Now, for a moment, lets go back to the pre-christian era. The Romans have left the Britannia and returned to rome. The leaving of the Romans made the English speaking Celtic tribes unstable and this was in the best interest of the Irish king who always plotted to keep them divided, so he can conquer them easily.This was the earliest divided and rule policy of the Europeans. One more famous instance of the implementation of this cheap policy by the Europeans, is the French keeping the different German tribes divided until the rise of the German nationalism due to the aryan supremacy ending in the Franco-Prussian war of 1871.
The Europeans, all through the time during their rule over India, played the cheap policy of divide and rule over Indians alongside their other dirty tricks. They infested the Indian society with nepotism, bigotry, the religious divide. By no means, the Indian society was a perfect Utopian society before the coming of the british. There were shortcomings with Pre-British Indian society too. But that the blackspots in the pre-British India did not block the sun then but they do now.
The British plans to proselytize India were being chalked up now, so the genesis of all sorts of nonsenses. We can already see them succeeding in most parts of India to this day.
The first one was revamping of the educational system. The British, especially Macaullay was very much intent on removing the then prevalent age old educational system and replacing that with the more materialistic english education. The result is evident today. The next one was dividing the demographics. Here religion served its purpose, Hindus and Muslims. It is might be wrong for me to say Hinduism and Islam served the English at this time but Hindus and Muslims changed the words of their religion more appropriately to serve their purpose. The 85/15 split was obvious then and it was done. Now the game plan boiled down to divide the 80. The opportunities were plenty. There were as many castes,sub castes, creed as there were stars on the sky for the British. But they could do that and still fail. Because the 80 %, though split they are still Hindus. They still share the same scriptures, culture etc. Ramayan, Mahabharat, The Gita, The Vedas and above all Sanskrit will hold them together. The Think-tanks probably spent more than a few some sleepless nights. At that time, came to light one of the most talked about, so called western Sanskrit scholar, Freidrich Max Mueller. Though a German by birth , he had settled in England after his education in oxford. Many sources say that he was struck with poverty before he actually climbed to fame by bombing the entire world with the "Aryan Supremacy theory". The writings by Max Mueller saw the rise of German nationalism and the effect was unification of Germany leading unto the World War II.
Now, who would not like to be in the limelight? and that too to climb out of poverty, that is a double whammy. He was missionary funded by the british, like the lawrence of arabia but to study into the scriptures in Sanskrit and propogate them in a demeaning way so that the Indians who revere those scriptures as holy books should lose faith in the Sanskrit and the oldest, Rig veda. More about this can be found in the links given at the end of my own thoughts.
The British plans to proselytize India were being chalked up now, so the genesis of all sorts of nonsenses. We can already see them succeeding in most parts of India to this day.
The first one was revamping of the educational system. The British, especially Macaullay was very much intent on removing the then prevalent age old educational system and replacing that with the more materialistic english education. The result is evident today. The next one was dividing the demographics. Here religion served its purpose, Hindus and Muslims. It is might be wrong for me to say Hinduism and Islam served the English at this time but Hindus and Muslims changed the words of their religion more appropriately to serve their purpose. The 85/15 split was obvious then and it was done. Now the game plan boiled down to divide the 80. The opportunities were plenty. There were as many castes,sub castes, creed as there were stars on the sky for the British. But they could do that and still fail. Because the 80 %, though split they are still Hindus. They still share the same scriptures, culture etc. Ramayan, Mahabharat, The Gita, The Vedas and above all Sanskrit will hold them together. The Think-tanks probably spent more than a few some sleepless nights. At that time, came to light one of the most talked about, so called western Sanskrit scholar, Freidrich Max Mueller. Though a German by birth , he had settled in England after his education in oxford. Many sources say that he was struck with poverty before he actually climbed to fame by bombing the entire world with the "Aryan Supremacy theory". The writings by Max Mueller saw the rise of German nationalism and the effect was unification of Germany leading unto the World War II.
Now, who would not like to be in the limelight? and that too to climb out of poverty, that is a double whammy. He was missionary funded by the british, like the lawrence of arabia but to study into the scriptures in Sanskrit and propogate them in a demeaning way so that the Indians who revere those scriptures as holy books should lose faith in the Sanskrit and the oldest, Rig veda. More about this can be found in the links given at the end of my own thoughts.
Who were aryans? All through the Vedas, there is not a mention of aryans as racially superior tribe who conquered India and drove the inhabitants down south. The simple use of the color of the people, light and brown, aryans and dravidians to divide the people was handled by the british. The impact of climate, lattitude, diet were left out of the equation to give way to an imaginary theory. Caucasians, Mangolians, Negroid and Australians were forgotten. Nevertheless, both the divisions, aryans and dravidians belong to the Caucasian race. It was in the vedic age and in the indus valley that Indians and the Iranians lived a vedic life before a possible fight between the groups made one of groups move to what is now called Iran.
The Old theory says that the aryans came from central Asia as nomadic tribes and destroyed a highly advanced Indus valley civilization and dark skinned dravidians. There is no scientific truth that such a war or genocide took place at the timeline mentioned. There is no solid proof that the aryans came from the central asia. They were also the people who occupied the banks of Sarasvati. How could a tribe, barbaric in nature, coming from elsewhere, compose verses and poems about nature, God, affection ,society and endow us with the ways of living for different causes? If aryans are from a different part of earth, why is it that there is not a single mention of any place outside India and there are innumerable mention of places and rivers all through India? Why is it that they chose India as their motherland and all their holy places are scattered all over India? No proponents of AIT have answered these queitions convincingly.
