryans started spreading westward  from India!
Supporting Dr. Cynthia Talbot's suggestion - qualified academics should 
publish material on this 'hot' topic in India.

N. Ganesan
nas_ng at lms420.jsc.nasa.gov

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Date:         Wed, 21 Aug 91 07:47:00 +0000
Reply-To:     Indology discussion list <INDOLOGY at LIVCMS>
Sender:       Indology discussion list <INDOLOGY at LIVCMS>
From: JBRONKHO at CH.UNIL.ULYS
Subject: Vedic dates

Would anyone be willing to offer intelligent comments on the recent article by
 Harry H. Hicks and Robert N. Anderson "Analysis of an Indo-European Vedic
Aryan Head - 4500-2500 B.C."?  This article appeared in a recent issue
of the Journal of Indo-European Studies.  Unfortunately I haven't got
further details with me.
Johannes Bronkhorst

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Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 10:04:50 CET
From: Dominik Wujastyk <D.Wujastyk at ucl.ac.uk>
Original-Sender: ucgadkw at mail-a.bcc.ac.uk
Reply-To: D.Wujastyk at ucl.ac.uk
Message-Id: <36293.D.Wujastyk at ucl.ac.uk>
To: indology at liverpool.ac.uk
Subject: Copper head of Vasishtha?

In the "Arts & Society" section of *Far Eastern Economic Review" of
3 December 1992, p.32, there is a report by M. K. Tikku in New Delhi
entitled "A head for history: Copper image sheds light on Aryan migration".

The report describes a copper head bought by Harry Hicks in 1958, now in his
private museum in California, the Foundation for Cultural Preservation.
Apparently the head has been dated as between 5200 and 5710 years old by
scientific tests performed at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology's
Laboratory for Nuclear Sciences in Zurich.  [Any chance of checking this
out, Peter?]

I won't reproduce the argumentation, but the article claims that the head is
that of Vasishtha as described in the Rig Veda.  This is then taken as
evidence of the Aryans being in India before the Indus valley civilization,
and of them developing the RV in India, rather than before their arrival on
the N. Indian plains.

The article gives no references to scholarly literature, and the whole thing
is rather puzzling.  If the head really is that old, it is of great interest
and significance, although I would not jump to the conclusions mentioned
above.

Does anyone else know more about this artefact?  Can you point to literature on
it?

Dominik
----------------
Dominik Wujastyk                                  d.wujastyk at ucl.ac.uk
                                                       +44 71 611 8467

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Date: Fri, 05 Feb 93 11:45:09 CET
From: Harry Falk <FALK at ibm.ruf.uni-freiburg.de>
Subject: Re: Copper head of Vasishtha?
To: Chris Wolff <indology at liverpool.ac.uk>
In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 03 Feb 93 10:04:50 GMT from <D.Wujastyk at ucl.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <"mailhub.li.216:05.01.93.10.54.55"@liverpool.ac.uk>

if I recall it properly the head was subject of a question on this list
about a year ago, the question was put by Johannes Bronkhorst. The head
is shown in an article by probably the same author Dom mentions in one
of the latest issues of the Journal of Indo-European Studies (JIES). I am
not an art historian, but dating this thing earlier than the beginning of
the current millennium would be absurd. It is quite some time now I read
the JIES article, but I still remember the reaction: the author(s) is
either completety out of his mind or an impostor. The complete lack of
secondary literature in the article and the (seemingly) false claim to
have a reputed institute (does it exist, Peter?) backing his datings make
the second solution more likely.
Harry

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From: vidya <vidya at cco.caltech.edu>

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). 

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