Dasyus and PaNis inRV

[Vanbakkam Vijayaraghavan]

On Wed, 8 Nov 2000 04:38:57 +0000, Narayan R. Joshi <giravani at JUNO.COM>
wrote:

>The academic understanding of the words"anasa" and "daasyu" has gone
>through a major change(Vidyasankar Sundaresan-Nov.7).Now the ancient Indian
>Dravidians are not to be grouped with RV Daasas and Dasyus. But I am
>puzzled by the following references(Substrate Languages in Old Indo-Aryan-
>Prof.Witzel-p.35)--"The non-IA Kiika.ta or the PaNi are clearly described
>as foreigners(late RV hymn 6.45.31), and even later, in the Mantra and YV
>Samhitaa period, the Ni.saadha in the Chambal area(MS2.9.5 etc) and other
>dasyu enemies in (RV 10.61.8) as well the south (i.e. the area souhth of
>Kuruk.setra)....".Do the above sentences mean that PaNis and Dasyus were
>located east of Khyber pass within the Indian sub-continent? Please correct
>my interpretation if wrong.


Dasyus of vedas are the same as Daha of Gathas and Dahae of Greek
reference.( I don't have the refernce URL at the moment). There is nothing
to suggest that Dasyu/Dasa/Daha/Dahae were any different from the composers
of Vedas i.e. aryas in speech or appearance. So this group Dasyu/Daha were
spread over much of India, Iran and central asia



>Did the ancient Dravidians develop these features after entering the Indian
>sub-continent?


To really settle this question , the folowing steps must be taken:

1. Skeletal remains are found across the alleged/proposed route of entering
or migration

2. Reconstructions of skeletal remains must be undertaken using up-to-date
forensic and archeological technology so that a reasonable reconstruction.
The reconstructions must show the , DNA profile , height, physical
features, skin colour, hair , etc with a reasonable degree of confidence

3. All this reconstructions must also reveal if possible the  most likely
the conditions of living and manner of dying

4. These skeletal remians must be proved to belong to what the contemporary
evidence called "dravidians". i.e. if you find a skeletal remain of the
period 1000 BC, then you should look into contemporary records for
Dravidians and show that the record matches with that of the skeletal
remain.

At the moment when we say "dravidian" , primarily it is linguistic tool and
secondarily it means whoever spoke (as their mother tongue) this language.
Hence from the skeletal remain we cannot determine what language the person
spoke when alive

My thoery is this is impossible to settle at all this question. I have not
come across any single reconstruction as delienated in Step 2 of anyboby or
body in India Even the question itself assumes so many things, the question
can be dropped without any loss to Indology or archeology at the moment.

To the best of my knowledge the ancient people from Central
>Asia were fair in color with respect to the average dark/brown color of the
>ancient Indians.The dark/brown population of Makuran coast could be due to
>the migrations from Oman/Yemen/Arabia regions in the known history.Now AIT
>is gone and AMT might be on the way to go.Will DMT(Dravidian Migration
>Theory) face the same future?Please correct my thinking if wrong.I would
>like to remain in step with New Scholarship and I do not want to fight the
>battles of the last century. Thanks.

Batlles of the 19th century are not yet over, leave alone 20th