It is human nature to associate oneself to the greatness in the past. And all that history tells us is that people of Indus valley lived a great life and people of vedic age were far ahead of the times. To show their racial superiority, one possible option left was to say that all the aryans were central Asians or rather Europeans and since ages Europeans have been dominating the rest of the world and particularly India. By default, the credit for all the achievements of aryans in science, society, warfare, spirituality would go to the Europeans. A cheap tactic? Why steal greatness?
There is no such distinct clan or race called Aryans. Aryan in sanskrit and in the vedas means good natured or gentleman and it is used in vedas as a means of addressing someone in a noble way. So the aryans did not come from elsewhere but are also a part of the greatness of this nation which most of us have forgotten or deny to accept.
How is Sanskrit, the language of aryans and dravidians?
Though the aryan invasion theory has been refuted as a false theory now all over the world, it is in India the maximum impact is still prevalent. The AIT was politicised by the British and the Germans then and also by present day politicians for cheap gains. If aryans speak Sanskrit and dravidians have their own languages, why is it that the philosopher saints like Shankara ,Madhvacharya and Ramanuja, and many more from south revered so much in the north as well? Why is it that their teachings are in Sanskrit as well? Aren't the politicians we find in India today very good at playing cheap politics to survive the AIT even when its proponents go back on their word saying that the aryans were the natives of India?
Max Mueller, in his book " India,what it can teach us?" says that many European and Asian languages in their unadultered form, which is pretty much away from the present day form have a lot in common with Sanskrit. So, is it right to say that sanskrit originated in Europe? Hahaha.....it sounds foolish. People of Britain speak English. There was a lot of migration to the Americas. So the people of Americas speak english. But English has not died at its very birth place, has it? Sanskrit in its purest form is found in India and it is from India, people have migrated outside and spread their language and raised city states and nations.
Sanskrit was the language of the indigenous India that was coexisting with other languages. It was the major language spoken by most of the people in aryavrata.
What really happened to the Vedic Civilization and the Indus Valley Civilization?
Max Mueller and the AIT proponents say that the civilization is just collapsed around 2000 BC and Ramayana and Mahabharata are merely fictional stories and if at all considered real, they are just the skirmishes between petty cheiftains that took place around 1000-1200 BC. But the reality is hidden and unkown.
Saraswati is a holy river that has been revered in the Vedas. Along the banks of this great river flourished the vedic civilization. Accounts say that the river was 7 kilometers in width and was flowing from the Himalayas through Rajasthan in to the sea. There are about 60 citations about this river in the vedas compared to one about the Ganges. Recently many settlements have been found around and along the banks of the now dried river Saraswati. Modern historians have found the course of the river which is same as the vedic location. The river changed its course a lot of times. And probably it is the flooding in the great river Saraswati that caused the end of the glorious civilization. Probably it is this flood that caused the great migration, the migration of the Indus valley people in to Iran, central Asia and as far as Europe where there were city states and nations which rose thereafter and from the other bank into South India. Modern excavations show that the vedic settlements were spread from across Iran to Ganges and beyond and beyond Tapti.
Dinesh Agrawal states that the prehistoric chronology of India is,
- Vedic Age - 7000-4000 BC
- End of Rig Vedic Age - 3750 BC
- End of Ramayana - Mahabharat Period - 3000 BC
- Development of Saraswati-Indus Civilization - 3000-2000 BC
- Decline of Indus and Saraswati Civilization - 2200-1900 BC
- Period of Complete chaos and migration - 2000-1500 BC
- Period of evolution of syncretic Hindu culture - 1400 - 250 BC
Swami Vivekananda on Aryan Invasion Theory
"Our archaeologists' dreams of India being full of dark-eyed aborigines, and the bright Aryans came from - the Lord knows where. According to some, they came from Central Tibet; others will have it that they came from Central Asia. There are patriotic Englishmen who think that the Aryans were all red haired. Others, according to their idea, think that they were all black-haired. If the writer happens to be a black-haired man, the Aryans were all black-haired. Of late, there was an attempt made to prove that the Aryans lived on Swiss lake. I should not be sorry if they had been all drowned there, theory and all. Some say now that they lived at the North Pole. Lord bless the Aryans and their habitations! As for as the truth of these theories, there is notone word in our scriptures, not one, to prove that the Aryans came from anywhere outside of India, and in ancient India was included Afghanistan. There it ends..."
"And the theory that the Shudra caste were all non-Aryans and they were a multitude, is equally illogical and irrational. It could not have been possible in those days that a few Aryans settled and lived there with a hundred thousand slaves at their command. The slaves would have eaten them up, made chutney of them in five minutes. The only explanation is to be found in the Mahabharat, which says that in the beginning of the Satya Yoga there was only one caste, the Brahmins, and then by differences of occupations they went on dividing themselves into different castes, and that is the only true and rational explanation that has been given. And in the coming Satya Yuga all other castes will have to go back to the same condition." (The Complete Work of Swami Vivekananda, Vol.III Page 293.)
One interesting thing to be noted is that the Sarawati saga is still continuing.........
Some references thay you might like if you wish to follow through this topic.
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4 comments:
Mazel Tov !!! excellently written .. let the dark horse enlighten all of us on its saga
quite interesting read. I had spent time on reading about AIT and OIT a few months back. In the end I thought
there is no single conclusive argument supporting either theories. It was just interpretation of history in the minds of a few from both camps.
good machi.. waiting for the next
Refer to Srikant talag
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