Aryan Invasion Theory has been proved to be a myth and as a wrong theory long back. But let me explain in detail the actual history and dirty politics behind this theory. Note that this theory was used as a basis by Hitler to advocate his theory of the supremacy of the Aryan race and to mindlessly kill whom he claimed to be non-aryans!
Origin of the Aryan Invasion Theory
Let us first see why the Aryan Invasion Theory was required.
It all started with the rediscovery of the Indian origin in many of the European languages and cultures. About languages like Greek, Latin, German and then later English all being influenced by Indian Sanskrit language. About the discovery of Indian culture and science influencing the science and culture in Europe, especially in Greek and Rome. At an era when colonialism was ruling India, how can they digest the fact that their language, culture and science came from India? So a spin off began in the form of Aryan Invasion Theory that ancient Northern Indians were descendants of an European Race called Aryans who invaded India in the ancient past. So this would mean that, Indian culture and language itself came from Europe or Central Asia (whichever part they imagined) and not the other way round.
Even the imaginary PIE or Proto-Indo European language is also the result of a similar spin off theory which tries to deny the Sanskrit origin of European languages by trying to attribute it to some imaginary PIE language, and they saying that both Sanskrit and European languages descended from this PIE! Read more about the imaginary language PIE and Sanskrit influence on English here.
So both, Aryan Invasion Theory and PIE are both efforts to deny the Indian Origin of the European languages and Culture.
Definition of the Aryan Invasion Theory
Let us now see what the Aryan Invasion Theory says.
It calls the race which belonged to the vedic age as Aryans. It says that at around 1500 BC Aryans, (which it says was a tribe from the Europe) invaded north India plundering and pushing down the local Dravidians (who it says were the original natives of India) who lived there to down South India. In a nutshell, it says the North Indians of today belong to an Aryan race which came to India from Europe and today’s South Indians are the native Indians (called Dravidian Race!) who lived in North India before the Aryans came! The vedic people who lived in North India during the vedic ages were these Aryans, it says!
First let us see how did they arrive at these dates! It was well known in India in the british period that Vedas pre-dated Christ, since they definitely pre-dated Buddha who lived some 400 years before Christ. Some scholars(!) then said that as per Bible the world was created in 4000 BC(!), and Noah’s flood took place in 2500 BC(!). So they decided that Aryan Invasion of India must have taken place only after this flood and before Buddha, and hence would be around 1500 BC! This is the funniest investigation I have ever heard about. I doubt if anybody can dare to call this a scientific investigation! This is what some call as, adjusting history to be compliant with religious texts
Now let us see some of the obvious proofs that have thrown this theory into dustbin.
Aryan is not a Race!
First of all Aryan is not a race. No where in the vedas and other ancient Indian text is the terms Aryan used to refer to a race!! Aryan in Sanskrit means a Noble Person. When the Sanskrit texts referred to any foreigners as anarya, they only meant they were not noble people. Because we also have references where within their own race, they referring to people who are not noble as anarya.
Even Max Muller who initially termed vedas as childish (only to be later criticized by other scholars as a person who doesnt know even basic sanskrit!), later tried to correct himself in many occassions about the Aryan race! He said:
I have declared again and again that if I say Aryas, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair, nor skull; I mean simply those who speak an Aryan language. To me an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar.
(Max Mueller, Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas, 1888, pg 120)
Dravidians are not a separate race!
The people of south India whom the Aryan Invasion theory says were the original natives, are NOT a race separate from the North Indians! They all belong to one and the same race. The ancient Indian civilization. The languages of both, the so called Aryan and Dravidian people share too much with the ancient Sanskrit language. Both worship the same Gods. Both have the same epics. Both have same philosophies. Both have histories which date back to BCE.
Given these facts, how can then Aryans and Dravidians be two separate races? If Aryans had invaded India then why are Dravidians following the same customs and religion as Aryans. How do they speak languages which are heavily influenced by a common ancient language?
Why dont any dravidian folk lore or ancient texts or sayings or stories or epics exist which talk about the so called Aryan invasion? Also why do the vedic texts talk about locations in South India? The Ramayana, Mahabharatha all talk about South Indian locations even below and beyond the main land of India into the Indian ocean like Srilanka! If Aryans were from europe and if they invaded North India and pushed local people down to South India, where did these locations come from?
This proves beyond doubt that there do not exist any separate Aryan and Dravidian races. Instead natives of both North India and South India belong to one single race called the Vedic Indian race!
No Mention of Europe!
There is no mention of any location outside the mainland of India in any of the vedic texts! If aryans came from Europe, then why havent the so called aryans mentioned any of the european locations in any of the vedic or related texts? The farthest location away from India towards the west mentioned in the vedas is Kadhahar of present day Afghanistan, which was called Gandhar in the vedic texts and was said to be the kingdom of Shakuni.
Why haven’t any of the texts mentioned about their European locations? Why is there no vedic text which talks about migration from Europe?
No European Rivers!
None of the vedic texts talk about rivers outside India! Everybody knows that rivers were the major sources of water for all ancient civilizations and so all ancient civilizations were centered around the world’s major rivers. Why is there no mention of any European river or a river outside India anywhere in the vedic texts? Wouldn’t a race mention something or the other about its native place in at least one of its texts?
Saraswati River
This is a death blow to the Aryan Invasion theory. According to the Aryan Invasion theory the aryans who invaded India in around 1500 BC settled on the banks of Indus or Sindhu river in North India.
The vedic texts talk about Ganga Yamuna Saraswati as the trio river , the three great rivers of their age. Ganga and Yamuna rivers exist even today in North India and till sometime back Saraswati was thought to be a mythological river. But vedas talk about Saraswati as a mighty river that flowed in the north India during the vedic ages!
There is also the mention of the Ganga Yamuna Saraswati merging at a place called Prayag , which was also called the Triveni Sangam (the current Allahabad in North India where today only Ganga and Yamuna meet). It is said that the Saraswati that merged here with the other two rivers was a subterranean channel of the main river of Saraswati.
The Mahabhartha talks about Saraswati river saying that it dried up in a desert! So it has to be noted here that Mahabhartha can be dated back to the drying up of the Saraswati river!
Recent satellite images and geological excavations have proved the existence of a ancient river in North India, with exactly the same features of river Saraswati described in the vedas and Mahabharatha! Today Saraswati is a dried up river today. Before Saraswati dried up, the present Rajasthan was a lush green area! The drying up of Saraswati created the Thar desert in Rajasthan. Even the current dry beds of Sindh and Baluchistan (currently in Pakistan) were lush green fertile lands before the Saraswati river dried up!
See Saraswati Darshan for a related video and explanation. Below is a image of the path of Saraswati river in ancient India. The source is http://www.aryashaadi.com/.
Below is a satellite image of the dried up bed of Saraswati river. The source is http://www.stephen-knapp.com . Note that in some places the river is as wide as 7 kilometers!
Why did the Saraswati river dry up? The plate tectonics of the Indian sub continental plate and the himalayan sources of this river are thought to be the main reason for that. Sutlej and Yamuna were the main sources of the Saraswati river. As the Indian plate moved up towards the main Eurasian plate, the course of Yamuna got altered in the Himalayas moving more water of Yamuna towards the Ganga river and that of Sutlej got altered to join Indus! This caused a major loss in terms of its water source for the river Saraswati and is thought to have been the cause for its drying up.
Now what does Saraswati river have to say about the Aryan Invastion theory of 1500 BC? Well, the geological excavations give a date of about 4000 BC for the drying up of Saraswati river !
Aryan and Dravidians belong to the same Human Race
There are four primary human races in the world. They are Caucasian, Mongoloid, Australian and Negroid. The so called aryan and dravidian people both belong to the Caucasian race where people only get a bit darker as one moves towards the equator which is a natural phenomenon all over the world. More sunlight means more melanin pigment in the skin. As simple as that.
So if Aryan invasion is true then it means that the Caucasian race which first evolved and lived together, then got separated into Aryans and Dravidians and both moved geographies apart, and then became one by Aryans invading Dravidians! Is there any proof for this in AIT?
Aryan Invasion Theory as a Divide and Rule instrument
AIT was popularized and promoted by the British because it suited their divide and rule policy in India. The same way they divided the Hindus and Muslims in India based on religion, they also divided the Indians using this theory as Aryans (North Indians) and Dravidians (South Indians). This was the politics behind this theory. Also read this .
Pandya and Chera Kingdoms in Mahabharata
In Mahabharata we have references of kingdoms from the Southern India (attributed to Dravidian race in Aryan Invasion Theory) taking part in the great war. Mahabharata mentions in detail about the Pandya kingdom in this region and also about the Pandya king Sarangadhwaja who took part in the war siding with the Pandavas. He is said to have been killed by Ashwatthama in the war.
Mahabharata also talks about Chera and Pandya kings from the south bringing loads of Sandalwood, precious sea-born gems and other gifts to Yudhishtira during the Rajasuya Yajna.
Summary
In a nutshell, the ancient vedic people were settled in India much before 4000 BCE and have nothing to do with the myth of 1500 BCE invasion theory! There is no separate Aryan or Dravidian race. There is one single ancient Indian civilizational race with its roots firmly in INDIA.
Recent genetic research, the ancient texts of Europe and India, linguistic studies have all proved the contrary theory to be true. In the ancient past people migrated from India to Europe. In fact genetic research has proved that most of non-African humans have their ancestral roots in India. Humans first migrated from Africa to India and from there spread to the rest of the world – America, Europe and Australia included. Read about the Out of India theory.
When Europe was uninhabitable and covered with ice in the last glacial era India had a fully developed advanced civilization. Later as the glaciers receded in Europe, humans spread to Europe and that is when they entered into Stone Age there. So when there was Stone Age in Europe, India already was home to advanced civilization, languages and culture. European language and culture have their roots in Indian civilization. Linguistic roots of European languages in Sanskrit, and numerous documentation and texts of ancient Greece and Rome support these facts. The Pre-Christian culture of Rome, Mithraism also supports this fact about Indian roots of the European civilization.
Finally read this link to look beyond my thoughts on this invasion that never really happened!
Aryan Invastion Theory – THE END
I agree with you
In 1856, Alexander Cunningham, later director-general of the
Archaeological Survey of Northern India was the first man to discover Indus
Valley Civilization.
Around 5000 years old Indus Valley civilization had the
system of underground drainage & Toilets. The main sewer, 1.5 meters deep
and 91 cm across, connected to many north-south and east-west sewers. It was
made from bricks smoothened and joined together seamlessly. The expert masonry
kept the sewer watertight. Drops at regular intervals acted like an automatic
cleaning device.
A wooden screen at the end of the drains held back solid
wastes. Liquids entered a cess poll made of radial bricks. Tunnels carried the
waste liquids to the main channel connecting the dockyard with the river
estuary. Commoner houses had baths and drains that emptied into underground
soakage jars.
When British arrived in India, Indians had absolutely no
clue what toilet is. Even to this date, nearly 50% Indians don’t use toilets.
This gives you a tantalizing hint about how Indus valley
civilization was destroyed with an absolute impunity.
Max Müller & Rig Veda:
The main reason why Brahmins & other upper castes people
hated Max Müller and his Aryan Invasion Theory is because it simply put them
under the Invaders list such as Arabs, Mughals, Turks, Afghans and other
central Asian invaders. And Brahmins always portrayed themselves as they are the
native inhabitants of India since the creation.
In mid-20th century archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler, who
interpreted the presence of many unburied corpses found in the top levels of
Mohenjo-daro as the victims of conquest wars, and who famously stated that the
god “Indra stands accused” of the destruction of the Civilisation.
Here is the Prof. Max Muller’s translation of Rig Veda.
Based his translation on the work of Sayana who was a prime
minister at Vijayanagar Empire., Karnataka.
In Rig Veda, there is a word called Dasyu, Sanskrit d?sa
(“servant”), an aboriginal people in India who were encountered by the
Indo-European-speaking peoples who entered northern India about 1500 bce. They
were described in Rig Veda as a dark-skinned, flat nose, harsh-spoken people
who worshipped the phallus (Shivling?).
In Rig veda, Purandara is another name of Indra. Pura means
city and dara means destroyer, so purandhara means destroyer of cities.
The verses of the Rig Veda says “Armed cattle raids
& warriors on horse driven chariots attacking walled cities & forts in
search of wealth.”
Rig veda portays the invaders as a light skinned race
fighting the dark skinned natives (Adivasi).
Ibn Book 2: HYMN 11, 4 we who add strength to thine own
splendid vigour, laying within thine arms the splendid thunder. With us mayst
thou, O Indra, waxen splendid, with Surya overcome the Dasa Races.” ”
Oh Indra you killed and chased out the black skinned short people from
Indus”
In Ancient India, It was caste which decides what profession
you should do and what type lifestyle one must lead. Initially it was the VARNA
(Skin Color) which decided your caste.
“Brahmins Varna was white, Kshtriyas was red, Vaishyas
was yellow, and the Shudras’ black” source Rig Veda.
Veda’s say that God Created Brahmins from his head,
Kshatriyas from his chest, Vaishyas from his stomach and Shudras from his Foot.
It also says that Sudras the lowest of four classes, were
born in an “inferior womb” (Papayonaya, 9:32) because of the combination of
their Tamas Guna (inherent traits such as ignorance, delusion, heedlessness,
indolence and sleep, 14:8), and some sinful acts they must have committed in
his previous lives, such as hitting a Brahmin or stealing his cow.
Sanskrit:
Sanskrit was first recorded in inscriptions found not on the
plains of India but in what is now northern Syria.
Sanskrit is a symbol of Indian slavery to Aryan invasion and
reminds us Syrian nationalism and not Indian Nationalism. Only the Dravidian
languages to some extent reflects Indian Nationalism!
Sanskrit never originated in India. It belongs to Indo
European Language which scholars believe that it originated somewhere ancient
Anatolia (present-day Turkey).
Sanskrit was brought from outside invaders, that is the
reason why Indus Valley Civilization scripts are still not deciphered.
Below are some of the evidences found:
Firstly, in the documents of the Kassite rulers of Babylon
(c. 1750 BC–1170 BC) there is reference of two gods’ viz. Suriya (sun god) and
Marutta (god of war) and a King called Abiratta (Abhiratha).
Secondly, there was a Mittani Kingdom in the North-West of
Babylon in 1500 to 1300BC in which some documents list the names of princes and
noblemen. Some of them are Indrota (Indra), Sauksatra, Purusa etc.
Thirdly, the most important evidence comes from the
Boghazkoi tablet inscription found in eastern Turkey. These inscriptions record
the details of a treaty signed in around 1350BC between the losers Mittani and
victors Hitties. Both the sides have listed their Gods. The Gods of Mittani are
Indra, Varuna, Nasatya etc. which are clearly Rig-Vedic. In Rig-Veda, these
Gods have been assigned the task of overseeing the treaties. Kikkuli’s horse
training text includes technical terms such as aika (eka, one), tera (tri,
three), panza (pancha, five), satta (sapta, seven), na (nava, nine), vartana
(vartana, turn, round in the horse race). The numeral aika “one” is
of particular importance because it places the superstrate in the vicinity of
Indo-Aryan proper as opposed to Indo-Iranian or early Iranian (which has
“aiva”) in general. Another text has babru (babhru, brown), parita
(palita, grey), and pinkara (pingala, red). Their chief festival was the
celebration of the solstice (vishuva) which was common in most cultures in the
ancient world. The Mitanni warriors were called marya, the term for warrior in
Sanskrit as well; note mišta-nnu (= mi??ha,~ Sanskrit m??ha) “payment (for
catching a fugitive)”.
Sanskritic interpretations of Mitanni royal names render
Artashumara (artaššumara) as Arta-smara “who thinks of Arta/?ta”,
Biridashva (biridaš?a, biriiaš?a) as Pr?t??va “whose horse is dear”,
Priyamazda (priiamazda) as Priyamedha “whose wisdom is dear”,
Citrarata as citraratha “whose chariot is shining”, Indaruda/Endaruta
as Indrota “helped by Indra”, Shativaza (šatti?aza) as S?tiv?ja
“winning the race price”, Šubandhu as Subandhu “having good
relatives”, Tushratta (t?išeratta, tušratta, etc.) as *t?aiašaratha, Vedic
Tvastr “whose chariot is vehement”.
Saraswati River:
Rig veda is a version of Iranian or Aryan “Vendida ” a text of Zoroastrian.
The oldest name mentioned of this river in Avesta is Haraxvaiti, a cognate to
Sanskrit Saraswati River. Hence it is Helmand River which is mentioned in Rig
Veda as Saraswati River.
Pre-Zoroastrianism considers Asuras as good and Devas as bad
which is inverse of the Rig Vedic beliefs.
This indicates that they were two rival tribes one in
present day Iran and another one in present day somewhere in Afghanistan. May be
it was same tribe much before later got split.
Linguistic and literary evidence provide us with very
important clues. The closeness in grammar, vocabulary and phonetics between
Sanskrit and major European languages (especially Greek and Latin) suggests
that ancestors of their speakers must have lived together in the remote past.
This joint Indo-European homeland has been placed in the Eurasian steppes.
Furthermore, there is a remarkable degree of closeness between the Rigveda and
the Zoroastrian sacred text Avesta, not only in language but also in mythology
and religious concepts. The peoples of the Rigveda and Avesta referred to
themselves as Aryan. The 19th-century German scholarship used the term Aryan to
denote the ‘race’ of Indo-European speakers. With the Nazi holocaust, the term
fell into disrepute. It is considered more appropriate to use linguistic
indicators. Thus, we talk about Indo-European speakers, of whom Indo-Iranians
constituted a sub-group. It is surmised that various linguistic groups dispersed
from the homeland into Europe and southwards into Iran, Afghanistan and North
India. Indic speakers moved into India after the collapse of the mature
Harappan phase. Whether there was a migration or an invasion is a mere matter
of detail. The key point is that the Rigvedic People were not Harrapans.
River Sarasvati is described in detail as a mighty river, in
the old books (mandalas) of the Rigveda. It is noteworthy that rivers
Sarasvati, Sarayu and the land Sapata-Sindhu appears in the Avesta in
equivalent forms. It has been received wisdom for a long time that the
Sarasvati of the old mandalas (naditama Sarasvati) is to be identified with the
Old Ghaggar. Ghaggar today is a small river, in the land between Satluj and
Yamuna that loses its way in the desert. There is incontrovertible evidence
that in the past, things were different. Both Satluj and Yamuna flowed into
Ghaggar and the combined waters flowed into the Arabian Sea. It must be borne
in mind that contrary to popular misconception, SATELLITE imagery confirms the
existence of Old Ghaggar but does not (cannot) provide any chronological
information. It is very likely that the Ghaggar system has been in its present
pitiable state for say 10000 or 20000 years. More fundamentally, the old Ghaggar
cannot match the Rigvedic attributes of the mighty Sarasvati. The waters of
snow-fed Satluj and Yamuna will make Lower Ghaggar a mighty river, but Upper
Ghaggar will still be as it is now, a small rain-fed rivulet. It is noteworthy
that there is an uncanny similarity between the Rigvedic description of
Sarasvati and Avestan description of Helmand (old name Haetumant=Setumant).
Rigveda (6.61.8) talks of Sarasvati ‘whose limitless unbroken flood, swiftly
moving with a rapid rush, comes onward with a tempestuous roar’, while Yasht
(10.67) refers to ‘the bountiful, glorious Haetumant swelling its white waves
rolling down its copious floods’. This suggests that the same river is meant in
both cases.
It is very likely that the Ghaggar system has been in its
present pitiable state for say 10000 or 20000 years. More fundamentally, the
old Ghaggar cannot match the Rigvedic attributes of the mighty Sarasvati. The
waters of snow-fed Satluj and Yamuna will make Lower Ghaggar a mighty river,
but Upper Ghaggar will still be as it is now, a small rain-fed rivulet. It is
noteworthy that there is an uncanny similarity between the Rigvedic description
of Sarasvati and Avestan description of Helmand (old name Haetumant=Setumant).
Rigveda (6.61.8) talks of Sarasvati ‘whose limitless unbroken flood, swiftly
moving with a rapid rush, comes onward with a tempestuous roar’, while Yasht
(10.67) refers to ‘the bountiful, glorious Haetumant swelling its white waves
rolling down its copious floods’. This suggests that the same river is meant in
both cases.
