Aryan invasion debate

[Koenraad Elst]

Dear Dr. Thompson,

    Let me say first of all that i am impressed with the first-hand
knowledge of the Vedas abounding on this forum.  Myself, unfortunately,
temporarily abandoned my plans of pursuing Vedic studies when I stayed at
Benares Hindu University in 1988, thinking that the incipient Satanic Verses
and Ayodhya crises called for my more urgent attention.  Doing something
"relevant", you know.
    Anyway, even with some basic knowledge of the Vedas and the prevalent
theories about them, we can go a long way.  For starters: the very evidence
usually given for a post-Harappan date is equally compatible with a
pre-Harappan date.  Thus, it is always said that Vedic culture shows less
sophistication in material culture and less urbanization than is evident in
the Harappan ruins.  Well, that may fit India in the 2nd millennium,-- but
it also fits India in the 4th millennium.
    Secondly, the absence of a number of things in the Vedic testimony
points to pre- rather than post-Harappan.  Thus, you may be aware that one
of the opening shots in the renewed Aryan invasion debate was KD Sethna's
argument sometime in the 1980s, that the Vedas were unaware of cotton, a
common commodity in the late-Harappan period, and also making its appearance
in the literary record in the Sutras.  How likely is it that wool-clad
Central-Asian invaders conquered the Harappan territory, which even after
losing its most advanced urban traits continued its elementary achievements
like the production and use of cotton, did not acquaint themselves with this
climate-adapted native cloth?  It is obviously more likely that cotton had
not been commodified yet, pointing to the pre-Harappan time.  Similar
arguments have been developed for metallurgy and other material items.
    Thirdly, the astronomical references to the shifting equinox, continuing
through Vedic literature and down to Kalidasa.  If this concerned just one
stray reference, you could say it is open to interpretation; but there are
many, and their relative chronology is consistent with what we know of the
sequence of this literature.  The only coherent reading of all of them puts
the Vedas in the pre-Harappan period and the Brahmanas in the Harappan
period itself.
    Fourthly, the centrality of the Saraswati river in the Vedas, the
life-artery of many Harappan cities, river and cities declining together in
ca. 2000 BC.  That this excludes a post-Harappan date for the Vedas has been
pointed out so many times by AIT skeptics.  To my knowledge, this objection
has not been answered satisfactorily.  But maybe we shouldn't "waste time"
on answering the confabulations of Atlantis theorists?
    Discussion of specific verses will have to wait till after these general
observations have at least been acknowledged by AIT defenders.  Note also
that all these points have been developed in detail in books published in
the past few years (some also are much older, e.g. Winternitz's observation
in ca. 1905 that you just cannot cram the complex development of
pre-Buddhist literature and civilization into the few centuries before the
Buddha) and widely available.  I need not rewrite them here.

Yours sincerely,
Dr. Koenraad Elst
http://members.xoom.com/KoenraadElst/