Genetics:
There is “general agreement” that north and south
Indians share a common maternal ancestry which indicates that those who invaded
Indus Valley were only Men and later interbred with local population. A series
of studies show that the Indian subcontinent harbors two major ancestral
components namely the Ancestral North Indians (ANI) which is “genetically
close to Middle Easterners, Central Asians, and Europeans”, and the
Ancestral South Indians (ASI) which is clearly distinct from ANI. These two
groups mixed in India between 4,200 and 1,900 years ago (2200 BCE-100 CE),
where after a shift to endogamy took place, possibly by the enforcement of
“social values and norms” by the “Hindu Gupta rulers”.
The first steps ever by genetic science into the Harappan
space, both studies are based on DNA samples taken from those same burials at
Rakhigarhi.
Importantly, the R1a genetic marker, typical of the Western
Central Asian Steppes, is missing in the Rakhigarhi sample.
“The Rakhigarhi samples have a significant amount of
‘Iranian farmer’ ancestry. You won’t find this DNA in the north Indian
population today, but only in south Indians,” said Niraj Rai, head of the
Ancient DNA lab at Lucknow’s Birbal Sahni Institute for Palaeosciences. He also
said ““We aren’t getting any Central Asian gene flow in Rakhigarhi. Comparing
Rakhigarhi with data from modern Indian populations, we have concluded that
they have more of an affinity with the Ancestral South Indian tribal population
compared to the north Indian population.”
Some people argue that there was no Aryan Invasion. If there
was no invasion why is there only a relationship in “male” DNA
(y-chromosome) between Indians and the other indoeuropean people? Only 17% of Indians
carry the indoeuropean male dna signature. But in the west there are
populations where the share is almost 100% and no trace of the ancient indian
male DNA (DNA that would correspond to the ancestors of the Dravidian part of
the Indian population) can be found
anywhere to the West of the Indian subcontinent. Why is the indoeuropean DNA
only found in the upper castes?
The Aryan invasion theory is uniformly and categorically
accepted at every single university of international repute and there is no
serious scholar in the field of Indo-European Studies who thinks otherwise.
Who built Indus Valley
Civilization?
Many scholars believe that Neolithic Iranians (Iranian
Agriculturalists)/Elamites got mixed with South Asian Hunter Gatherers and
formed I.V.C.
Some claim that it was Dravidian culture. May be one can
find the genetic similarity between Dravidians & I.V.C. people, but their ancestors
simply not capable of building such urban style civilization 5000 years ago.
Some fools made us believe that we are nothing without invasions, all good things were brought by invasions as we were salvages, this lie is hurting our civilization and us, both Manuwadi due to their false pride of being Aryan and Mulnibasiwadi due to their paranoia of false Aryans are destroying our civilization, need to destroy both and unite as one!!
Dear Guruji,
Its all about ” Chamatkar Ko Namaskar ”
Those white people invaded, conquered and ruled India for long time, and added achievements were they could invent material gazettes, for our daily use, Now people has no time to discover truth of our own History, only few have made the efforts like you, but that is through Internet, but here majority think that all these are waste of time, they do not care to read it, they are busy using technologies, in-fact they do not even bother to understand the science behind all these technologies, they blindly use it for their material wishes, above all, our sickullar scientists are favoring all these technologies and rejecting any claim of our ancient advancements. Hardly few of them do believe our ancient science.
Now I want to convey, that who are genius and know our Vedas thoroughly , they should come up with some great Vedic Technology to the masses for demonstration, and this is the right way we can convince our own people and this kind of front is necessary and that is the reality.
We Indians have a bad habit of doubting ourselves unless proven by time an again…god save my fellow citizen and fellow planetizens who manipulate & get manipulated.
I believe the Aryan race is real. It’s not a myth.
No one can save you.
Awsomely written and quoted actuall facts that were in mind but always trying to pop out of a “Hindu”.
Hi, I am astonished that Indians who have a treasure of human spirituality, do not use or do not know this treasure. You do not speak about lost continenst, you do not speak about IMMORTALS, you do not speak about RISHIS ! You are using a European materialist ‘scientific’ approach which is quite unsuitable to speak about India !
Speaking about Aryans, people who studied spirituality know that these people were grown up, formed, trained in Central Asia from the best avalable humans to better the human race. After that they came to India and from India went everywhere ! It suffise to see African looking people in South India and others who have a different face and a body characteristics. Aryans were Noble people, it does not mean they were Europeans ! Then a European type is called CAUCASIAN, WHY ?
There is no rivalry between Europeans and Indians. Europeans have mastered machine technology and Indians have mastered spiritual technology. So please share with the World Indian Heritage !
A logical theory. The Aryan and the Dravidian concept is indeed a racists imagination to fuel North – South divide.
Let us be united as ”Indians” and not as the North Indians or the South Indians.
in our modern education we have been taught about aryan invasion theory and we indians believe that people in north are aryans and people in south are native indians or draividians but little we realize that this was a racist game played by the british to separate north and south indians.excellent article.
hello people..i was wondering if anyone could help me find links to VEDAS translations . And where are they now.? And by the way i appreciate this website for its efforts to restore our pride..
I saw the complete text with of all the Vedas in English somewhere on the web. Don’t have the link now .. but will find it let you know.
Drop me a mail.
Im only up to this statement and youre showing your lack of intelligence.
“Given these facts, how can then Aryans and Dravidians be two separate
races? If Aryans had invaded India then why are Dravidians following the
same customs and religion as aryans. How do they speak languages which
originated from the same parental language?”
thats like saying how can Irish (rish) people speak english and be catholic.
I dont expect this article to get any better from here :(
You quoted me saying “Given these facts”, but didnt quote those facts :)
Irish people do have a pre english history as well as pre catholic history documented. For instance it is well known that Irish converted to Christianity sometime during the 5th Century. The Irish language went into decline in the eighteenth century, rapidly losing ground to English because of the British rule.
But there is not a SINGLE documented proof in the so called dravidian literature about any aryan invasion, nor has any of the languages classified as Dravidian declined. So we have a case where the original languages of the people classified as Dravidian exist even today and so does the ancient literature in these languages. The languages classified as belonging to Aryan people exists too and so does the ancient literature in these languages. Yet none of these literature, culture give even the slightest hint of or mention about ANY kind of invasion or being invaded. On the contrary all these literature talk about oneness of the two cultures since ancient times – the Lord Shiva worshipped in far south of the country at Rameshwaram is the same Lord Shiva worshipped in the far north of the Himalayas. And both date back to the ancient pre historic period of Ramayana – literatures in both aryan and Dravidian languages talk about this.
If there was an invasion, wouldnt the ones being invaded or the invaders mention it ATLEAST IN SOME PLACE of their literature. If the invasion destroyed the ancient dravidian culture, then how did it not destroy their languages, and why isnt there any mention of this invasion in the literature of these dravidian languages who are said to be on the receiving end of the invasion? Strange isn’t it?
By the way, if you have not been following recent researches in genetics on migration theories, all modern research points to an Out of India theory saying Man migrated from Africa to India and from India spread to the rest of the world including Europe.
All dravidian languages are from sanskrit? My, my… Do you know any?
The south indian language of thamizh is at least as old as sanskrit and variants of it are being spoken in Afghanistan till date. Indus valley scripts point that they might have spoken an ancient version of the language. It has absolutely no relation to sanskrit whatsoever – the ancient or the modern versions.
Mohenjadaro has left us several clues to confirm an invasion (though none have been found in Harappa yet). There are findings in Adichanallur that predate Harappa indicating that people might have gone from the southern lands to harappa rather than the other way around. We don’t know yet.
Please don’t twist facts and come up with imaginative theories especially when there are so many people who read this and might believe you. I agree that your intentions may be good (any kind of racial or regional discrimination is bad), but selectively analysing info is as good as falsifying it and should not be how you go about it.
No one will dispute the greatness and richness, even the distinctiveness of the Tamil genius, but I will certainly dispute what some like to call its “separateness.”
Early Tamil culture was no more “separate” than, say, Bengali or Gujarati cultures. All of them have their own stamp and own original contribution, but all are branches of the same tree. If you take a look at the Shilappadikaram again, you will see vivid references to Indra, Shiva, Vishnu, Krishna, Durga, Lakshmi, and several mentions of the Veda;
King Shenguttuvan is shown as bringing the stone for Kannagi’s idol from the Himalayas, where his ancestors are said to have carved their emblem; he does fight North Indian kings, but there is no hint that their culture is regarded as different.
In historical accounts, we find Chola and Chera kings proudly claiming descent from Rama or from kings of the Lunar dynasty – in other words, an “Aryan” descent. We are told that the greatest Chola king, Karikala, was a patron of both the Vedic religion and Tamil literature, while the Pandya king Nedunjelyan performed many Vedic sacrifices, and the dynasty of the Pallavas made their capital Kanchi into a great centre of Sanskrit learning and culture.
Another Pandya king is said to have fed the armies on both sides during the great Bharata war. And let us not forget the reverence accorded in the South to Agastya, the great rishi from the North.
Countless similar examples could be cited from Sangam poetry or even the ancient Tamil grammar Tolkappiyam. None of this suggests any clash of culture ; rather the contrary, it was a mutual enrichment. While Vedic culture was welcomed in the South and harmonized with local elements, what has come to be called “Hinduism” owes much to the generous contribution the Tamil land made in return, for instance in music, dance, architecture, or the bhakti movement.
Well yes I know to speak three of the four dravidian languages – and I know they all contain massive use of sanskrit vocabulary in their modern daily use. Nobody is denying the antiquity of these languages be it ancient Kannada or ancient Tamil, but all these languages as they are spoken today are under heavy Sanskrit influence.
Mohenjadaro has no clues of any invasion, these are all old theories of Max Mullers times. As I have said earlier, you cant have the same culture if aryans had invaded dravidians. You acknowledge that Tamil is a very ancient language and has one of the most ancient texts available after Sanskrit, now if there really was an invasion of so called aryans into dravidian society, dont you think there would have been scores of ancient tamil literature which narrate this invasion, fight between aryans and dravidians and so on? The fact is, there is none. And even bigger fact is, as I=Indian has stated above, even the most ancient Tamil literature speaks the same language as that of vedic society and ancient sanskrit literature.
If you look when it was for the first time this aryan-dravidian theory was put forth, then you will realize the truth. None of the southern indian societies nor any northern indian societies in the complete ancient history have ever talked about this aryan and dravidian theories till it was put forth by Max Muller & co! How can it be possible that something which none of our ancient literature, history, kingdoms, inscriptions etc ever talked about became known to Max Muller & co just one or two centuries back?
By the way, ancient tamil kingdoms have even great history which is rarely taught in the schools and our governments have little time to spend on researching on such greatness of tamil history, and instead the dravidian movements are politically diverting people’s attention on this aryan-dravidian fake theories. Look at the comments Karunanidhi made about Rama. To say Ravana was a dravidian invaded by Rama the aryan is to talk about history with ignorance, Ravana was a Brahmin and an expert on all the four vedas.
The ancient Tamil kingdom was spread over the entire east asia, if Singapore is called what it is today it is only because of its Tamil history. The temples of Angkorvat in Cambodia, the spread of hinduism in east asia is all because of the mighty ancient Tamil kingdoms. There is a lot of research that needs to be done in the seas of Bay of Bengal and across the east asian countries to dig out the historical facts, but as I said our governments are useless on the front of doing research on our own past. We should have ourselves done research about how the ancient Tamil architectures constructed the mighty Tanjavur temples which is no less a miracle than the construction of ancient pyramids.
perfect!!
You may be right when you claim “People from Southern Lands went to Harappa”. I for one would rejoice if some one can find enough evidence to prove that Migration of People started from South to North, Languages evolved from the Southern most tip and expanded up towards North. Some of them continued towards North and West and at least one is still spoken in Afghanistan.
This would be consistent with “Out of Africa” theory as Migration was first along the Coast. The ancients after Settling down at a point on the coast must have explored Land up towards the North, or towards the Central Ridge between East and West Coast. The Routes chosen must have been along the Rivers. Imagine the groups that went up the Saraswati River up towards the Himalayas. Imagine the ones that managed to reach what we today call Madhya Pradesh and then beyond.
I do see common beliefs and stories and Gods and Temples and rituals of birth and Death, Marriage, rites related to Seasons and Agriculture.
Point I want to make is there are far too many things common between the so called divided Arayans and Dravidians and these should neither be ignored nor disputed.
Wheather Saraswati is the Goddess of Wisdom or Godawari or Narmada or Cauvery is not important, what is important is the Fact that Vedas are neither Dravidian nor Arayan (North Indian).
Very true, now yet another research has found Aryan invasion theory false – http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/indians-are-not-descendants-of-aryans-study/1/163645.html
Genetic migration research shows that all non-african people originated from India.
You may be right when you claim “People from Southern Lands went to Harappa”. I for one would rejoice if some one can find enough evidence to prove that Migration of People started from South to North, Languages evolved from the Southern most tip and expanded up towards North. Some of them continued towards North and West and at least one is still spoken in Afghanistan.
This would be consistent with “Out of Africa” theory as Migration was first along the Coast. The ancients after Settling down at a point on the coast must have explored Land up towards the North, or towards the Central Ridge between East and West Coast. The Routes chosen must have been along the Rivers. Imagine the groups that went up the Saraswati River up towards the Himalayas. Imagine the ones that managed to reach what we today call Madhya Pradesh and then beyond.
I do see common beliefs and stories and Gods and Temples and rituals of birth and Death, Marriage, rites related to Seasons and Agriculture.
Point I want to make is there are far too many things common between the so called divided Arayans and Dravidians and these should neither be ignored nor disputed.
Wheather Saraswati is the Goddess of Wisdom or Godawari or Narmada or Cauvery is not important, what is important is the Fact that Vedas are neither Dravidian nor Arayan (North Indian).
Add these for references
http://hindufocus.wordpress.com/2009/10/14/what-great-indians-thought-about-the-aryan-invasion-theory/
http://theindianheritage.blogspot.com/2010/09/macaulays-letter-and-origin-of-f-max.html
http://vsc.iitm.ac.in/vsc.activities/transcribed.lectures/indusaryan.htm
http://indiatourdirect.com/?p=450
I dont know what I was thinking that time about groups and all when no one would be interested. I got into all the old and young generation crap bcoz our college faculty treats us just that way. Is it fair when students get their exam timetable 1 day b4 exam and then hear them say this is what you deserve. They see some jerks and put that on the entire generation and even we see some of them and blame theirs.
Your blog is great. Keep it up. I heard from someone Kundalini Jagrit is in which our Pineal gland starts secreting all kinds harmones. Our yogis practised that which rejuvenated them. Meditation, pranayam etc they used that to attain more concentration and by that maybe just like u decrypted Vakratunda shloka in the Alien twist to god, they decrypted all the shlokas, vedas etc by all the concentration they gained and even their lifespan would increase. I had heard that vedas could not be grasped by normal people and required lots of practise and teaching and dhyan which they got through practising all these exercises.
Thanks for liking the blog Akshay. Yes Vedas and other ancient scriptures are a great treasure house of knowledge, science and history. Just need to understand them and present them in modern terminology
Thanks for liking the blog Akshay. Yes Vedas and other ancient scriptures are a great treasure house of knowledge, science and history. Just need to understand them and present them in modern terminology
All such topics can be covered in such groups and only then will it be of much use. Most of the general public is ignorant and have no idea what we talk about. We only know stories about our deities and without deep knowledge they all are unbelievable to anyone so no one is interested thinking it is just meant for housewives for eg how can a youth be interested in mahabharata related serials when no one knows about what is conveyed and how can it benefit us.
AIT is quite old this page is also quite old. This had come in newspapers. Even in the texts it says that bharatvarsha is to the right of river Sarasvati.Indus is not even mentioned anywhere. This is not even a big issue. There is no division in South and North. I have both North Indian as well as South Indian friends. Every one lives in harmony. The issue is how we lost everything and how we can restore.
You are absolutely right Akshay. But the point is that we should get interested ourselves in knowing these things. For ex, do a bit of search on the Internet about Mahabharata to see if atleast it interests us, then we can decide whether to move further or not. First thing is we have incorrect content in our text books, and that needs to be corrected, else there is no point in saying we are educated. It all depends on one’s perception about saying epic stories are for house wives or spiritual texts are only for elders. Almost every single quantum mechanical scientist and other reknown physicists be it Heisernberg, Neils Bohr, Schrodinger, Einstein, Oppenheimer, Carl Sagan – they all had read vedas, bhagavadgita etc and have quoted them numerous times in different places about the great knowledge present in these texts. Now their parents didnt teach it to them, it was not there in their textbooks, and still they knew a lot about it than most youth in India today! How? The answer is passion. If you are passionate about something you will go for it and learn it, instead of expecting somebody to come down and teach it to us. Infact nowadays Sanskrit is studied by researchers, historians, scholars, spiritually inclined people etc more outside India than within India!! Long back I had read a paper by some US scholar who researched about how Sanskrit could be used as a Meta Programming Language in Software!
Well, there is harmony in North and South and everywhere where people have job and work to do and dont mind about others. But to say that everyone is living in harmony would be incorrect. See what happens to Biharis in Mumbai, or what happens in Assam for Hindi speaking people, or what happens when Kaveri stops flowing from Karnataka into Tamilnadu etc. Even among the salaried professionals they dont talk about others in open but I have seen many with regional mindsets, just have a look at message boards like rediff and you will see scores of people talking with a regional mindset and using abusive language against others.
And false theories like AIT even cause murders. You know how many brahmins were killed in Tamilnadu because of this AIT theory where Dravidian supremacy arguers wanted all so called Aryans thrown out of Tamilnadu? So its not these are mere harmless theories. Infact it was this theory that even caused the second world war, the most deadliest war in known history where in Hitler wanted to finish off all the Non-Aryan blood and hitler believed he was an Aryan and believed in the supremacy of Aryan race!!
I have found interest in reading such topics on ancient India Puranas ,vedas etc. I even like to read translated puranas .Everything goes against AIT.
U talk about youngsters having lost their minds. They have to be taught and led in a direction. U cant blame them there is all kinds of stress which the old generation is unaware of. and they are just follwing what what they started. They try to enjoy themselves and the old generation is jealous of it.I have read that Ved vyasa(one who splits vedas) who comes in the cycle of 4 yugas, it is from there where we know vedic knowledge. And there will always be one Ved vyasa again in satayuga . After every yuga people who are further away from Moksha are born. That is how yugas are divided. Which shows where we stand in Kalyuga. All that is bound to happen in bharatvarsha is given in this 4 cycle is already given in Bhavishya purana and it says about the rise of English language and fall of Sanskrit. This was bound to happen .
Even I was not interested in this until I myself started reading Bhagvadgita etc. Yougsters like me are already pre occupied with lots of stuff . Some of my friends talk about such stuff but they dont use internet for reading all this. We just read about such stuff from newspapers and the material passed on to us from our parents .. We can only restore some part of ancient knowledge by spreading it to people interested. And out of those Indian people there are many people who don’t use internet . I know of a few people who read puranas but don’t use internet and are not techno savvy. And blaming of youngsters only creates more differences between them. There should be groups where old people could teach us and where both can participate.
Oh come on old generation is not jealous about youngsters, why should they? Some rare individuals might be, but cant make that a generic statement. By the way I am not old in that sense, still in my very early 30s :)
What old generation is concerned about is the loss of interest of young generation in the past and future of their country. You said about we just read stuff and newspapers and know only what is passed on to us from our parents. Tomorrow the next generation will also say the same thing :)
For those who are really interested, in this era of Internet its just a matter of minutes to start picking up things. I myself didnt know most of this a couple of years back. What matters is what our young generation is interested in. Our interests determine the future of this nation. Just go to Google and look at the country level statistics about what the internet generation of each country is mostly searching for. You will amazed to see the results. Top search keywords coming out of India are related to Porn, on the other hand Top search keywords coming out of China are related to technology. Now that speaks volumes about it, isn’t it? Old generation obviously have a reason to be concerned about it.
And what techno savvy generation we are talking about? Most of them are unable to take on the pressure, I have seen how developers struggle to find code in google to copy paste and somehow get the system working. Managers who know nothing about the technical effort involved give non-feasible estimates and make the developers slog on weekends and late nights. Coding starts without a design in place, and if at all there is a design it rarely is accompanied by a complete requirements document. We call India an IT super power, how many world class products, operating systems, frameworks have come out of this country? For the number of IT professionals we have, India should have flooded the market with such core software systems. We are only good at services so far, and get laid off whenever there is a recession in US or Europe. Thanks to US and Europe which created the Internet and Computer Industry, our youth atleast have well paid jobs in hand today.
Why should we expect old people to teach us, by the way not most of the old people are that informed about such things either, I have experienced it myself :)
We should take the onus on ourselves and start teaching ourselves by doing some good research which basically is searching using Google :) Infact that is more useful that listening to discourses because many a times we just want the knowledge and not lengthy speeches, and Internet makes it quick and possible.
All this is not to discourage the youth, as I said I myself am one among them. A lot of the youth are really passionate about the country and achievements, the recent Movement against Corruption by Sri Anna Hazare was a great example of how youth got together across the country for a cause. BUT, a lot more youth waste their time around Coffee days, pubs, etc, have their credit cards always filled with balance to pay, have loads of EMI to pay and all this adds for the debt of the country. Just look at how many youth have taken 15-20 year loans to buy flats at exaggerated rates, and what if IT industry goes burst against in another 4-5 years? What will happen to their EMIs, and what will happen to the banks? This was exactly what happened in US a year back. The youth think that the salary they are getting is guaranteed till they retire :)
Please note that I am not putting any blame. I am merely trying to put across some facts and my thoughts. Blaming the youth of this country is also like blaming myself, I am a software developer too, but not have developed any world class software yet. The whole point is if we can search the internet for bollywood, hollywood and software code and facebook friends, we can also use it to learn a bit more about our country :)
please raise a movement in general public to include all these and other relevent facts in school curricula.
I am trying to do my bit by writing about these facts and figures. Guess when the general public becomes much more aware about history, then the movement will start automatically to correct our history books.
The problem here is that Bible , as a historical reference is invalid. It is proven to be filled with scientific inaccuracies and it has also been changed to suit the purpose of different men either kings or pope.
Your arguments are compelling, but here are some of my thoughts.
Even Latin is derived from Sanskrit, and latin was spoken throughout Europe. So that can explain the discrepancy you have pointed out in languages.
The migration pattern was also supported by data collected the Human Genome project.
Thanks for those interesting points justgoodin. Yes, we should be careful while using texts containing self contradicting entries as historical references. And especially if it contains dates which are scientifically inaccurate then that becomes even more risky to use them as historical references, for instance the claim that the universe was created a couple of thousand years ago and within a few days indicates the work is more of a fiction than factual documentation.
nice article..nice way to express you bit of history..as well as well supported by facts and figures….looking forward to many more articles from you
Sure raman, will keep writing more articles.
Dear Gurudev,
You are an asset of any civilization,
Jai Hind
Leela.
As we slowly move away from pre-conceived history as it is “wanted to be” towards a more based-on-archeological facts history we may find that history is much more interesting and complex , ancient peoples have been more mobile and more developed that we would like to give them credit for which might well be due to our absolute belief in technology=civilization.
In the past 2 centuries many obvious facts have been discarded or ignored because “this cannot be so”. See Mueller’s Translations of the Vedas, the discovery of Dvarka by Rao, etc..
India has been settled (confirmed by latest DNS science) since at least the 1st human migration 70thousand years ago. All of India’s coastlines at least. The ISC again has probably been slowly developing out of existing settlements and migrations from Mergarh, possibly Elam et.al. This is far from being based on archeological facts but otherwise quite obvious.4000 years old trade routes prove this (Meluha, Dilmun…)
What we call Aryan is a 2-tiered migration of Indo Europeans / Indo-Persians that have been highly mobile and moved from their (so far alleged) homeland around the Caspian to the east, south and west in many movements . They also moved massively into India and assimilated with the local much older peoples. We are talking of 5-6000 years ago, ample time for criss-cross relationships, intermixing and local developments. The vedic culture itself, no matter if we date this on 1500 BCE with 1st recordings or earlier as common sense would have it, is a development that was not brought from the outside but an indigenous development in situ – see archeological finds that indicate very early notion in that direction.
There are certain similarities with other early cultures and the general development of early religions is usually the same: from nature gods to personified gods to ideas – that is when , apart from the icons, the development starts up and differs.
Far from being finished and dubbed on it did indeed develop and although some links are visible many missing parts have yet to be discovered. As I have no doubt they will be.
Now this word Aryan is sanskrit, written down not before say 1500 BCE at best, which makes it on terms of the ISC a relative late definition, at a time when both the ISC had already become IVC, peoples had already developed into a “people” and their attached kleptocracy, also started dispersing towards continental India and the vedic culture was already in full bloom.
It is also a fact that vedic culture is the brahmanic culture and is so highly ritualized that the development from the beginnings to the turn of the ages took millenia and has many localized interpretations. Knowing what we do about migrations, influences and cultures we can easily assume that this was not brought upon the ISC by some foreign invaders but was a genuine development that fitted.
On linguistics : the Dravidian/ Aryan separation on the basis of skin colour and language is deliberate. This connection between Bask and Tamil seems a lttle strained and I allow myself to have doubt in reconstruction of ancient and long-forgotten languages to show connections. Where they are traceable let us accept them but …..the rest is as much speculation until strengthened by archeological and factual finds.
If we look at the Dravidian Hinduism we can see that the same vedic principles apply albeit a slightly separate development in parts that only show geographical movements and separation for times.Their peculiarities are as much due to geographical environment as much as separate developments and show only that their roots are as deep and long as any other, ergo they were well a part of and not an underdog of the ISC/IVS. Hinduism is not a religion in the Western sense and is highly adoptable , see Bali and the separate development there, which is only around 1000 years old.
Then there would lastly be the following to keep in mind : India is not a Nation as we understand it before independance in 47. The subcontinent is simply too large and it’s history does split into many completely diverging pieces that only loosely fit a whole. It is therefore almost a miracle that over a period of 3000 plus years Hinduism has not diversified or split into many religions or created more ethnic tension than it has. How much larger would it appear 4000 years ago . A major Kudo towards the strength of it’s indigenous culture that kept it Indian per se from Beluchistan to Karnataka.
Going by the astronomical dating of the events mentioned in these ancient texts, the time period of these texts is definitely much before 1500 BCE, infact there is NO SCIENTIFIC basis on which a date of 1500 BCE was arrived at. Astronomical dating of events in Ramayan using planetarium software date it back to 5114 BCE – See Birth Date of Rama
Similarly Mahabharatha gets dated to around 3100 BCE, both from astronomical dating perspective and also from the lineage of kingdoms and royal families after Ramayana and Mahabharata as mentioned in Mahabharatha and related texts. This also coincides with the drying up of Saraswati river around the same time which is a geologically proven fact.
Moreover none of the ancient texts (NONE OF THEM) talk about any kind of migration, nor make any reference to places outside the subcontinent of India other than about such places being already a part of expansion of indigenous kingdoms, like Bharatha, brother of Rama expanded his kingdom to include Modern day Tashkent (Capital of Uzbekistan today) which was called Takshakhand during Ramayana period – Taksha was the son of Bharata.
excellent. an eyeopener. great bharat.
Thanks Anand.
THE FACTS AND FIGURES ARE REAL PROOF OF UNITED INDIA IN ANCIENT AGES.
Yes Nyamagoudar very true – India since ancient times was referred to by its entirety – even the Europeans who came to trade to India or who set out to find a sea route to India – did so by referring to the entire subcontinent as “India” – not as individual kingdoms or empires. No matter how the political map of the Indian subcontinent kept changing over time – but the cultural map has always been – Bharath, Hindustan, India
Very good article. Thanks a lot for this.
I believe this Aryan’s migration theory has been proven myth many times over. This myth was planted into India by the British, in order to “divide and rule”. I hope you understand the point and would appreciate the fact that British divided Indians on the many parameters and tried one faction to go to war with the other. So we have now Dravidian Vs Aryan fight, North Indian Vs South Indian fight, Hindi Vs Tamil fight, or Hindu Vs Muslim fight – all these happened because of the British design. And it is a known fact that the British used “English Education” as a tool to achieve their goals.
True Rahul. Aryan Invasion Theory has no basis at all and is filled with inherent contradictions, a theory where answers are first created and reasons devised later to support those answers. It was just another divide and rule by-product. Similar to the creation of beef eating machinery in India by the British.
brilliant. read somewhere that max mueller had tendered apology and refused to step in Bharat as he had sinned by creating and popularizing Aryan Dravidian theory. can you confirm and add that to this?
Not sure whether he refused to step in to Bharat, but he did apologize a couple of days before he died. But then he had already done the damage which our current generation still carries thanks to the continued colonial content in our syllabus, the educated people in India today have actually become McCauley infected people.
Aryan invasion is merely a proposal not a definitive theory. Vedic civilisation is still masked in antiquity.What you said about flood or bible is mere a concoction not a fact. Several facts yet to be discovered
(i) Mystery of horse: horse is mentioned about 255 times in vedas, yet, Rajaram has been able to get only one image of horse in Indus (or, Saraswati ) valley civilization from an indus seal that too has been generated as horse through computer and doesn’t sound convincing.
(ii) How do you know that this dried bed is definitively a mythical river called Saraswati ? No evidence to support that this “dried bed” or “mythical Saraswati” was so vibrantly active as mentioned in vedas in past 5000 or 10000 years !!!
(iii) the connections between harappan culture and vedic culture is very loose, as all the time connections are not self-obvious but need to be interpolated. For example, figurines interpreted as shakti, man sitting cross-legged interpreted as yogic posture, no definite fire-altars as prevalent in vedic-hawan …… etc.
Who said it is a mere proposal? Every single primary school text book teaches it as a definitive fact. This is how these people brainwash kids into believing some guy called Max Muller’s superficial imagination as some proven fact.
If you call Saraswathi a mythical river then you are living in pre-90s. The existence of saraswathi river is a proven fact today. And the drying up of this river is what caused the lush green Rajasthan and surroundings to become a dry desert. Excavations in this area have shown that 5000-6000 years back this was a lush green area. And Mahabharatha also clearly mentions that Saraswati dried up after the war which falls in the same period.
And as far as truth is concerned, irrespective of whether somebody believes it or not it remains what it is, and finally Satyameva Jayate.
To day I got the some valuable information regarding
Aryan invasion and river Sarswati , I thought that this informatiom guide me to ponder correct dates regarding hindu Darshan
narendra
narendranath-c2yahoo.com
My father late shri Premvallabh Sharma – Siddhpur has written a big Granth of about 4500 pages about vedic Saraswati in 1982 containing no.of pictures and maps. During Resp. Vakenkarji’s visit to siddhpur he shown the his writeup and later on Sh.Vakenkarji intended to bring the same for publication. My father gave the same and within short period he expired. We are having some Letter’s and written proof of the same, till today we could not get the menuscripts. He was also member of “Saraswati Shodh Abhiyan”. Pl. guide what to do in this regards…
We are ready to produce letter of Shri Vakankarji and Press Cutting of news paper about the same. Awaiting your favourable response. Some rough work/menuscripts are available with me.
My mobile is 09898367174 Gmail:[email protected]
Even if a small linguistic component is added – rebus principle or punning (Witzel Kyoto, 2009 or Sproat in his presentations) or acriphony is added, it qualifies for full literacy. I assume some ’sound coding’ would have been useful to them atleast on some occasions.. the longest seal is 17 characters non-analomous and 26 characters analomous. I have never said that what Farmer is saying is necessarily fully wrong, but even Parpola has been reading them mostly as logograms with a linguistic component. So how much of what Farmer is saying is new apart from the fact that he popularized the idea? These men have been saying almost the same thing and fighting with each other?Till 2900 BC Egypt and Mesopotamia were considered proto-literate even if their texts are shorter(not non-literate!!!!)- even if there is small difference between the 2 maybe the Indus system was more expressive than Egyptian proto-literate- because conditional entropy, order of signs, combinations probably did play a major role in meaning in the Indus script (Korvink). ????Terminologies pertaining to literacy cannot be changed unless all scholars agree – and any demands to change terminology must be met with suspicion, naturally. Only a very small portion of the IVC has been excavated, you know, 5% maybe! Even Farmer agrees “Judging from modern examples and research in the linguistic history of South Asia, the Indus Valley was probably intensely multi linguistic throughout its history. This may have provided the Indus emblem system with an advantage over ordinary writing as a means of providing the civilization with social cohesion. The fact that the majority of inscriptions rely on a surprisingly small core of symbols suggests that the meaning of Indus signs could have potentially been known by almost or all (ALL!!) of the population, resulting in a pervasive quasiliteracy far beyond that achieved in Mesopotamia or Egypt.” No other civlization mass produced writing or (”writing”!!). Where else did they have public signboards then apart from the Indus?
I can instead cite Farmer and declare it the most literate civilization on erth. And he and I could be saying the same thing. I say such terms must be avoided. if they had learned how to use the rebus principle , they would have used it whenever the need arose. Seal writing is always short . Sproat’s smoking gun cannot be used to test the stability or the complexity of the system. It has weaknesses. It cannot also be used to prove that the Indus script didn’t have a linguistic component.
Making fun of ancient people is absolutely disgraceful.It is in poor taste~!!!!
I hope more Indians take up research. people are taking us for a ride.
Sujay Rao Mandavilli
Very well said Sujay. Its indeed a great achievement to have small amount of symbols for effective communication, the chinese language has thousands of symbols and is said to be one of the unnecessary toughest languages to learn. Its like using Roman numbers where in you need 1000 symbols to represent 1000 numbers, now compare it with decimal system introduced by Indians where you just take 10 symbols and can use it to represent any number no matter how big.
@zookybeans http://is.gd/aQuMt Chec this. I don't believe in Aryan-Dravidian Theory.
@GetAbhi http://is.gd/aQuMt Check this out.
problem published in a peer-reviewed journal. part two is very important
> http://www.scribd.com/doc/27103044/Sujay-NPAP-Part-One
> http://www.scribd.com/doc/27105677/Sujay-Npap-Part-Two
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/25880426/Sujay-NPAP-Part-One
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/25865304/SUJAY-NPAP-Part-Two
> Links to the journal Part one http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1324506 Part Two http://ssrn.com/abstract=1541822
Good research Sujay. Thank you very much for those links. Really appreciate that.
well Clara, in that sense Hinduism is a democracy in the world of religions for there is no organized structure at all. There is no one single religious head here, no one single chief religious institution, no one single way of worship, no one single holy place, treats not just humans, but even all living beings and non-living beings on equal scale, you can be a hindu and still be a christian or a muslim.
Dear Clara,
In addition to what Uday had to say which I totally support, the Vedic Scriptures have always respected women and their contribution. One such scriptures, called the Vedaangas which highlight the customs and rituals has a section called Kalpa Shaastras which consists of duties of father, mother, son, daughter, wife/husband, etc plus the role of the leader and government which underlines that a woman should have absolutely no fear and have freedom ” Whereby she could walk in the street, in the middle of the night, completely covered with jewelry/gold and feel totaly protected”. Every ritual/custom had a scientific and a spiritual reason, e.g Why don’t you sleep with your head towards the North, due to the magnetic field and chances of iron concentration in the brain. Why do you pray in bed, after sleep, sitting uprights for a few seconds before getting up, please look at the stats of people having heart stroke by suddenly jumping up. Just to site a few examples, which might encourage you to look deeper into the “Hindu religion” which has no meaning except it has a geographical conection with the River Sindhu. The actual name would be “Santana Dharma”, “way of living”, introspection conducted by rishis, thousands of years ago and written in a way of this sacred scriptures, virtually on on every subject with full authority for us to make changes, improve, modify as per the times and conditions. I was born a Hindu but not once was I forced to follow any domas/rituals but to respect all religions. India has a very rich scientific heritage, valuable to all mankind. Only in the recent part of the Indian history due to the Mugul invasion and the British exploitation that the country suffered. The most to suffer were women under the Mugals due to forced conversions. The myth of the Aryan invasion came about and all Indian valuable scriptures were disregarded during the British Empire. Just after independence the women literacy was about 18 %, but in the last census board conducted in 2001 it was 65%. In Kerala State it is 86%. Whilst USA has yet to to elect a woman president, Indira Gandhi was elected as early as 1959 as President of of the congress party and then elected as the Prime Minister of India in 1966. Several Chief Ministers of states are also women. As I travelled from South to North I was proud to see women off to work in lot of the cities driving, cycles, motor bikes and cars, probably trying to juggle home/work duties, like in the west. This is not to say their conditions have completely improved but when I compare it to the women in the west, you’ll find it shocking when I tell you that one of the tragedies of my city, ” Vancouver”, while we celebrate Olympics have been the way we have treated our homeless people. Surving Canadian winters in a cardboard box is not a joke. A 70 year old woman was refused to enter shelter because she had a few belongings she wanted to take along, whilst trying to keep herself warm in the open she burned herself to death. There has been a case where a farmer was chaged for abducting “First Nation women” , take them to the pig farm, slaughtor them and feed them to the pigs. It’s pathetic the way the seniors are treated, often very lonely and in recent case a 75 year old woman was thrown out of her home as she couldn’t pay rent. Such cases never get reported when a documentary is done about a Western Country but any Documentary on India starts of with the slums, so it is not the fault of people, from other countries, but the media who report it. I was reminded by my elders “when you point a finger at someone, the rest are pointing at you”.
I would like to hear about the status of women in India from Gurudev, during the Vedic period as it seems he has studied them to a much greater depth and knowing Sanskrit has much better understanding.
Lastly, in the words of the great Swami Vivekanda who was the first hindu monk who brought awareness to the west about are rich heritage at the ” Conference of world Religions, Chicago 1893? )
“IT IS IMMPOSSIBLE TO THINK ABOUT THE WELFARE OF THE WORLD UNLESS THE CONDITION OF WOMEN IS IMPROVED. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR A BIRD TO FLY ON ONLY ONE WING.”
Hi Clara,
I’m afraid you are quite wrong. The female energy is an integral part of Hindu philosophy. The mother god is one of the most revered forms of god in India (Parvati/Shakti/ Kali/Uma/ Sita/Radha…). All gods with have their eternal consorts and the combination of male and female energies is a consistent theme throughout hinduism. The material universe is considered to be the feminine aspect of gods energy and the wrath of the feminine energy is considered the greatest force in the universe. There are many example of male gods having to bow to female ones eg: Shiva was forced to kneel before Kali to appease her wrath. Likewise Radha’s love for Khrishna was so powerful he had to prostrate himself before her. The hindu concept of god or the primeval being (the Purush) is not considered male or female, however aspects of his personality manifested on Earth in both male and female forms.
You are right in saying that there is a discrimination against women in India, as there is in many parts of the world, but this is a man made discrimination rather than religious. No Hindu books that I have read undermine woman and on the contrary the power of feminine energy is something that has been worshipped for a long time (cf Durga Puja). Don’t let the ignorance of men stop you from enquiring into hindu philosophy which is above the opposites of male/female and black/white.
In reading some other things here by others talking of Hindu beliefs I would have to say I wont be becoming a Hindu after all, as a woman I see that like all other religions in this world( and Hindu is a religion too) it also has no real respect for woman ether. Though the main ideas are nice and I do agree with and feel it is very much like what I already believed in regards to God or God like ideas, a way to live, I feel I will stick with calling myself a agnostic instead sense it fits best, I can’t see getting into any religion or belief that teaches such disrespect of woman, or anyone, especially when it claims to be so peaceful and nice, I guess that maybe all the nice stuff in all religions is just for men, its like all the religions teach that what ever think of as a God only cares and respects men, and of course they themselves are all men too, at least they are now, sense few people follow Goddesses, and non of the religions have any Goddesses as the main god anyways, Hindu really isn’t any different then the others, at least when it comes to woman, so I don’t see any reason to want to follow it, or even care if anyone else does or not, sense it wouldn’t change anything when it comes to how woman are treated, it might bring some peace but even if people had always followed Hindu woman would still have been treated as good for nothing other then making children mostly male children for the men, and nothing else, which is really sad, I guess there really isn’t any real hope for woman in this male ruled world, I know this probably wont be allowed to stay here, it will probably be removed because I am not praising Hindu now, but I not really trying to put it down ether, its just like all the religions that have came after it, those who created it had no respect for woman and still don’t. the fact that no woman can be a Brahman proves that, Unless I am mistaken on that, which even if I am on that I am not on other stuff I have learned here, well that’s all, back to what I was doing which was me just comparing all the religions and seeing if there was any Historical proof of people from the Bible, and other Beliefs, but I got side tracked by the whole Hindu idea of being so different from the others, which as it turns out its not that different after all.
Clara, hindu texts say “Where women are worshipped there roam the Gods”. The chief hindu God is genderless, and is referred to as “it” in the vedas and has no physical form and is considered to be the all pervading supreme consciousness. Of the zillions of hindu Gods and Godesses with a physical form the chief hindu deity is FEMALE and is equated to ENERGY in this universe without whom no universe would exist. There are numerous stories in hinduism where when all the male gods failed to destroy a daemon finally it was the chief female Goddess who suceeded in destroying the evil force. While a lot of ignorant people say that in Hinduism females are not allowed to study vedas, the matter of the fact is that a lot of vedic verses themselves are authored by female authors like Maitreyi, Gargi etc. Mother plays a special role in Hinduism and is referred to as the God who is visible to your eyes. The importance given to Mother is not given to Father in Hinduism. Brahman does not have a gender, Brahman is neither male nor female, it is genderless. The trinity who rule creation, observation and destruction are Brahma Vishnu and Ishwara are males and all three are considered to be the children of Shakti Godess who is a female and who as mentioned earlier is the chief hindu God considered above all. So if you look at it, Hinduism is the only religion which considers a female as a Goddess and again is the only religion where Female is the chief God to whom all male gods report to.
Hinduism being a natural religion where universe itself is the God, the natural hierarchies are given divine places accordingly and the female force of nature rules all other forces.
All I want to say is I had figured this to be so for awhile myself, and I am a white Irish American myself, but I also believe long ago that we all came from Africa too, and that all of major religions of the would were connected to Hindu, which many now say is most likely. And it does not bother me in the lease to be linked to the people of India or Africa ether, I have long admired the original history of the Indu people and always found that there seemed way to many holes in the Aryan invasion theory, I felt that why does it have to be that the Europeans had to have came to India, why couldn’t it be the other way around? That the Indian people went to Europe, I mean most people even in Europe have brown eyes and brown or black hair, blue and green is rare in the whole world including Europe, as is Blond hair and red hair, so it make sense that Caucasians came from India and Middle East areas.I myself have Brown eyes and hair, and I am Irish. I can truly say I am proud to say I have a connection to India, as I am proud to be Irish.
The validity of this theory was also documented by the National Geographic March 2006. Unless the theory were 100% true and beyond scientific doubt no American/European journal would ever acknowledge that the origins of white Europeans was from India. It brings a smile to my face just thinking about it!
very true Uday. Satyameva Jayate :)
The Aryan Invasion theory has been scientifically proved wrong. The irony is that the Europeans actually originated from India. The evidence comes from studies of mitochondrial DNA which show that all human lineages (except African) stem from the M1 mitochondrial line which left Africa and arrived in India. India has the highest diversity a M haplotype consistent with India being the souce of this lineage.
References:
1) Rajkumar et al. (2005), Phylogeny and antiquity of M macrohaplogroup inferred from complete mt DNA sequence of Indian specific lineages, BMC Evolutionary Biology 2005, 5:26 doi:10.1186/1471-2148-5-26
2) un et al. (2006), The Dazzling Array of Basal Branches in the mtDNA Macrohaplogroup M from India as Inferred from Complete Genomes, Molecular Biology and Evolution 2006 23(3):683-690; doi:10.1093/molbev/msj078
Yes Uday. What’s unfortunate is that this false theory being taught in our Indian textbooks, along with incorrect facts like rigveda dating to 1500 BCE etc.
Thanks for the references.
Dear Uday,
Agreed, this is biggest irony, to learn about our rich Scientific Vedic heritage from others but I have full faith that truth will prevail. As Gurudev pointed out, advocates like David Frawley, Stephan Knapps and others are fantastic advocates and in many respects chalenge western historians, archeologists and researchers for reporting false claims, assisting us in safeguarding our true heritage. His holiness Dalai Lama on his last visit to Canada proudly said to a crowd of about 20,000 people, “we were like barbarians, before Hinduism was brought to Tibet.” Another example was when the Chief Mercredi ( Leader of the First Nations People) having visited Mahatma Ganndhi’s ashram in the 90’s decided to have Nationwide conferenc on Non-violence. This are just a few names but what we’ve really to worry about are foreign researchers who are still bent on spreading same old garbage about our heritage or trying to patent “Tumeric”- big joke another subject . The Indian youth to be more vigilant, educated, proud of our heritage and be aware of such incidences. We’ve no-more excuses, We’ve the IT medium, provided by such notable people as our Gurudev-SPREAD THE WORD. Hopefully in doing so we do not forget to recognize and appreciate fellow Indian researchers, authors and historians , too whose hard work goes in vain sometimes as we tend to carry on romanticize with the western culture. Dr. Navatram Rajaram is a mathematician, liguist and historian. He is the author of the acclaimed book “Vedic Aryans and the origins of Civillization”. He has written extensively on Indian history, philosophy and current affairs-just to name one related to the above subject.
Gurudev,
Your summary and presentation of “The myth of the Aryan Invasion theory” is the best compilation I’ve seen , no wonder it has had such a fantastic and the best response, so far. Great work.
Besides the evidence (archiological, marine studies, NASA Satelite evidence, palaeography and vedic literary studies) that mentioned in the above text proving the above theory totally wrong there is further written proof in the vedic astronomical calenders-Vedanga Jyotish. This references fit in well with the movement of civilization and natural history.
In secondary medium English school, I had the option of taking another second language. I took the mistake of taking French, I lasted one lesson, I was in shock, nothing against French and infact I do “Thank” it for it forced me to go back to my mother-tongue which I value the most, it opened doors to other Indian Languages and appreciation and composition of Indian music – food for the soul. : 0)
Yes Prakash, but the unfortunate thing is that this theory is being taught in the schools of India even today as a fact! Macualay has successfully brainwashed these people. But fortunately not all can be fooled all the time.
Very True, The Youth of India somehow (if the history books are current) should read about “The myth of Aryan invasion” by Dr. Raja Ram and David Frawley and also made aware of Lord Maculay’s adress to the British Parliament in February 2, 1835″ as follows:
I HAVE TRAVELLED ACROSS THE LENGTH AND BREADTH OF INDIA AND HAVE NOT SEEN ONE PERSON WHO IS A BEGGAR, WHO IS A THIEF, SUCH WEALTH I HAVE SEEN IN THIS COUNTRY, SUCH HIGH MORAL VALUES, PEOPLE OF SUCH CALIBRE, THAT I DO NOT THINK WE WOULD EVER CONQUER THIS COUNTRY, UNLESS WE BREAK THE VERYBACKBONE OF THIS NATION, WHICH IS HER SPIRITUAL AND CULTURAL HERITAGE, AND THEREFORE, I PROPOSE THAT WE REPLACE HER OLD AND ANCIENT EDUCATION SYSTEM, HER CULTURE, FOR IF THE INDIANS THINK THAT ALL THAT IS FOREIGN IS GOOD AND GREATER THAN THEIR OWN, THEY WILL LOSE THEIR SELFESTEEM, THEIR NATIVE CULTURE AND THEY WILL BECOME WHAT WE WANT THEM, A TRULY DOMINATED NATION.”
I appologize if this address by Macaulay has been shared before but neverthless, worth mentioning it again. We should never loose sight of our great heritage.
True Prakash. The very intent of introducing English education in all their colonies was to make future generations subordinates to their empire. If France or Dutch or Portugal had succeeded against British in dominating asia and america during the colonial era, then today’s internet would have been dominated by French or Dutch or Portuguese :)
Personally I feel we need more than a overhaul of our education system. We need to make hinduism mainstream. However due corrupt secularist politics we will always lack the cohesion to mount any significant political change. Just look at Narendra Modi, he is ritually lambasted for promoting hindutva. Correct me if I’m wrong but unfortunately the vast majority of Indians don’t give a shit about their own vedic heritage and lack the balls to promote it. It is ironic that the westerners have realised the depth of sanatan dharma and are now probably its greatest advocates (cf Alfred Ford heir to the Ford Empire). Whereas we still languish is caste, religious and communal division. I find it strangely amusing when I see a westerner lecturing on hinduism. That is the power of the Indian inferiority complex that we are willing to be taught our own religion by a white foreigner, who not too long ago believed us to be barbarians and enslaved us for 250 years. Thats irony for you.
If we change the education system and replace greek mythology with Indian history and introduce lessons which teach the greatness of ancient Indian culture and its values, that itself will cause the future generations to embrace our ancient culture more openly.
True that while our youth in India are busy in pubs and clubs, westerners well versed in ancient Indian culture like David Frawley, Stephen Knapps, Francois Gautier are all working so dedicatedly to preserve and spread this knowledge.
nice one arjem im not sure about the south indians migrating north that is an asumption india has always been inhabited by the native people and due to climate they have adapted lets not start a north south division
True Robert, there is no north south division as such for one of the oldest of the ancient Indian historical documentations, the Ramayana is stretched from North to beyond the mainland of the subcontinent in the south.
It is obvious that western civilisation originated from Sanatan Dharma. But The Indian Inferiority Complex will make sure that we will always be playing catch up to the west. Its only when we realise that the west and its philosophies has brought the world nothing but destruction will we as a nation change the way we look at ourselves and each other.
Yes Uday, what needs to be changed is our educational system where in we promote the true history, rich cultural and scientific heritage of ancient India, and the glory of our ancient past to cleanse off the brainwashing that has happened over the past few centuries.
True Uday. We need to relalize ourselves first that if humanity were to survive on this planet, then the ancient vedic culture should be brought back to life where in the children are taught to worship trees and animals not to cut and kill them, to worship mountains and hills, not to mine and destruct them. If world is dominated by the religion which worships nature then such an Earth will be meant for all living beings, if the world is dominated by the religion which treats nature as a materialistic wealth then humans will be wiped out of this planet and natural balance will re-evolve minus humans.
In addition to what Arjen mentioned, our ancesters or homosapiens originated in Africa 150, 000 years ago (well known fact). A small group left 80,000 years ago and settled along the coast of Soth Asia from which they gradually spread to colonize different parts of the world. The Toba volcanic eruption (Sumatra), 74,000 years ago nearly put an end to this non-african human population but a core group survived which became the jumping off for the ultimate colonization of the world.
This means that the Indian population is largely indegenous from the earliest times of the Toba Explosion and is not the result of recent migrations as held by many historians and anthroplogists-the contribution of immigrants (gene flow) is negligible.
Yes, the recent developments in human migration theory states that, All non-african human beings have their origin traced back to India! In other words, there is an “Out of India” theory where in the entire western population migrated out from India in the pre-historic times.
And why is adams bridge named as such
Adams Bridge was the name given to Ram Sethu by the British during their rule in India when they heard that this was the oldest man-made structure on this planet. I call England as Anga Desh :)
The problem is not with other races inventing a theory to give themselves some credibility. Its with the indian people themsleves. They teach these lies in schools and a lot of indian historians actually promote this rubbish. These things are degrading the country and everyone is trying to be westernised like bafoons and the world laughs at them.. Indian people both born in india and abroad should be proud of their culture and respect there own way of life and not try and live like trailer trash.
A change in the education system in india is so important to give the new generation some pride of belonging to the greatest and oldest surviving nation.
Very true Robert. Indians try to copy only negative things from west like eating junk fast food, going to gyms instead of doing yoga, teaching children to say mummy daddy as if there are no words in their languages, talking pseudo-science to tease ancient Indian scientific heritage etc, but none of these Indians try to copy the positive things from west like following a lane system in the traffic, not breaking the queues and rushing like bulls, being more innovative and creative, new scientific discoveries and so on. Urban youth in India is one of the largest spoilt population on this planet. Just a walk during the weekends around posch areas in the metros would show us the contribution of these youngsters in building a strong India.
fianlly the Genetic ‘map’ of Asia’s diversity confirms that NO ARYAN invasion to place………..IN FACT india was populated BY ONE SINGLE HUMAN MIGRATION from south of india. The south indians travelled up into north india (Therefore are the same genetic group), and the another group of south indians ventured into south asia/ china……..creating the chinese race……..and the north indians who are the same as south indians ….then ventured out of of north india into middle east and then into EUROPE. Aryan invasion theory is CORRECT..WITH ONE ALTERATION ……………the aryans where dark/medium skinned haired INDIANS…..NOT WHITE , BLOND HAIRED BLUE EYED EUROPEANS!
Good one Arjen :)
Shree,
Not sure how much you have got the latest updates on Sindhu-Sarasvathi civilization. Many scientific proofs disprove the aryan invasion theory. As for as the sounth indian river names are concerned, this has to be take not of. There definitely exists a devide bewteen ancient north and south indians. Thats not mean so called aryans came from outside.
Please cehck the following videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pueVNbuZ2A4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8NpaG0cAGo&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgXq1dHLS0o&feature=related
Guru might have used some strong words aginst Britishers who used Aryan invasion theory to devide people. Please find yourself the scientific proves in the above videos.
True Vishy. As for the south Indian river names they are mentioned in Ramayana as Rama moves towards Lanka and during his forest stay. Much of south India was in those days a dense forest called Dandakaranya. The places of South India are mentioned throughout Ramayana and Mahabharatha.
Thanks, Gurudev, that clears that up. Alexander seems often to have been called Iskander in Asia so there are some close phonemes here. I only chanced upon your site because of your explanation of the Einstein equation. A more limid bit of science education would be hard to find. I shall read and reread it ’til I can explain it by heart at parties and thus get all my hanging-on-til-dawn guests to leave….
Yes Harry, Alexander was referred to as Iskander (a localization of his name), and Greeks were called by the name Yavans (horsemen) in Asia. It was here in India that his army finally rebeled with the thoughts of having to invade further across Ganges after the tough war with Porus in which Alexander nearly lost his life. On the other side of the Ganges there was the mighty army of the Magadha kingdom waiting to fight Alexander, but Alexander never crossed the river due to the refusal by his army to move further into India, and instead the greeks turned back from what is the current Punjab region.
True, field equations are one of the most fascinating mathematical formulations yet the least written ones in terms of layman’s language. So that was an attempt made by me to talk about these equations in non-mathematical language (or may I say in simplest mathematical terms).
If my memory serves me well, the city of Kandahar was originally called Alexandria after the Macedonian conquerer who founded it.
In an earlier message on this topic it was said that in the Mahabaratha (or perhaps the Ramayana) this city was known as Gandhur, which to me sounds remarkably like both Kandahar and Alexandria. Since Alexander lived around 600BC does this also date the Vedic text as coming from that period?
Since I’m English you’ll no doubt have dark doubts about my motives in raising this question, but please explain how a city mentioned in a supposedly 4000 year old document can contain a name given 1400 years later.
No such dark doubts harry. Question is logical :)
1. Mahabharata is the one which identifies this region as Gandhara kingdom in those days, ruled by Shakuni (which is dated to around 3500 BCE). Now tell me what sounds more like Kandhahar- Alexandria or Gandhar?
Well, the truth is the name Kandhahar existed for this region even before Alexander conquered this place. It was part of the Achaemenid Empire before Alexander’s invasion. After Alexander conquered it, just for a brief period it was renamed to Alexandria – and Alexander did this for almost every place which he conquered ie to name conquered places after his name – the traces of Alexander vanished from all those places just as quickly as Alexander himself, and so did it in Kandhahar.
2. The word “kand” or “qand” in the local languages (Persian and Pashto) means “sweet”. And the ancient word in Mahabharata- “Gandh” (which Gandhar is derived from) also means the same – a sweet nice smell.
As for dating of the vedic texts is concerned, in India we have hundreds of places which have the same name as the one they had during the ancient vedic ages. Does this then date the vedic texts to current date? :)
I have done much study over the criminological aspects of british groups through their entire history. We will not believe what are actually trying to do, ” I mean trying to do – not done, and what all done is part of that.” Some of us will be aware of their secret groups’ propaganda. In britain and other allied contries They have numerous secret terrorist groups having the root in britain. Some of them are like following: Ku Klux Klan, Illuminati, Freemasons, etc. they are functioning for wealth, power, and supremacy of british monarch. Making of the history of India, making of dictionaries of Indian languages, educational system which excludes all the indian scientific and cultural knowledge (refer http://www.iish.org for scientific knowledge), even the explosion of atom bombs in Japan (at that time Subhash Chandra Bose’s army movement was being done with the help of Japanese army) all are related to the activities of secret groups. So justifying or trying to find out the truth about aryan invasion is a joke for the british. They are exploiting our nobility and wisdom. The most important thing is, before 1880’s nobody was knowing about the aryan invasion, because that was the point where they found that might will not help for conquering India, therefore they initiated psychological crime as big as this.
The entire world war II and hitler’s ideology was based on this flop aryan invasion theory which talked about supreme aryan blood resulting in massacre of millions of innocents by hitler’s army.
Nice one.
Yeah, I grew up knowing that I’m Aryan and the ‘South Indians’ aren’t! I grew up knowing that Hindi language is more similar to, say, German than it is to Tamil!
We were fed with this crap by the British and other Europeans, and we have been living happily. In our history books, we mention opinions of European ‘scholars’ to substantiate the claim of ‘Aryan Invasion’, but don’t include the opinions of Swami Dayananda Saraswati, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo etc (all the three had countered AIT with solid logic during 1920s and 1930s).
I have read “The Secret of the Veda” by Sri Aurobindo where the AIT has really been destroyed. But we prefered to follow what our white masters had taught us! A linguistic study suggests that Tamil is the parent of Sanskrt. While Sanskrt could expand, both in letters and in words – because of cultural exchanges with Persia and beyond, Tamil remained stagnant.
Very true Raja. Infact most of the vedic culture was revived in India after the rise of Buddhism by the great men from the south like Sri Adi Shankaracharya, Ramanujacharya, Madhvacharya etc. Wonder where did this dravid-aryan divide come from which didnt exist in those days. The source clearly points to the arrival of British and the era of Maxmullar and Co.
The alphabets of Indian language indicates a thing in common among them. Except the letter “ZH” in Tamil and Malayalam, the rest of the letters are all in the same order in all the languages. The division of consonants is based on the organ involved in making the sounds represented by the letters in the particular group, eg. “ka” group, etc.
In case of Tamil alphabets, it is only truncated, but grouping as such is retained.
Very true Kannan :)
Wonder indians easily believe colonial educational system. As the system boasts of works based on sceintific evidence. OR believe only on evidence.
But why indians are not questioning the sceitific grounds of evidence itself?
So whom to be blamed? System Creator or We Indians the Follower?
Its a systematic brainwash thats in place everywhere. Just like how they teach in Paksitan today saying that India was a part of Pakistan before 1947 :)
Dear Mr Gurudev,
So glad to read this one. I see things changing at one end and dead end of ignorance at another. I live in the united states and work in a software company. apparently, i have colleagues who are still stuck with this aryan, north Indian have fairer skin and south Indians are not. I feel like jumping out of the building. Feels soooooo disgusting to acall them even Indians. Since they are in bulk and I ended up with bunch of sumstanders people, i end up staying wquite. DO you have suggestion for te>
Thanks for your comments. Well the ignorance on the part of those Indians is because of the brainwashing colonial education which they have gone through :) The textbooks still talk about aryan invasion theory, 1500 BCE etc which first needs to be corrected. We still are following the Mckauley’s educational model which was introduced in India by the British to make the Indians then feel that everything west is superior and scientific and everything Indian is inferior/unscientific and illogical. The most important thing pending ever since Independence is the reform of textbooks in India.
Sreeram, this explaination might be bit technical rather boring.. but info to ponder.
Most indian languages have 8 Vibhakthi and pratyayas’
eg. Phalam(a fruit-singual) Phale(2 frts-dual) Phalani(fruits-flural) – Sanskrit
Pandu(singular) Pandlu(plural) – Telugu
haNNU(singular) haNNUgaLU(plural) – Kannada
In Sanskrit it is possible to trace back why suffix, am, le, aani for word phalm to be used… that is for every word formation must follow sutras…
My point is it, Sanskrit is already refined
Can any one throw some light on Telugu, Kannada grammer rules and and also grammer to their dialect versions?
This might help us derivation/relations among languages….
Am with Gurudev on AIT. Telugu cannot stand by itself without sanskrit words. Telugu and some southern indian languages might have their own words which sprung local to the region.
Correct Ramnarayan. I have never been able to comprehend how the so called dravidian languages exist without sanskrit influence be it in terms of language or culture or literary works or history, because we dont see anything outside the bounds of the ancient vedic culture in these languages and every work in these languages or every piece of history/culture in these societies can be mapped with the vedic culture.
do you realise that this argument support gurudev’s theory.
first of, the the group to which most indians trace their ancestry were likely to have a fairer complexion whether they were from armenia or from mesopotamia. if u wanna argue otherwise..u can even go on and say that u dont agree that mongoloids at that time were fair skinned.
once enterign india – this happens so that genteic cannot be used to identify race properly. theres like a million molecular leisons occuring per cell/per day mosly because of what we eat and the climate. you claims about algeria being close to the equator is nullified by your own previous post- obviously those recent arabs are not sunbathing nude out doors at 40+ degrees- even if they do the DNA also has the tendency to repair itself and it takes more than one millenia to incur high percentages of dark skin within the population. however south india is closer in temperature to sub-saharan africa, which is at a different range of temperature from northern africa. and south indians have been working the fields for alteast 3000 years which gives most ofthose farmers a darks skin.
ur lingistic theories about sanskrit and tamil coming from different substratums are also failing. some recent works show that they are closer to each other than to other europeanlanguages-which may or may not have come out of sanskrit. obviously this is not in the interest of the west or some internal scum or the western academia and hence these works dont gain that much popularity.
Very well said catweasel :)
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Hi,
I just wanted to add something.
Recently, i read in a news article that some organisation has conducted genes collection and they found that some people of tamil nadu near madurai have gene pattern of african race. One person called virumandi had an exact gene pattern of Nelson mandela. It was published in some tamil magazines also. Cant recall it now. But if thats the case, then how can we explain that all indians belong to ancient india and no migration happened.
The one which you are referring to is the migration that happened in pre historic world, when the humans first migrated out of Africa. This is a well proved theory today using genetic tests that humans first migrated out of Africa into India and from India spread to the rest of the world including to Europe, North Asia, Australia, Far East and to North America. This is called the Out of India theory. This says that almost all humans outside Africa have their roots in India.
So this is not the same as aryan invasion theory which is said to have happened recently. This happened more than a million years ago, and these were the first humans who migrated out of Africa into India, and their later generations spread from India to the rest of the world.
Then there is another smaller migratory population of Africans who came and settled in Southern India which was in relatively recent times, but again this one is a small time migration like how Indians went and settle in other countries today. Its not something like they are the root of all existing Tamil population.
Malayalam is descendants of Grantha came to existence after Tamil. Malayalam has 70-80% Sanskrit words and has no inferior feeling that it is descendant of Sanskrit though it has inherited Tamil. But the claim still exists Tamil has not inherited Sanskrit.
Not heard from Telugu/Kannada speakers or grt authors that their language did not inherit Sanskrit.
I wonder it is not too far Sankethis of South Central Karnataka claim in near future that their language is aboriginal if such trend continues. Sankethi is a coded language – mixture of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Hindi , Malayalam to name few. Sometimes words of inherited language means totally different in a given context.
I used the word “”Mainstream”” in the sense that it is accepted by many historians, especially linguists. Of course, even the Aryan Migration Theory has many holes in it. For an excellent overview of the Aryan Migration Theory and its rival, the Indigenous Aryan Theory, please refer to the book – “”The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate”” written by Edwin Bryant. This is one of the few books which concentrates more on the light rather than the heat associated with the Aryan debate.
I do agree that nationalism and history should not be confused. Sanskrit being the mother of all languages or not, has nothing to do with nationalism. India has always been a land of diversity and will continue to be so.
Having said that, even the aryan migration theory is NOT the mainstream theory for there is no formidable evidence to support it.
1. Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam are NOT descended from Sanskrit. Telugu, for example, is highly influenced by Sanskrit, but is nevertheless NOT the linguistic daughter of Sanskrit.
2. The Southern Languages are Dravidian Languages. The word Dravidian is being used here in a purely “”linguistic”” (not racial) sense.
3. Aryan Invasion Theory may not be true, but the Aryan (largely peaceful) Migration Theory is still the mainstream theory among historians.
4. Don’t confuse nationalism and history. Someone who says the (generally accepted) truth that Sanskrit is not the mother of all Indian languages isn’t necessarily being anti-national.
Aryan Migration has been proved wrong by even the recent genetic studies. There is not an iota of evidence of any such migration or confrontation either in dravidian literature of in Aryan literature. Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam are highly influenced by Sanskrit, even Tamil is though it is not as much as the other languages. Aryan Invasion Theory is NOT a mainstream theory today, unless you are still living in the 80s. Read about the Out of India theory which recent genetic studies have revealed. You can fake history, but not genes. And again all the Aryans and Dravidians worship the same Gods, follow the same festivals, same rituals – the same Varnashrama system is present in both Aryans and Dravidians – all of which cannot happen unless and until they had a common culture and civilizational past. All of which proves that the Aryan Dravidian divide is a political creation. You wont find any such instances of aryan-dravidian in Pre-Colonial India. What more proof does one need?
Hi,
I must admit, you have helped me greatly dear brother to enlighten a few idiots oops Indians about hopw they are wasting India by filth and ignorance of their culture.
I strongly object to the fact that kannada and telugu were derived form sanskrit.. .they were influenced and NOT DERIVED from sanskrit…. for example in sanskrit words conveying the same meaning have different genders whereas in kannada it is not that case…. another point if south indian languages were derived from sanskrit how come so many original words are there in these 3 languages and how come so much change in the script… can anybody explain?
They are not derived, but are highly “influenced” by Sanskrit. Just like they are greatly influenced by English today. Almost all of the original literary works in these languages were translations or re-rendering of original Sanskrit works. This shows that Sanskrit has influenced these languages immensely.
Sure Srinivas, I agree with you, what you said is the most appropriate way of referring to the geographical directions and we will use only that henceforth
REQUEST TO ALL:
Usage of geographical direction in noun form, eg.””north India””, “”south India”” may kindly be avoided. Normally this usage is when the direction is part of the name itself, eg: North Korea, South Africa, etc.
It is apt to use adjectival form like “”Southern India””, etc.
Thanks for your understanding and easing the pain in my heart!
Come on Abhilash
This is the same argument some people in north east India are using to demand for a separate nation. India has for centuries allowed refugees from all over the world to come and settle here, and obviously their genome doesnt match with that of indegenious Indians. So?
Zoroastrians came to India and settled here from Iran. Can you test their genes and say that Indians migrated from Iran to India?
To support the aryan invasion theory, the kind of genetic testing required is not take genes from random people and come to a conclusion.
First they will have to take the genetic samples across north India mainly from those who directly descend from the vedic age like the temple priests and other communities and test them. Then there needs to be another sampling done to see whether south Indians whom AIT considers native to India, have different genetic makeups than others.
And even then, what is the possibility of migration being the other way round too?
But as I said earlier in one of my posts, the whole confusion is because of equating modern India and ancient India in terms of geographical boundaries. Ancient Indian geography was spread out well beyond modern India. If you realize that part, its no surprise at all finding the common genes in say for ex Uzbekistan and India, because in the vedic period modern uzbekistan was called Taksha khand and same vedic people lived there too!!
2000 years down the lane from now, how about doing a genetic research in pakistan and India and then concluding that pakistanese are actually Indians who invaded/migrated from India? ;)
Today we know its not true because, before partition it was one nation, so you are bound to find genetic similarities.
In a similar way ancient India was this entire part of asia and today we are testing in one part and other part and trying to conclude about migration! This would only lead to an out of India theory for else how can you conclude about the direction, and moreover sanskrit is at the root, about the roots of european languages in sanskrit? No sanskrit text talks about its root locations in europe. So?
A practical answer is that the ancient vedic civilization was spread out in this entire region for the entire geography is clearly mentioned in the ancient texts. One can sit and easily map the entire geography mentioned in the ancient texts and check for oneself. This eliminates the need for both aryan invasion and out of India migration.
My pity about this aryan invasion theory is that what started as an invasion/migration from europe based on biblical history funded by missionary and colonial views, has now moved into asia and has entered the map of ancient Indian geography, and still is not giving up!
We cannot consider anything from central asia as migration. Migration has to come somewhere from europe for the regions of asia are clearly described in ancient texts as part of the vedic culture in those days. Its not migration, today its only separation.
Any person can go through the article above and the entire chain of comments here, and read the links given and then think and conclude for himself/herself ;)
Gurudev,
In my previous post, I was pointing to the Geographic project by the National Geographic Society. This is a human genome study and they have some conclusions of human migrations from central Europe to India.
I was not referring to the study by Stephen Oppenheimer which concludes that all non African people have their roots from people who migrated to India from Africa. But this migration took place around 65,000 years ago and was done by not modern humans but by homo heidelbergensis.
The Geographic project deduces from the distribution of the genetic marker, haplogroup R1A1 (M17) that some sort of a migration indeed did take place from central Europe (Russia/Ukraine – microsatellite diversity of the marker is greatest in in these parts suggesting its origin there) to India, albeit starting from much earlier than 1500BC (from around 10,000 BC). Interestingly if we move the date of the migration backwards to say 9000 BC ? 5000 BC, this can accommodate the Saraswati river paradox very well. :D
Alternatively, high frequency of R1A1 has been found in several south Indian tribes which do not support the migration theory. In fact Stephen Oppenheimer has also undermined the theory of M17 as a marker of an Aryan migration to India.
Even though the National Geographic Society has done some elaborate study on the genome distibutions, I think there is still lack of a specific comparative study of R1a1 haplogroup diversity in cental Asian and Indian polulations. So till then supporters of both sides would be arguing in vain. ;)
PS: I am building a time machine to go to the past and see what exactly happened (I think nothing else would be convincing enough). I will tell you as soon as I find out once and for all. ;)
Shiva
I think you are confusing the genetic studies related to the evolutionary migration of humans, with aryan migration theory. Both are two completely two different things. Thats what even Abhilash said and even I said.
See Abhilash’s comment
“”here you are talking about migrations around 65000 years ago. No Aryans or Dravidians (for that matter, maybe not modern man) were born then””
which is perfect! The genetic patterns indicate that humans migrated from Africa to India 65000 years back, and then from India to the rest of the world, so the entire non-african humans found today have their roots back in India. In other words its the reverse direction of aryan invasion, i.e non-african world came out from India, but again this is NOT to say that aryans actually went from India to rest of the world because this migration took place about 60000 years back, when as Abhilash said probably “”No Aryans or Dravidians were born then””, which is what even I meant when I said “”A human migration that took place before the vedic ages, out of India””
Now which genetic studies are you talking about which say that “”idea of tribes migrating from Central Asia into the Indian subcontinent””? As far as my knowledge goes there is no such genetic study. Will be great if you can point it out. In fact when you look at the vedic texts and the civilizations unearthed elsewhere in the region, it clearly suggests that there is no evidence of any massive migration, but by the time the vedic civilization came into existence it existed all over the region, and today since it’s culture is confined to India we are tending to think in terms of migration from these other parts to India!
In other words its actually the shrinking down of vedic civilization in terms of geography which If you look at the continuous twists made in aryan invastion theory its clear for any person that somehow people desperately WANT TO PROVE that North Indians are NOT native Indians and that they migrated from somewhere else to India. First they called it migration, then they called it invasion, then again now migration. First they started with europe, then nowhere in europe, then near asia, then to central asia, now at ancient India (tashkent was the kingdom of Bharatha’s son in Ramayana), so what does it all mean? They are already inside ancient India.
The geography of modern India and ancient India are not same, Ancient India existed well beyond the boundaries modern India. What we are talking about in this migration theory is actually different parts of ancient Indian civilzation that existed all over this region of asia. Where is the invasion/migration here?
You said “”modifying a theory to suit facts is the right thing to do!!””. Being selective while modifying the theory to ensure that the root statement remains unaltered, is it scientific? Why are those hard facts which are against the root statement left out while modifying the theory? because in that case the theory cant be modified, it has to be totally scrapped out. Selective modification is no science, Its nonsense.
In fact, one of the most important fact is that original proponents of AIT were not historians or archaeologists but had missionary and political axe to grind.
How many questions in the link below does the modified AIT answer?
http://www.hinduwisdom.info/aryan_invasion_theory.htm
http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/ancient/aryan/aryan_frawley.html
The same Max Muller who started off with calling vedas “”childish””, started off with a missionary funded vision, as he got deeper and deeper into sanskrit and the vedas finally in the last days of his life clearly acknowledged the supremacy of the vedas, superiority of sanskrit, and brushed aside the use of the word “”aryan”” to mean a “”race””.
See what he said in his last days
“”I have declared again and again that if I say Aryans, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair nor skull; I mean simply those who speak an Aryan language? To me an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar””- Max Muller
And now we have people who still talk about the aryan race when its original proponent Muller himself has termed it complete nonsense!
Coming back to Sanskrit,
“”Sanskrit is to the Science of language what Mathematics is to Astronomy”” – Max Muller, after he learnt real Sanskrit.
“”Sanskrit is the mother of all languages”” – Francois Gautier, correspondent of Le Figaro,France?s largest circulated newspaper
What is the scientific basis for Proto-Indo-European language when there is not a single scrap of evidence supporting it? If the european languages did not have similarities with sanskrit, do you think they would have ever come up with this “”hypothesis””? Why not consider the possibility of an existing language sanskrit being the
mother of all european languages instead of trying to come up with a new hypothetical language? Isnt this an attempt to distance european languages from Sanskrit? When a theory is put up there should be some rationale reason behind it, which both aryan invasion theory and PIE lack.
Its not mere similar sounding words that make sanskrit root of these languages. There is lot more linguistic reseach into it.
Professor Dean Brown of the American Sanskrit Institute says that Sanskrit is the root of all Indo-European languages. See one of his interviews at
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4ush_thinking-allowed-sanskrit-tradition
Note that nowhere does prof Dean Brown mention PIE even though the interviewer mentions about it in the beginning. Also note that Prof Dean Brown clearly says “”Greek is a vedic subculture””
There is no PIE. Sanskrit itself is the Proto-Indo-European language. The confusion is because of the wrong assumption that Sanskrit is CONFINED to India/asia, and european ancestry lies outside this.
William McDougall beautifully summarized the blunder committed by these self proclaimed historians saying, it is their “”false assumption that linguistic groups are racial groups””
Obviously suppose people today all over the world are using Visual Basic, it doesnt mean that they all descended from Bill Gates!
Let me give a simple example, Sanskrit is classified by some under Indo-Iranian branch, and Lithuanian language under Baltic branch, now what explanation does one has to offer about the vedic Indian concepts like “”Ashwins”” present in Lithuanian? If lithuanian and sanskrit were not linked, then from where on earth did the cultural concepts related to sanskrit enter into the lithunian language? Unfortunately, some of the scientific minded people do not apply here what you said “”Modifying a theory to suit the facts or evidence”” ;)
What do you mean when you say
“”Of course there is compelling evidence against the Aryan *Invasion* theory and that could be used to argue
that the invasion theory is wrong. However, stretching that to say that because the invasion theory is wrong, the theory that Aryan were an indigenous race/ethnic group is correct, is also equally wrong. It is again only a theory.””
If people didnt come from outside, then they have to belong here indigenously right? What is the third option if not?
Doesnt your statement sound like, “”even if aryan invasion theory is wrong, I dont want to accept that these people are indegenious to India””?
Or are you referring to the latest “”version”” of AIT which switches back to “”migration”” instead of “”invasion””. First migration, then invasion, then again back to migration :)
Finally let me quote Will Durant
“”India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe’s languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy””
The thing that is very much debatable or “”wrong”” in the Aryan Invasion Theory is the invasion part. One could very well argue that is an European supremacist view and that is what researchers before you who take the view that “”AIT is wrong”” have done.
I do know and agree that there the invasion theory has been heavily politicised by the Europeans, especially the British to support their colonialisation efforts. Even in India ‘historians’ like Romila Thapar support the invasion theory.
What is *plausible*, however, is the idea of tribes migrating from Central Asia into the Indian subcontinent, rather the northern parts of the Indian subcontinent. This is substantiated by the genetic studies as Abhilash has pointed out. That cannot be ignored. The migration theory would answer your question of why there’s no mention of modern day Europe anywhere in the Vedic literature (the western-most regions described are modern day Afghanistan and parts of Uzbekistan). In fact Max Mueller himself has this view:
?I cannot bring myself to say more than non liquet. But if an answer must be given as to the place where our Aryan ancestors dwelt before their separation, whether in large swarms of millions, or in a few scattered tents and huts, I should still say, as I said forty years ago, ?Somewhere in Asia,? and no more.? [Max Mueller, Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas, 1888]. This is incidentally the same source from which you have quoted Max Mueller in your first post.
Some examples of where you have speculated:
1. “”Proto-Indo-European Language is a hypothetical one created just to free european languages from their roots in sanskrit. Till date nobody knows who spoke it, any words in it, which place was it spoken, any texts in this language etc””
Sure, the Proto-Indo-European family of languages is in some sense hypothetical, but this hypotheis has been made based on similarities in languages like modern day Iranian, Sanskrit, German, Greek and other European languages. It is pure speculation to say that this was “”created to free European langauges from their roots in Sanskrit””.
2. “”Wikipedia is the last source one should refer as it depicts the general trend in society and not necessarily the expert view.””
Not quite. The articles in question are peer-reviewed (which is also the way hard scientific articles are judged and respected) and there are a lot of references to articles published in respected (as in peer-reviewed) journals. The list of articles cover all the viewpoints in the subject.
Good articles in Wikipedia are recognized in this manner.
3. “”If we simply read history we find that this theory was created first (based on political and racial prejudices), and the so called evidences fabricated later, the theory itself was changed later as evidences against it came (explained further below), and finally today it lies flat, exposed!””
Modifying a theory to suit the facts or evidence is really the right thing to do, isn’t it. That is the way science progresses.
5. In several places you have put forth another thesis that because of similarities of words in other languages like with Sanskrit (Man ~ Manushya, Soppanam ~ Swapnam etc), Sanskrit is the “”mother language”” from which all the other languages derived from.
Likely, yes. But what is equally, if not more, likely is that Sanskrit itself could have evolved out of an earlier language or set of languages (as in Proto-Indo European) and later evolved independently. So it cannot be said with certainty that Sanskrit is the mother language. However, within India, it is highly likely given the large similarities of all north-Indian languages with Sanskrit.
Tamil however is a different case. It has loan words from Sanskrit and has also undergone a lot of Sanskritization, but it also has native words equivalents for *all* Sanskritized words like soppanam (kanavu), chandiran (nila) etc. Besides its grammar is different from that of Sanskrit. Scholarly work in this area has established that Tamil is a different language or has evolved out of a language family other than Proto-Indo-European. Refer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_language. It is a “”good”” article as I have explained above.
Of course there is compelling evidence against the Aryan *Invasion* theory and that could be used to argue that the invasion theory is wrong. However, stretching that to say that because the invasion theory is wrong, the theory that Aryan were an indigenous race/ethnic group is correct, is also equally wrong. It is again only a theory.
I’m glad to see people like Abhilash, Balakrishna, Sunita, Shree etc here who have taken a more balanced view to discuss the main topic and the offshoots that have sprung up. Guru, I do think you have something to learn from their attitudes. But, as I have said before, you have put a lot of effort in digging up material and I sincerely commend that. I only question how you draw your conclusions, that’s all.
Shiva
Where have I “”speculated”” things? Look at the very creation of this Aryan Invasion theory. Macaulay funds it, and Max Muller ‘creates’ it based on his ‘biblical’ beliefs with an added masala of european supremacy!
Please look at the numerous facts listed in the entire article and comments above, they are not just literary in nature.
Can somebody show me just one single piece of evidence supporting aryan invasion theory?
I would leave it to the reader to decide whether the facts provided are scientific or not!
Frawley’s paradox clearly proves the myth of the invasion theory. On the one had you have lots of archaeological evidence in Indus valley/Harappa with no literature associated with it and is labeled as Dravidian. On the other hand you have ample literature of the so called Aryans in the form of Vedas, Puranas, Ramayana, Mahabharatha etc associated with the same geography and history but with absolutely no archeology! Isnt it a paradox? asks noted Indologist David Frawley, who also says that the only answer to this is that both the available archaeology and literature belong to one and the same civilization, the vedic civilization of ancient India!
Please see http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/ancient/aryan/aryan_frawley.html
http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/ancient/aryan/aryan_agrawal.html
We have literary, archaeological, linguistic, historic, cultural, geographical evidences, all pointing AGAINST the aryan invasion theory. I am not sure what other ‘scientific’ evidence is required :)
Abhilash is spot on.
I’m not discouraging Guru in his efforts, but literature survey is only part of doing research. If you are putting forth a thesis which is “”AIT is false””, in true scientific fashion, it has to be supported by proof. From what I’ve read here, there’s also speculation here. Granted that you need a better forum to argue a thesis than a blog, but speculating only takes you further from the truth.
It is however true that the European mindset is biased towards the idea that civilization spread from around the Middle-East Asian region and spread west- and eastward. So much so that the northern Europeans of long ago like the Vikings, were called barbarians simply because they were farthest from the so-called cradle of civilization.
Thank you very much Sri for those nice words :) Yes we have to enlighten the youth of India about what India really is.
What you said about channels is very true, even other readers told this to me. But then its a very costly business and requires a lot of investment. So as of now, no plans for it!
Gurudev,
For a long time i have been in search for truth about our origins and our culture. After reading your articles and your research, you won’t believe how much i am excited…
The best thing we can do is pass on this information to the next generation and spread the truth, you bet i have already started …
People like you should be funded to do further research and present this in a channel that is similar to Discovery or History Channel. See these people they use this medium to promote their theory thats how some times the wrong message is spread across.
I am very proud of your articles and research, keep up the good work.
Pandian
A very late reply to your comment of whether I blog anywhere. I have finally started blogging. Please visit my blog at http://indianempire.wordpress.com/
Question is what is vedic age?
Vedas ever existing and immortal as it is “”Knowledge””
Some one expressed that sound indian rivers are not referred anywhere.. Just wondering… hindu rituals of inviting Water force into Kalash-puja pot with names like Narmada, Sindu, Kaveri, Krishna, Godavari Saraswati, Ganga, Yamuna etc..
My humble request to brothers & sisters – sanatana dharma followers in particular to observe/study own culture before commenting it.
Exactly Boss, if you read my comment once again, which is why I said “”A human migration that took place BEFORE the vedic ages, out of India!””.. meaning EVEN THIS WAS LONG BEFORE THE VEDIC AGE :)
Boss, here you are talking about migrations around 65000 years ago. No Aryans or Dravidians (for that matter, maybe not modern man) were born then. I didn?t read the link you provided fully, but refer this interesting study which says all non African people have their roots from people who migrated to India from Africa. So Out Of India is true but not in our context? ;)
Very well said, Abhilash, you spoke like a true researcher.
But as Guru has explained time and again how AIT is a complete hoax to divide the society right at the center, AIT was created which is falling down with each new evidence that we get. Also the linguistic evidence in no way proves that sanskrit took birth from europian or iranian languages. Infact the proponants of AIT have never been able to justify how many of these vedic texts were there long before 1500 BC. This is a systematic effort to rig up Indian history. I am for finding out the truth, but in this case, this theory stands as naked as a xxxxx. Look at when this theory was proposed and by whom, of all Max Muller and the macaulay who is now established as the true annihilator of indian culture. That itself is more than enough to doubt this this junk.
But in general for other theories which have some sane facts to substantiate itself, I am with you, i.e., we need to keep an open mind for everything.
But in this case the theory was created first and then people are desperately trying to cling on to whatever small relationship they find between europeans and indians to propogate this theory. At best I can only laugh at the AIT, but it becomes serious when some dravidian groups try to use this theory for political reasons. Hence this theory is very dangerous and that’s exactly what macaulay wanted.
The two predictions done by two colonists
macaulay – that India’s backbone is its culture so to break its back we need to break its culture and divide the society and inject english as a learning medium so that they forget the junk sacred texts
churchill – India will be ruled in years to come by thugs, crooks and people whose only intention will be to make money.
Sadly both these predictions are true, that’s the Indian truth.
Abhilash
Thats what we are doing, keeping an open mind, and hence rejecting fabricated theories :)
First of all, Europe is totally ruled out of the picture for any migration because till 10000 years back it was too cold to live, full of ice! There was
Next, current genetic evidence suggests that
“”because these events (migrations suggested by genetic evidence) took place during the last Ice Age, Europe was at first too cold for human habitation and was populated only later – not directly from Africa but as an offshoot of the southern migration which trekked back through the lands that are now India and Iran to reach the Near East and Europe.””
In other words, this actually supports Out of India theory! A human migration that took place before the vedic ages, out of India! Well, even that makes sense, doesnt it?
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/12/science/12cnd-migrate.html?ex=1273550400&en=f51368b3ad504517&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
Gurudev/Vijay,
I am not adhering to either theory here. Both have their strong points and weak points.
The case of the Saraswati river is a strong argument against the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT). But one must also consider the linguistic evidence and more importantly the genetic evidence (the Genographic Project conducted by the National Geographic Society) before completely discarding the AIT.
My point is that we should be keen to get to the truth, even if it doesn?t suit our patriotic or other interests. Personally I would hate it if Max Muller is proved right. But, God forbid, if that is the truth, I will sadly accept it rather than try to oppose it. I will not give up my search, whatever the nature of the truth is. :)
So before completely dumping/accepting a theory, we need all questions answered – 100%. Even if there is .00001% evidence supporting/contradicting the theory, we have to keep an open mind. What say, friends? :D
Abhilash
The contents in the links are full of ‘ifs’,’buts’ , ‘may bes’ and self contradictions.
If we simply read history we find that this theory was created first (based on political and racial prejudices), and the so called evidences fabricated later, the theory itself was changed later as evidences against it came (explained further below), and finally today it lies flat, exposed!
We have to see the obvious, which is as follows:
1) None of the vedic texts talk about this migration/invasion
2) None of the vedic texts talk about a “”root”” present outside the subcontinent
3) Date of extinction of Saraswati River and 1500 BCE are completely incompatible.
4) There is no race called “”aryans”” and “”dravidians”” mentioned anywhere in the ancient texts
5) There is no so called “”Dravidian literature”” which is completely outside the so called “”Aryan culture”” and which talks about an invasion by aryans
6) Proto-Indo-European Language is a hypothetical one created just to free european languages from their roots in sanskrit. Till date nobody knows who spoke it, any words in it, which place was it spoken, any texts in this language etc
7) Even the astronomical datings based on vernal equinox mentioned in vedas, date it back to atleast 4000 BCE!
I can simply go on and on and on…..
Look the history of the aryan invasion theory itself. First they proposed it saying intelligent aryan europeans invaded India, then once Indus valley was discovered they changed it to a Dravidian-Aryan issue saying nomadic aryan tribes invaded India, then now again as Aryan-Dravidian divide is being ruled out and as more facts come forward they are calling it a migration instead of an invasion! What is all this?
Writing to his wife in 1866 Macaulay says
“”It [the Rigveda] is the root of their religion and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last three thousand years.””, and then he funds Max Muller who creates this Aryan Invasion Theory!
“”Out of India theory”” has become necessary today to explain the roots of sanskrit in european languages. Because the question otherwise would be that “”If aryans did not come to India from Europe then how can one explain the sanskrit roots of european languages, the relationship between man and manu?, how can explain the traces of vedic culture in other civilizations?””.
I dont even think that “”Out of India”” to be true either because again the same questions. No mention of outward migration anywhere in the ancient vedic texts. I assume that Sanskrit and vedic culture were spread all across the globe thousands of years even before the ancient Sumerians. What I mean is when the vedic civilization flourished it was a global phenomenon already.
This quite obviously explains the sanskrit and vedic resemblances across the globe like in russian excavations, the sumerian, egyptian, roman pagan, ancient arab/ancient iranian cultures, etc. Also the detailed description of kingdoms across the globe in these ancient texts supports this view, like the earth being divided into seven parts (called Dvipas), which were further divided into Varshas, further into Khandas etc.
Vedic past of the humans hence seems to be an appropriate term, not an inward or outward invasion limited to modern Indian geography :)
Finally, some points to ponder about
http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/aryan-invasion-history.html
http://www.hinduwisdom.info/aryan_invasion_theory.htm
Abhilash,
Yes I saw them long ago, and the funniest part was that said by Bryant that rigveda represents nomadic culture which worships fire. Comeon, man, seriously has thsi Bryant guy studied the rigveda. Their view of all Indian Literature is that its just some tribal stuff and they worship fire, water, etc. They cant even comprehend what their true meanings are. No one has ever able to give a specific date to the vedas. That itself shows how shallow these reaserchers work.
They themselves put forth a sentence right at the beginning saying that some scholars are of the view that migration took place from out of India and not into India. The pro-invasion history scholars only take into account the relation between the Indo-European languages but fail to point out that sanskrit has been there in this part of the world much before European langauges were refined. They systematically neglect the evidences of sanskrit as an established language much before the dates that they give for the invasion. They neglect the archeological findings of dwaraka, which is dated much before this invasion. This is what has happened due to the consistent neglect of history by us. Our history has been written by others who dont even know many facets of the true history. How many of them know that Valmiki had written Ramayana much before these dates, hence meaning that Lord Rama existed much before the dates of this illusionary invasion.
All they do is comparison between Indian/Iranian/European cultures and come to the conclusion that civilization started from Europe-Iran-India. Its just common sense that the migration can be the other way round too.
Finally any attempt to argue against the aryan-invasion theory is labelled as hindu fundamentalism or nationalism, which shows how open they are to criticism.
Wikipedia is the last source one should refer as it depicts the general trend in society and not necessarily the expert view.
Hi Gurudev & Vijay,
The Aryan invasion theory cannot be siad to be completely baseless. See what Wiki has to say… ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan_migration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_India_theory
Hahaha, Junk indeed, LOL. Even I happened to glance thru it. The funniest part for me was “”In addition Sanskrit contains many loanwords of Dravidian origin.”” which clearly shows their stupidity ;) and makes our tamil brothers believe that tamil was the mother of sanskrit which makes me laugh, LOL. Very funny indeed.
Gurudev,
This is for your reference
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Ithaca/1335/Hist/fall_ind.html
Ramana
It is not just MY theory that aryan invasion is wrong :) I just added some more facts to it here. Every single historian today, you can check out over the internet, has said that it is a complete myth.
Just go through the way in which this theory was created by Max Muller between four walls to see the “”science”” behind this theory. See my post http://hitxp.wordpress.com/2007/12/13/a-presentation-on-the-future-of-past/
As I have said in this article given above, the basic confusion is because of we equating the geography of ancient vedic culture with the geography of modern India. The fact is that during the vedic ages the vedic culture was spread all across the globe, this was thousands of years before even the sumerians civilization existed.. Vedic geography mentions places from north pole to south pole from america to austrialia. Hence it is quite natural to find traces of this ancient culture all across the globe. The similarity you found in Iranian hymns is not just limited to Iran, its there in Lithuanian, in ancient Sumerian, in Egyptian, every where….
See http://www.ivarta.com/columns/OL_051212.htm Its even found in Russia now! What does all this simply means? Its anybody’s guess :)
Then about the proto-Indo-European language, again this is
another FABRICATED theory like the aryan invasion to prove the European supremacy.. They cannot accept that fact that Sanskrit is the root of all Indo-European languages.
Earlier this theory of Proto-Indo-European did not exist bcos they had proposed the aryan invasion saying Indian aryans themselves were originally from Europe. Now that the Aryan Invasion theory had collapsed, they were forced to accept that Europeans were of Aryan origin, who came from India because their European languages had Sanskrit in their roots, so they somehow wanted to get rid of it.
So they came up with this concept of Proto-Indo-European saying this was the root of all Indo-European languages and even Sanskrit came from this language, and all european languages came from this language, and that Sanskrit is the root of ONLY Indian (not Indo-European) languages!!
Why all this? Just to somehow prove that Sanskrit has nothing to do with European languages…
The beauty of this joke called Proto-Indo-European language is that till today no civilization has been found which was speaking this language, there has not been a single word of this language known, nobody knows how was it, who spoke it, when, where, no literature about it, no other ancient cultures/languages including vedic/sanskrit mention about it…..
So this PIE is just another figment of imagination like Aryan Invasion Theory.
Now about the so called “”massive”” burials. Massive? There are only 37 skeletons found in that site of Mohen Jo Daro, is that massive? Brutal injuries??? who said :)
Prof. G. F. Dales (Former head of department of South Asian Archaeology and Anthropology, Berkeley University, USA) in his The Mythical Massacre at Mohenjo-daro, Expedition Vol VI,3: 1964 states the following about this evidence:
“” What of these skeletal remains that have taken on such undeserved importance? Nine years of extensive excavations at Mohenjo-daro (1922-31) – a city of three miles in circuit – yielded the total of some 37 skeletons, or parts thereof, that can be attributed with some certainty to the period of the Indus civilizations. Some of these were found in contorted positions and groupings that suggest anything but orderly burials. Many are either disarticulated or incomplete. They were all found in the area of the Lower Town – probably the residential district. Not a single body was found within the area of the fortified citadel where one could reasonably expect the final defence of this thriving capital city to have been made.””
He further questions:
“”Where are the burned fortresses, the arrow heads, weapons, pieces of armour, the smashed chariots and bodies of in the invaders and defenders? Despite the extensive excavations at the largest Harappan sites, there is not a single bit of evidence that can be brought forth as unconditional proof of an armed conquest and the destruction on the supposed scale of the Aryan invasion.””
You can read even more information on this here
http://www.tamilnation.org/heritage/aryan_dravidian/agrawal.htm
Hope this answers :)
Gurudev,
I have problem accepting your theory as final one or real one, not because I know history well, in fact I do know very little but because the process involving any claim by peer review. The claims that you are mentioning must go through rigorous and independent peer/publishing process. As you know these processes are in place. If they are not published in reputable journals including Indian and International journals the claims are just claims with out validity.
These are simple things I know with my limited knowledge
That are not in favor of anything other than Aryan Invasion.
1) The massive burials and brutal injuries on the skulls suggest an invasion by foreign power
2) Language link ..Proto-Indo-European, Loubird mentioned in her post
3) Anomaly of Iridium ( radio active Material) ,ruling out any other kind of reason of disappearance of Indus culture
4) A strong Indo-Iranian connection.
– I happened to hear Iranian hyms recently and I am surprised to hear how closely sound to south Indian hyms and slokas.
The new revolt against Aryan invasion , is it politically charged one or does it have reputable Indian historians supporting for it?
Interested to know more about it..
DARYL GRANT
Its my pleasure to share with rest of the world whatever bit I know which I find worth sharing :)
I WANT TO THANK YOU FOR EXPLAINING THIS INDIAN HISTROY AND THE TRUTH ABOUT IT. I HAVE BEEN STUDING TEXTS ABOUT RELIGION FOR MANY YEARS TO FIND THE TRUTH AND THE CLOSER I GET TO IT (TRUTH) THE MORE AWAKEN I BECOME. AGAIN THANK YOU..
Shree,
have you ever heard of the word tanning. I was a bit brownish red when in bangalore, but since I have come to the west my friends say I have become firer, thats because I stay indoors mmost of the time, there is little sun here and it chill. The reason there is diversity in skin colour in India is bacause people tend to marry within their caste. Now how did upper caste people become fairer in the first place? the reason is simple, they wer staying indoors most of the time and didnt not do much of the manual work. The people who do manual work out under scorching sun tend to turn darker. Maybe now that the caste system is slowly vanishing and the work done by people is not dictated by their castes, who knows, maybe in 500 years many darker skinned Indians may turn fairer. Please think about it.
Shree
It is interesting to note that you have not put across any points that substantiate the aryan invasion theory :)
The theory about four races and melanin linked to equator is NOT MY THEORY, its the current set of scientific theories which every student of these subjects studies. Sunlight is more intense around the equators and hence evolution gave people here more melanin to protect the skin, the other minor distortions around equator that you mentioned are due to human migrations, just because a person from siberia relocated to central africa doesnt change his or his children’s skin colour immediately right? Evolution and adaptation is a slow process…
Can you show me Indians who look like Europeans :)
Of course, modern India also contains people from other parts of the word like the descendants of muslim invaders, greek invaders, tibetian refugees, people of african origin, from afghanistan etc.. but how is that in any way related to the aryan invasion theory?
If south Indians are not the vedic people, then why do ancient south Indian texts also have the same ramayana, mahabharatha, vedic commentaries etc? Where did shankaracharya, ramanujacharya, madhvacharya etc come from? North or South India?
In fact, the truth is that in the vedic texts and related historical scriptures you find no mention of any other culture.. and yet we also know that sanskrit is the root of all indo -european languages.. so it makes more sense to think that what we call as modern world today has its roots in ancient India, in other words ancient Indians are the ancestors of modern europeans! I can provide a big list of similarities between greek stories and ancient Indian texts.
Of course saraswati river, ganga and yamuma met at prayag during the vedic age. Saraswati river entered this place in a subterranean channel, satellite imagery and geological excavations have proved that this river is not a myth and did indeed exist. It only makes sense because why on earth will the people of the vedic age mention two real rivers (ganga and yamuna) and another imaginary river?
Please see http://hitxp.wordpress.com/2007/06/22/saraswati-darshan-the-revelation-of-sarasvati-river/
You wasted your time on this article because you saw real substance in it, and since you did not want to believe it, you were trying to see if there is any possible flaw which you can highlight to prove it wrong :)
I wonder how NO-ONE disagreed with you as this is a very debatable topic. I am not sure if you will sensor this comment because I would like to say I did not agree with you. Not because I am agreeing or disagreeing with the theory, but because I am surprise how novice and baseless your own arguments are. Extremely flippant and speculative.
Where do I begin? “”wrong theory long back””… long back when? In reference to Hitler… “”mindlessly””… on one hand you claim it is “”mindless”” killing and on the other, you comment on his very thoughtfully calculated move. So this is the wrong use of the word “”mindless””. What is the source of the “”definition”” of the Aryan Theory? Did you make up the definition according your own interpretation, or are you refering to any scholarly source?
There are so many stupid claims, that I am sure if it worth commenting. I will browse of the middle section. Your rhetorical question “”why do the vedic texts talk about locations in South India?”” Well, why don’t these texts ever take the pain of mentioning the South Indian rivers? They weren’t “”great rivers””? Why this prejudice? They were one nation, one race, one people?
So, the Saraswati that flows through modern Punjab met the Ganga and Yamuna in Prayag? Is there any evidence showing this?
There four major races (like a myriad other claims) is not supported with any scholarship. You just make a claim.
Here’s the funniest part that left me ROTFL (Rolling On The Floor Laughing). As you go nearer the equator, people become darker. Yes, the whole of Africa (except Egypt) is lined around the equator. Algeria and West Bengal and Kashmir are on the same altitude. South Africa is further away from the equator than Delhi. Indonesia is also on the equator.
Well, if I think for a moment that your wierd melanin theory is right, then the whole of India should be black. What made some of us so fair?
Your SMARTEST comment in the entire piece came at the very end Aryan Invastion Theory – THE END :) That was really intelligently articulated with an intended pun. I have no idea why I just wasted so much time in commenting on this ….
Gurudev,
Do you believe there is any chance of Vedas being patented by westerners. i.e., after some 500 years, say, they may claim all this vedic knowledge was given down by them to Indians. May be Inidians might even believe them at that time (2500 AD).
Here goes abstract of “”Points/propose that strongly contradicts AIT= Out of India theory-OIT””
Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_India_theory
*********************************************
The Out of India theory (OIT, also called the Indian Urheimat Theory) is the proposition that the Indo-European language family originated in the Indian subcontinent and spread to the remainder of the Indo-European region through a series of migrations.
Originally proposed in the late 18th century in an attempt to explain connections between Sanskrit and European languages, it is today rejected by the majority of academics in the relevant fields,[1][2][3] in preference to the more widely held[4] Kurgan model.[5][6]
The Out of India theory builds on the controversial[7][8] idea that Aryans are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent and its recent revival in Hindu nationalist writing has made it the subject of a contentious debate.
*********************************************
Aryan Invasion Theory is the biggest myth that was created out of political motives without any scientific proofs. The only true motive of Aryan invasion theory was to fool Indians into believing that the British have the right to rule India because Indians originally came from the aryan race of central europe of which Europeans are the true inheritors!!
All the well known historians of today world wide have called this theory “”rubbish””. Unfortunately some still continue to believe this British myth!
There is no proof of any Aryan invasion either in the form of ancient texts (including vedas), nor is there any archaeological evidence of aryan establishments outside India, and there are ample evidences of the origin of the vedic culture within India itself in the form of both ancient texts as well as historical, archaeological and geographical proofs.
Hi Everyone,
I chanced upon this web page while searching for some articles. I read through the page about the discussions about the aryan invasion theory.
Here are my comments:
1. “”History is always writter by the winners”” – Hence we only have the Aryans version of the history.
2. The Invasion, took a long time. Comparing with the British, the British occupation itself was 300 years. Similarly, the Aryan invasion took more than a 3 to 4000 years.
During this time, there was a “”Cultural”” Mix. Proof for this would be our Vedic texts itself.
3.Aryans should not be regarded on basis of Colour. Colour has nothing to do in this. Aryans should be thought of as a way of life.
http://chandrashekhar.sulekha.com/blog/post/2006/02/roots.htm
hi gurudev,
please go thru thw above link…something really new for me…
especially the 2nd last para..it tells something…true ??
i dont see my posting for the past 1 week now. u r basically a biased person i feel.
Is this the way to treat a new person on ur blog?
For argument sake even assuming that Aryan’s were of European origin and need to migrate was due to climate / food – No where in the vedic text there is any reference to the icy continent or their description there off . No mention of the nomadic movement or settling down in the plains of the Euro-asia.
Instead there is reference to Antarctic – Dakshin Gongotri – So were we the first to give the description of the icy Dakshin Gongotri ? Need further probe …
S Sainath, in fact site contains grt contribution from experts in various fields graduated with western style of education yet have inclination towards Knowledge- Veda. They are conducting International Seminar at Hyd on Different scientific subjects and its references/solution in vedas this December 14th . They have plans to conduct such discussions at Chennai and B’lore near future.
Thanks a lot for that nice link sainath.. will go through it :)
hi gurdev or usri,
can anyone of you explain the below link in simple language
http://www.serveveda.org/cosmos_divine_scientific.pdf
Thanks
Brilliant arguments Vinay. Thanks a lot for that info.
Regarding Retroflex in Sanskrit, please note that even Russian, Polish have retroflex. i.e. dravidians were in Europe ? Silly. Even current AIT/AMT proponent M.Witzel has accepted that Brahui is later migration after Christ. Development of Yoga is after Rigveda ( as per ancient sanskrit scripture ) , but we find Yoga postures in small terracota statues from IVC excavationss. Sanskrit was always associated with science & technology like Maths, Metalurgy, Astronomy, Sea navigation , ayurveda etc. So, we believe that dravid people of IVC were not having terminology for their science and adopted from some nomadic aryan tribe from steppes ? When Yoga is called Yoga by accepting original indian word then why so called Dravidians of IVC will accept terminology for whole many sciences in which they were far ahead of any civilization ?
IVC shows many aspects of post vedic period.
I have noticed that some people name are more widespread in one region or used only in those region. e.g. above mentioned Kritikka nakshatra name of females mostly of Gujarat & Rajashtan. Why people will give that name to their daughters and why other people will not use that – like South Indians. If dravidians were IVC people then they would keep Kritika name in their collective memory and that will appear as names. This is just one observation of mine.
Gurudev,
I have recently come across your blog.This is a nice blog on the whole with lots of information .
I am eagerly awaiting your unanswered questions for T.Sunitha’s questions such as
1) Origin of the word “”Mayura”” and loan Words in rigvedic sanskrit.
2) The sentences such as ?Given that rig vedic sanskrit dates back to a lot earlier than tamil? & “”I have already shown in my previous comment that sanskrit
is way ancient in history by thousands of years than tamil”” are debatable and requires proper explanation.I would like you to take back your words.
About Brahui, you have mentioned about migration of people from Inner India to Balochistan during muslim invasions. I havent seen any linguist giving this
kind of hypothesis. May be this is your own hypothesis :-(
T.Sunitha,
Very nice questions. I feel now people will not take only “”Tirukkural”” into consideration when they speak about tamil :-). The comparison of golden age of
Tamil and Sanskrit is very interesting.
I=Indian,
I am still not convinced about origin of the word “”dravida””.
As per Dr. Subhash C. Sharma (Email: [email protected]),
1) Adi Sankara (nearly thirteen centuries ago) called himself Dravida-putra
2) Drav (dravya, meaning water) + Vid (veed or beed, meaning ridge / edge), DravVid (used initially colloquially to represent area closest to a river, lake or
sea)
3)There is no circumstantial evidence for the origin or direct relation of the word Dravid with India-south-of-the-Vindhyas or southern peninsula
4) It simply might be that the word Dravid existed for a long time with different connotations, but lost its original meaning over time and later it was
conveniently (or by mistake) used for something else. It could then easily find its way, along with the latest meaning, into the prevailing literature and
dictionaries
Hi all good work
Sunita and Gurudev can u please help me, i was interested finding the origins of romans culture (bcos the western thought is based on these cultures) and see if there is any ancient indian roots in them.Etruscan civilization that developed after 800BC lasted untill 396BC (Romans sacking them)was the base for romans civizations. I had already posted this link,
http://www.verbix.com/documents/etruscan-dravidian.htm
its very radical research paper that suggests that language of Etruscan has dravidian link(plz see the Dravdian and Etruscan glossary in this paper). If its true ,since the authors have used Tamil for comparision,tamil(or if there was any proto-dravidian) should have existed before 800BC .Then it would prove indeed india was cradle of civilazations
Me ?arrogant? to anonymous or anonymous indirectly ?arrogant? to me by asking a sarcastic question. I know very well what you have in mind and why you tell this.
Probably, mixing up things and writing is your way.
If you know how to read, you never would have told me that I am against Sanskrit or Kannada or any other languages. I have told N number of times, that I have great reverence for Sanskrit and I never commented on Kannada language. If you think so, that shows the hatred inside your heart against me.
Anonymous very well knows that most of the people in India, use Sanskrit mantras. He asked me sarcastically thinking that I am against Sanskrit. And you telling me ?hatred?. Who is ?hatred? myself or anonymous or you?
For people who can?t read and grasp things correctly, whatever I say is not going to get into their mind.
If a person talks about Tamil that doesn?t mean he or she is against Sanskrit. It is a common notion in India that all Tamilians are anti-Sanskrit.I very well reiterated the fact that I am not against any language. Even then, you people think that way. That shows that your mind is closed and nothing can percolate, full of hatred ness and ignorance.
?Also how can you conclude that there are other works as great as vedas? This is the mistake you have been repeatedly doing, which is talking about something without even knowing what is there in it. You havent read kannada literature and yet you spoke about it, you havent read vedas and still you speak about it. Very irrational and biased approach?
Come on words are like swords and you tell me that I talk without knowing what is there. Such a derogatory comment.
Did I every tell you that Vedas are literary works?. Had any dream?
You telling me about Sanskrit and vedas.What a joke? Do you know the depth of my knowledge on Vedas,Upanishads,Puranaas and other Sanskrit works?. You know nothing about me, but you talk .Utter ignorance. Just shut up.
Do you know how much in-depth study Iam carrying out in my day to life about languages?. You just pass comments as though you know everything. Good attitude.
Have I ever commented on Kannada literature. Its you, who want to protect your views just by having something else in mind.Very arrogant approach.
I never show off like you and that made you think like that. Wonderful. Iam not like you to jump into writing without studying anything. If I talk about the parallel existence of 2 languages. Its after lots and lots of study undertaken. Do you think I am an idiot as ?
Not like you to read very very little and say ?I know this,I read this,I can compare languages etc?.
Knowledge is a ocean. I never want to say like you, ?I know everything?. It is utter nonsense. You are so reckless when passing commets.
I never tried to protect my views as you do always. You never read completely, but jump into replying. Good.
I always wished to have a healthy conversation about the parallel existence of Tamil and Sanskrit. If that makes some senseless people to think that I am against other languages. I can?t help.
It is waste writing to you. Anyways, you will keep on telling the same points again and again. You never even tried to answer many of my valid points. It is total waste writing to you.
When I say ?great scholars? and their ?conclusion? ? I really meant it. And you pass sarcastic comments on it. Good attitude to make fun of elite people.
Your words are loaded with ego, bias, ignorance, and impatience. And very well you mislead people.
You can make up things and write anything, as you like about people or events or culture or religion or language or any other. After all it is your blog.
Don?t expect any more postings from me. I don?t want to waste my valuable time by writing to a senseless,biased person, who doesn?t have an insight.
Before I depart, i want to to point out that, all of us are children of Annai Bharatam who is diverse in her culture,religion,language,literature,tradition and almost everything.
We all should stand together to make our home land a greatest power in the years to come as she was some centuries before. Our country has the most dangerous neighbours on the Earth.
Lets all unite and make our country strong. Vande Maataram
Dear Sunitha
The points given are quite logical. Would like to mention few observations. It would be of grt help if truth is uncovered
1. As per the dissolution, language is independent of script. So only needed is the first media (=language) used in oldest work.
Parameters to be considered for this ?
a. For Gen info, the oldest excavation inscriptions are not scriptural but they are pictorial
b. The work shouldn?t be hard copy as hard copy are views of individualistic in nature and are not true knowledge
c. Moreover God is the patent of Supreme Knowledge. We only have to find who was blessed first by HIM to bring down that knowledge, abridged/commented and provided it first to mankind and in which language
2. It is quite interesting to know that Tamil can be used simultaneously with Sanskrit in hymns recital. If you or anyone could throw us light on who, when and for what purpose they introduced this to the world. Currently I am looking for learned one (knowledgeable, good at both tamil and Sanskrit vedic practice) who can provide me candid information. This would help us all.
3. Coming to Agastya Mahamuni, whether he is one among saptarshi is debatable. Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saptarishi
If we consider Vedas existed prior to Mahabharat (in fact it is true), then Agastya is not one among Saptarshi. Date of any work should be independent of authors’s birth date.
And most of other points are addressed by Gurudev.
Dear Balakrishnan
I totally agree with your points. Since I consider language as media to acquire knowledge, and that supreme knowledge is in Sanskrit media, I got into advanced Sanskrit studies. (Dear Gurudev, could you pls provide a pointer to post Sanskrit references or misc. information. Since my professor is not just graduated from any current universities and belongs to vedic practising famiy from generations, provides us lot of practical reference in every class. these are not provided in any syllabus. Wish all of us get to know about such references).
I have regards for its simplicity and thoroughness which is proved by modern science too. This does not stop me learning/respecting different languages. That is only for access to regional talented works, better harmony and livelihood. Currently introduced by my professor to I-SERVE(The Institute of Scientific Research on Vedas) when I was trying to find answers on Coal Blooded Murder – specifically on why India should not be part of Interplanetory expeditions race for materialistic gain-(there are evidence in veda’s about ancient indians did interplanatory journey for spiritual reasons). Sharing this site for interested one’s benefits. We may find experts views. They have agreed to clarify my doubts and informed me to read all works provided in url prior to that.
Dear I=Indian
You have provided wonderful information about ?Dravida?. Now apart from my priority to gain scientific knowledge , I also learnt knew thing. thank for your contribution.
Dear Ananymous
Your questions are quite justifying and you seems to learn unabiased facts. Sure you and also Pandian, can contribute a lot and also make us to carry research on our comments itself.
My new work and in accessibility to net are hampering my participation. But only these stimulating, truth finding discussion quenches my thirst and makes my day. I shall provide my comments upon good research/debates with learned ones(Thank God for providing such access) in less frequency.
Sorry Gurudev, It becomes irrational to the current topic.
I = Indian, Good Going.. do you blog somewhere?
Oh My God!
This blog has become a fish without a bicycle ;)
How does it matter, a fish without a bicyle? It doesnt..
So it doesnt matter whether I am there or not.. the comments are on.. interesting debates are on… thank you all for all those wonderful views counterviews arguments counterarguments etc.. without your comments the blog would look like, as if I am talking to myself :)
Sunitha,
Why are you so arrogant to anonymous? What is so ‘anti-tamil’ in his question? He just asked a valid question. Please dont be so arrogant on that. It only proves that you are getting protective about your arguments and trying to dissuade people from asking valid questions. What is so wrong about inquiring about the language used to recite hymns in the temples? Just because the answer is sanskrit, you find it to be anti-tamil and you didnt want him to ask that question!
The language of Indus Valley civilization is not yet known. The debates are still going on, researchers are still trying to read the inscriptions. Some say the language is sanskrit based while others say it is an ancestor of so called dravidian languages. The former view is supported by the vedic texts which are in sanskrit and are associated with the ancient north India, while the latter views make use of the Brahui language in Balochi region.
But that doesnt support the parallelism of Tamil with Sanskrit. For both languages to be parallel there should be ancient literary evidences in atleast one of those languages which refers to the existence of other at that time.
OR
assuming the two languages were out of contact but existed at the same time, there should at least be literary evidences which date both languages back to the same time .
Now the oldest known sanskrit texts the vedas are dated back to atleast 5000 BC and even earlier because of the mention of the saraswati river in those texts. See http://hitxp.wordpress.com/2007/06/22/saraswati-darshan-the-revelation-of-sarasvati-river/
But the oldest available tamil work is Tolkappiam dated to around 300 BC.
Its good to be positive and search for even earlier tamil works. But until a time that such a work is found whose dating is approximately the same as that of vedic texts, there is no prima facie evidence for both the languages being parallel, atleast not in terms of literature.
Nothing can be accepted without proof just because some so called “”Great scholars”” come to some “”conclusion””. How did they conclude without proof?
Nobody here is saying that only tamil is great or only sanskrit is great. Language is just a medium of communication. Its only the people who can be judged as being great or not.
Also how can you conclude that there are other works as great as vedas? This is the mistake you have been repeatedly doing, which is talking about something without even knowing what is there in it. You havent read kannada literature and yet you spoke about it, you havent read vedas and still you speak about it. Very irrational and biased approach.
Vedas are not some mere literary works. It is the encyclopedia of knowledge written in those days. Apart from the spiritual and cultural guidance in it, apart from the great quotes in it, Vedic Mathematics, astrology, Ayurveda (medicine), Dhanurveda (military warfare), Yoga (exercise for mind and body), Puranas (documented history), the science in the vedas, music, upanishads all these are part of those ancient texts.
See for ex:
http://hitxp.wordpress.com/2007/05/28/speed-of-light-explained-in-rigveda/
http://hitxp.wordpress.com/2007/05/01/what-vedas-say-about-the-age-of-the-universe/
http://hitxp.wordpress.com/2007/04/30/scientific-verification-of-vedic-knowledge-in-hinduism/
http://hitxp.wordpress.com/2007/08/23/vedic-mathematics-simplified-part-1/
Pandian,
Yes I agree that its all about the dirty politics.
No matter how rational/irrational a person is, what he should not be doing is preaching ideology based on hatred and divisive politics. Because such people will leave a scar in the society for a long time even after they are gone.
Periyar’s approach has reflected in Karunanidhi’s statements causing a crack in the society. Brahmin Vs Non-Brahmin, Aryan vs Dravidian. And as I=Indian has clearly shown, all this so called rational thought is without any real logic or sound basis in it, and results in nothing but more racism, hatred and a social divide while achieving nothing good.
It becomes irrational when we think only about being rational rather than thinking about the actual topic :)
Gururaj
Yes devolution is the perfect word, which is what is the name given to the current timeline in the vedas calling it a kaliyug, where human values have reached its lowest level, where rulers will be liars and dishonest, where lust rules over love, pleasure rules over social service etc
I=Indian
you look like the Indian cricket team which thrashed the Aussies in the semis :) Good going and strong arguments with logic, thanks for all the info. But dont try to hit only sixers all the time..
I= Indian,
Historically, there is not one version of Ramayana in India.
Every author has added their own gimmicks favouring characters.
recently I read a tamil story called Seethayana..
Periyar is not a hero / ideal man. There were some of his ideology is good, there were something in his ideology that is bad. His intention is to ask people to think rational but it was always seen as he was praising anti god.
I dont know whether periyar knows Ravana was Brahmin or not. but thinking rationally, the time at which the story was written, Ravana followed saivism. we cant say it as Hinduism. Hinduism is not one religion in India.
Its not only periyar, who has written in praise of Ravana.
Saiva literatures of tamil, praises Ravana..
Onam festival in Kerala is for Maha Bali, Asura.
Asuras were not bad guys as common faith of people interprets.
Luckily, most of the identified Asuras found to be rulers of South India. which favoured his ideology.
The present Hinduism hides or merges two great religions saivism & Vaishnavism. Traditionally, The fight or competition between them leads to creation of lots of stories favoring each God. ( rational )
Hindu Politics is equally clumsy as Periyar Politics.
Quote for Periyar also applies to Hindu Politics.
The principles in Hinduism is more important than mere characters/stories.
Ravanayana? Oh man I am rotfl.
Didn’t periyar know that Ravana was a brahmin? going by periyar’s version of aryan-dravidian view, Ravana was a pure aryan, a person who was more knowledgeable than many other brahmins of the time, and still periyar calls him the dravidian who fought against aryans. What a hypocrite story.
There is a quote which applies to Periyar: You can fool some people all the time, you can fool all people for some time.. but you can’t fool all the people all the time.
Pandian, I didnt say Dravida is not a samskrit word. It is definitely a samskrit word. But what I mean was, unlike what Sunitha said, it was not a word given by Samskrit speaking people to non-samskrit speaking people. It was a word given by a foreign author called Robert Caldwell in a book about south Indian languages called ?Comparative grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian family of languages? published in 1856. Then the word was used by Periyar to refer to his separate south Indian dream, and now it is limited only to politics of Tamilnadu.
I = Indian,
Dravida Politics was one of the main reason for the retrieval of many tamil literature that further leads to existence of current Tamil. and so, EVR was refered as Father of Tamil. But he has spoken in favor of English than tamil at one instance.anyways, EVR is not a maryatha purusha and Just another extremistic rational thinker.
I dont know whether Dravida is a sanskrit word or not. But wikipedia refers it as Sanskrit word in more than four location. Wikipedia, kindly requires your service.
About Ravana as a Hero (pls.. note it is not as God), I have to say, EVR wanted the people to think rational and wanted the people to not to worship anybody, Anti God / God / Man. EVR wanted the people to read Ramayana, as a fairy tale and not as a holy sacred text. He questions Ramayana with his own morals and ideology. He himself has used some of its morals in his Ravanayana.
But people(including me) always want to live under beliefs/conspiracies and we give more importance to characters than principles.
Nowadays, in TN, Rajni was considered as God, and His movies were considered equivalent to Epic by his fans or Bhakthas.
May be after 3000 years, the descendants of these Rajni bhakthas might shout against India, for a plan to construct a bridge in Himalayas as it destroys the Rajni’s pilgrimage path.
Also, at those time, Some people site the reference to his super human action with advance technical terms (quantum mechanics) and claim Rajni as God. :)
Dravida Politics is equally clumsy as Hindu/muslim/christian Politics. Is there any place without politics?..
Gururaj,
Human Devolution is a good one.
Just reminded of my college T shirt writing.
“”I was born smart, but Education Ruined me””
I have been reading your blogs for sometime and they are excellent. I got here while searching initially about vedic cosmology. One of the articles I have read is http://www.humandevolution.com/ID.html by M Cremo. absolutely amazing. I am curious to know what others think of it.
Sunitha
The word Dravida was not given by samskrit speaking people to tamil speaking people. Who gave you this wrong information?
This is a brief history of the word Dravida and the Dravidian movement.
The word Dravida was first used to denote the class of the south Indian languages, from a book by Robert Caldwell called “”Comparative grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian family of languages”” published in 1856.
The word later was first used by Periyar as an effort to unite South India in the name of Dravida, against North India.
It started for the first time in August 1944 when Periyar came out of Justice Party and formed the “”Dravida Kazhagam””. Later in 1949 there was a split in Dravida Kazhagam. This was when Annadurai came out of the party and formed today’s DMK, because he was protesting against Periyar’s decision to appoint his young wife whom he had recently married as his successor in the party.
Periyar started the idea of Dravidstan based on the Aryan Invasion theory. That too knowing very well that the British were using the AIT as a justification for their occupation of India, by saying falsely that the North Indians were the descendants of aryan british!
It was periyar who first started theatrical productions of the reinterpretation of Ramayana showing Ravana as a Dravidian hero and Rama as an Aryan villain!
Periyar also declared Indian Independence day as a day of slavery, and a day of mourning! He even called Tamil as a language of Barbarians and wanted people to embrace english instead!
But there were not many takers for the Dravidstan movement, and Annadurai/DMK gave up the demand for a separate Dravidstan in 1962. So what started in the form of a movement based on Aryan Invasion Theory, claiming for a separate south India free of Brahmins and North Indians, ended up as a political force confined to Tamilnadu.
I am saying all this just to make you aware of the dravidian movement. Tamil is a also great ancient language. Hindi should not be IMPOSED anywhere in India including in Tamilnadu. But dravida is totally a different story full of politics. Please dont mix dravida and Tamil.
Anonymous,
First try to understand what I say before putting any Q. Have I ever questioned the antiquity of Sanskrit?.
The way you have posted very well shows that you don?t want to know anything about Tamil and simply want to question it and shows that you are a typical anti-Tamil. That shows your narrow mindedness.
The conversation is all about the parallel existence of Tamil and Sanskrit.
And also comparing the works of Tiruvalluvar by certain Tamilians with Sanskrit works shows the ignorance of a person and very well he is a amateur because Tirukkural is a Tamil work which came very much later (after Christ).
Yes, we have the option to recite mantras in Tamil. Try to read proper Tamil works before passing some silly commets.
For knowledge sake atleast try to read ?Nallayira Divya prabandham? by Thondarradi podiazhvaar.
Gurudev,
?Dravida? is a name given by Sanskrit speaking people to non-Sankrit speaking people.
I have very well explained you about the word ?Sangam? in my previous post. Why again a question of origin of ?Sangam? word?
No doubt Prakrit came from Sanskrit (language of Jainism).
Yes, Tirukkural is a NOT a pure Tamil work , but which has Prakrit words in it, as Tiruvalluvar being a Jain. This is what Iam saying from the beginning.
When we want to talk about Tamil, we have to consider PURANANOORU,TOLKAPPIAM,PATHUPATTU,ETTUTHOHAI and other great Tamil works rather than Tirukkural, Bharathiyar works etc. These are very much later Tamil works.
If you argue with Tirukkural, yes, it obviously not being a pure Tamil work, everyone starts saying Tamil came from Sanskrit. The panel of scholars who decide on the classical status of a language would have never accorded Tamil a ?classical langauge? status, if at all they have taken ONLY Tirukkural into account. That?s the mistake what the non-Tamil speaking people or the so called Tamilians (amateurs), are doing all these years.
There is NO question of Tamil being classical.
Loan words doesn?t mean that most of the words are derived from another language. Its just few words of a language inspired by co-existing language. I have very well shown an example of loan word (Mayura). This is what I call loan words.
Coming to the point of Rig veda, ?Given that rig vedic sanskrit dates back to a lot earlier than tamil? and also ?I have already shown in my previous comment that sanskrit is way ancient in history by thousands of years than tamil? ? This is a VERY AMBIGUOUS statement. Iam wondering what made you to tell this; till date NO great scholars of both Sanksrit and Tamil have told this and proved this or even believed that there was NO Tamil works at the time of Vedas.Only amateurs of Sanskrit and Tamil fight which language is greater than the other (just like a fight between Saivaites and Vaishnavites). There were Tamil works as sacred as Sanskrit vedas and both languages exchanged words out of Inspiration. There were no fight between both of them, as it is in these modern days
.
Most unfortunate is that, currenlty we are not able to discover those great Tamil sacred works. That?s why we are conversing like this. And also DON?T say Tamil sacred works concept what I am talking about is just an illusion. It?s the conclusion of Great scholars who have carried IN-DEPTH study on Tamil language.
The earliest Tamil work Tolkappiam, did very well suggest that there existed a rich,vast,sacred literary tradition long before Tolkappiam.
In Sanskrit after Paanini?s work,
We have discovered a flurry of literaray works
In Sanskrit before Paanini?s work
We have discovered sacred, rich works in Sanskrit.
In Tamil after Tolkappiar?s work,
We have discovered a flurry of literaray works
In Tamil before Tolkappiar?s work,
We have not discovered any works.
But Tolkappiam, very well suggest that there existed a rich tradition. This is the unfortunate state, which make us converse like this.
?And there have been no scientific evidences for the existence of any proto-dravidian languages as such. No inscriptions, literature, civilizations, nothing..?
?but given the fact that the roots of the so called dravidian languages like kannada and telugu in sanskrit?.
Kannada ? Why it is called a Dravidian language if it is derived from Sanskrit?. Yes, I have lot to tell about this. Will come to this and retroflex consonants soon.
Answer me one Q, what is the language spoken by people of INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION?
?But it doesnt date back before 13th or 14th centuries and the historical views are that these were migrations from Inner India to Balochistan during muslim invasions.?
Again an ambiguous statement. Will take up this also soon.
Tamil was brought down to Planet Earth by Great Sage Agatsiya, one among the Saptarishis. Everyone knows and accepts that life was brought to Earth via Saptharishis. This itself is enough to say that Tamil is as divine and as old as Sanskrit.
For people who disagree, Iam ready for any kind of converstaion.
Pandian
Anti God is NOT rational thinking.
The problem with some of these atheists is, they continuously try to prove their atheism by being anti-god, usually end up hurting the sentiments of others by making derogatory or abusive comments against a God, etc. If they believe that there is No God, then what is this Anti-God thing :)
btw, you said “”same is the case for any other religion””? I dont think so. See definitions for blasphemy, infidels, non-believers etc :)
Gurudev,
A small correction on chentamil & koduntamil..
it is not old vs modern tamil.
Old tamil literature says that chenthamizh and kodunthamizh as the language used by elite people vs common people (in other words upper caste vs lower caste).
Balakrishna in his earlier comments, mentions EVR as anti Hindu and Anti God.. the right word, I think is Rational Thinking..
Its a thinking for the 97% of hindus who were suppressed by the laws defined in Hindu scriptures.
In one of his speech, he says that , “”Only a Hindu can raise a question against Hinduism.”” same is the case for any other religion. It is really true, else it would be a communal fight.
Though he was also an extremist, the recent tamil movie “”periyaar”” is worth watching and a great way to know about what is rational thinking.
anonymous
Yes the mantras are in Sanskrit.. and this is the case in all south Indian states! Because all these are from the vedic texts :)
Sunitha
In your first comment you said that you knew about the aryan invasion myth and now you are talking about Indo-Aryan!! But there is nothing called aryan, and there definitely is nothing like Indo-Aryan, there is only the ancient Indian vedic culture as far as the culture of India is concerned, and ancient India was not limited to the geographies of modern India, but was spread from modern Tashkent to Afghanistan to Cambodia (based on the geographies mentioned in ancient vedic texts)
Coming back to language, kannada and telugu that are categorized as dravidian languages are definitely of sanskrit origin. So there is no aryan-dravidian divide here either. Now lets talk only about tamil. Malayalam and today’s tamil separated from a common root called chintamil.
Now the debate is about the origin of tamil and the timeline of sanskrit and tamil, I have already shown in my previous comment that sanskrit is way ancient in history by thousands of years than tamil!
And there have been no scientific evidences for the existence of any proto-dravidian languages as such. No inscriptions, literature, civilizations, nothing..
Not only that, the very claim that tamil came from a proto-dravidian language puts the classical language status of tamil in question!
*Given that rig vedic sanskrit dates back to a lot earlier than tamil, it should actually be the other way round, that these words are loaned from sanskrit to prakrit/tamil. Note that prakrit was a language spoken between 600 BCE to 1000 CE, where as Rigveda (and so Rigvedic Sanskrit) even going by the datings which give it the most recent dates are before 1500 BCE!! So how can rig vedic sanskrit loan a word from a language which never existed when it was written? Also doesnt this then suggest that tamil came from prakrit? And then the question comes that where did prakrit come from in around 600 BCE?
* Retroflexes are there even in sanskrit. Sanskrit retroflex vowels are ?, ?, ?, ? .The sanskrit retroflex consonants are ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
Any alphabet in a sankrit word that you see written in roman script with a dot below it is a retroflex consonant. Coming back to zha in tamil, of course there might be letters in tamil that are not seen in sanskrit. Thats what a language evolution means! But what supports a common origin is the number of letters that are same in both sanskrit and tamil.
* Prakrit words also came from Sanskrit. But by saying that Tiruvalluvar used prakrit words and which is why there are sanskrit words in Tirukkural, are you implying that Tirukkural is not a pure tamil work? Same about sangam too.. its a sanskrit word.
* how does the presence of La in sanskrit mean that it came from Tamil to Sanskrit and not the other way round? As I said earlier there are retroflex consonants in sanskrit too.
* Also you imply as if “”Proto Dravidian”” and “”Tamil”” are one and the same. No they are not. Proto Dravidian is an imaginary hypothetical language which is thought to be a common ancestor of dravidian languages, but given the fact that the roots of the so called dravidian languages like kannada and telugu in sanskrit, the very name proto-dravidian is questionable! The very word Dravida is a sanskrit word!
* Yes Brahui has similarity to south Indian languages with about 15% of words matching, and so definitely shares a common root. But it doesnt date back before 13th or 14th centuries and the historical views are that these were migrations from Inner India to Balochistan during muslim invasions.
As I had said earlier.. all other languages have evolved from their parents. The old classical tamil was called chentamil (before malayalam separated from tamil) and the modern tamil used commonly today is called koduntamil.
For Sanskrit, there has been no evolution observed anywhere, it is the same sanskrit that was spoken thousands of years back. Which is why many linguistic specialists have called it a “”created language”” than a evolved language. Because of this, it has been the only human spoken language identified as the one that can be converted into a computer programming language.
T.Sunitha could you please answer my below question…
When you(tamilians) perform poojas or yajnas(havnas) etc do you recite mantras…..my question is what is the language of these mantras ??…is it tamil ??…. if it is Sanskrit….then have you or anyone ever heard mantras being recited in any other language than Sanskrit……????
Gurudev/Usri you also can provide answer by consedering your own languages please….
This might give us a pointer on parallelity of languages….
Thanks for the answers….
Hi Gurudev,
Good to know that you have got a copy of Tolkappiam
? The Rigvedic word for ‘plough’, langala, is probably derived from Proto-Dravidian *nangal (refer T. Burrow?s The Sanskrit Language)
? Scholars have identified some twenty other Dravidian ‘loan words’ in the Rig Veda including the one I mentioned above.
? The earliest script used for writing Sanskrit is Brahmi. The period of the Brahmi script relates to the reign of Emperor Ashoka (300 B.C.). There are variations of this script which can be seen in the rock inscriptions in South India which includes four Tamil letters not seen in Sanskrit. One of them is the retroflex consonant (zha as in Thamizh).
? Controversial information is that Tiruvalluvar wrote Tirukkural during 100 BC-1st Century AD may be a Jain and the reason why we see lots of Prakrit words in it.
? ?Sangam? is the word coined by the Jain people during BC 100-300 AD because Jainism was prevalent during that time. The actual word for the word Cankam, as spelt by indologists, is yet to be known.
? The presence of retroflex constants like La in Sanskrit is a definite indication of the influence of proto-dravidian language such as Tamil.
? While Dravidian languages are primarily confined to the South of India, there is a striking exception: Tamil-like Brahui ,which is spoken in parts of Baluchistan indicating that Dravidian languages were formerly widespread in North West India.
? There are some words like mayura (peacock) is, incredibly, a loan word from Classical Tamil. But neither its root (Skt. mA “”to bellow””?) nor its suffix (yU-ra??) nor its word structure (ma? +yU-ra??) is Indo-Aryan
So I would like to conclude that there is a co-existence of Sanskrit and Tamil and Tamil did exist in parallel to Sanskrit.
Sunitha
Interesting read!
I have one point here. Sangam literature being the oldest available tamil literature, dated between 200 BCE and 200 CE, the very word “”Sangam”” itself is of a sanskrit origin, Sangam in Sanskrit means unity, meeting.. called Sangha, mostly used by buddhist monks. Given the fact that in those days Buddhism and Jainism was prevalent in South India.
The dating of Tolkappiyam is done between 300 BCE to 10 CE (i.e between 300 BC to 10 AD) by various experts on the subject. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_of_the_Tolkappiyam
Panini on the other hand is said to have lived between 520 BCE to 460 BCE, and hence Ashtadhyayi is atleast 2 centuries older than Tolkappiyam. Also the reference by Panini to Yavanani (Greeks) proves that Panini lived before Alexander (who invaded India around 326 BC)
Since Tolkappiyam is a book on Tamil grammar, it means that Tamil existed even before Tolkappiyam was written.
But did it exist in parallel to Sanskrit ever since Sanskrit was a spoken language? The geological evidence of the existence of the Saraswati river and the mention of this river in the vedas prove that Sanskrit existed well before 4500 BCE! The river dried out around 4500 BCE where as vedas mention the mighty flowing Saraswati river, so we can take it back easily to before 5000 BCE.
5000 years is a lot of time difference unless and until we get some other tamil literary work which dates back somewhere near to the vedic age.
Another point that I have to make is that, Mahabharatha talks about Vega(Abhijit) being the pole star and the constellation Krittika (Pleides) being at the summer solstice. Vega infact was a pole star at 12000 BCE, and Krittika was at the summer solstice between 21800 BCE and 20840 years BCE! – Vanaparva Chap 230, Verses 8-11
BTW I have got a copy of Tolkappiyam :)
Hi Gurudev,
I got a few information to share with you all.
AN OVERVIEW OF THE EVOLUTION OF THE TAMIL SCRIPT
CONTRIBUTED BY N.Krishnaswamy
“”It would be appropriate and useful to supplement our presentation of an overview of the Tamil Language and it’s literature, with a broad overview of the evolution of the Tamil script. There are enough indications that the Tamil language originated and evolved independently of the Indo-Aryan Sanskritic stream of the North, in both it’s spoken and written forms. Of course, their coexistence over the millennia did lead to much mutual influence, but this does not obscure their distinctiveness. Both Sanskrit and Tamil are unique among the languages of the world, not only for being among the oldest, but also the earliest to reach the highest stage of development with a comprehensive and scientific grammar and a literature of phenomenal range and depth. Scholars will find it difficult to choose between their respective excellences.
While the earliest extant Tamil inscriptions, whether written in Asokan Brahmi, or in the local Tamil script, are set in the early centuries of the Christian era, scholars have perforce to look for additional evidence for details of earlier forms of Tamil writing only in the earlier extant Tamil literature. The earliest extant work is the Tolkappiam, the celebrated work of Tamil Grammar, often considered the Tamil counter-part of Panini’s work on Sanskrit Grammar, and considered by tradition to originate in the Sangam period of the centuries prior to the start of the Christian era.
The Tolkappiam (according to the commentator, Ilampuranar) is comprised 1595 Verses spread over three Books, each in turn, containing nine Chapters. Their comprehensive content dealing with every aspect of the structure and usage of the language does quite certainly point to the language having evolved to a high degree of sophistication over several prior centuries, or perhaps millenia. The work commences with a very detailed account of the letters of the alphabet, the way their sounds originated from the throat, and the rules and sequences in which the letters were joined to form words. The first Chapter of the First Book of the Tolkappiam is significantly entitled “” öÇêÐÊ “” , which refers to letters of the alphanbet, and which would normally imply both their spoken and written forms. The very first verse of this Chapter runs thus :
öÇêÐâêäç?çÌç
íæõËêù? äæõ ?×ôèá?
Ëç?ç þ âêä?ç
òèõÐåÐÊôõù? ëõç?ä? ßä?÷è?? æìîô
Translated, the verse reads : “” The letters are said to be from ‘a’ to ‘n’ ( í to ä ), thirty in number, excluding three whose use are dependent on the others””
The Tolkappiam itself has an explicit reference to writing in Book – 2, Chapter -1, Verse -60, where it refers to the inscription on commemorative stones of the name and valour of warriors who distinguished themselves in battle. This unique Tamil tradition persisted for long and such stones dated to later centuries have indeed been found. But we are yet to get direct cliching physical evidence, not resting on indirect surmise or inference, of how the writing actually looked at the time the Tolkappiam was composed.
The earliest extant written forms of Tamil are in the Brahmi script or in a local Tamil script in a form called the va÷te?uttu ( ôì?âìÇêÐÊ , meaning rounded writing) Two other names for the Tamil script found in the earliest extant Tamil literature are kaõõe?uttu ( æú?âúÇêÐÊ, also suggestive of the rounded shape, and
referred to in the Silappadikaram) and kÌle?uttu ( îæèâùÇêÐÊ , suggestive of use of a stylus, and referred to in the Kural). In a Tamil article entitled “”Tamil Stone Inscriptions””, in the Silver Jubilee Souvenir of the Delhi Tamil Sangam, Professor C.Govindarajan provides the following two illustrations to show how the Tamil va÷te?uttu ( ôì?âìÇêÐÊ ) was quite different from the Tamil Brahmi, and also suggest that it was indeed the authentic written form of ancient Tamil.
Tamil text in Sangam Tamil ( va÷÷e?uttu ) ( ôì?âìÇêÐÊ )
Rock inscription at Thirunathar – probably 4th. Century AD
——————————————————————————–
I have some inscription pictures. Iam not sure if I will be able to paste the pictures here.
I am equally proud of the great and glorious Indian heritge, whether the reference is to Kannada, Tamil, Sanskrit, Hindi, or any other Indian language (and the associated culture of the respective linguistic region).
It is, however, not correct to take off any one language of India, and try to argue that it is the greatest in some sense. That said, the Sanskrit language has acted as the mother of all Indian languages, providing nourishment with all the nitty gritty of grammar and treasury of words, or rather, the recipient language of India borrowed all the essential aspects for its growth, most welcomingly, from SANSKRIT ONLY. The growth based on Sanskrit has been perfectly natural, since the words (simple, and compound) are seen not only in the literature produced by scholars, or saints or Kavis (poets), but seen to have percolated right down to the mass level since they are used in every day usage. This may sound rather fanatic (about the motherly role of Sanskrit), but this is the truth which, no argument need to refute, it cannot be done sensibly.
I repeat I am a Tamilian, but once you travel a considerable part of India, stay in some of the regions for at least 5 years with a reverence for, and interest in, the local language of that region – both spoken and written. Thus, today one finds that all languages of India share the common feature of a heavy borrowing of Sanskrit words which help such a ‘reverent and interested’ traveller across India to appreciate the fundamenal unity of India, and start wondering how this came about.
On the other hand, this unity is being sort of questioned or doubted because of the permissive use of the regional TV channels – and the politicians – to placate the local masses by praising the local languages, and never say or do anything to underline the importance of cross-linguistic studies within the Indian context. For them revenues are assumed to be the sole goal, so that the parochialist appeal is being indulged by every channel.
Let us take these two facts: (a) Ramayana and Mahabharata are being sought to be made available today for global unity through understanding the eternal values for which India stood, nay, always stand. (b) For centuries, or millennia perhaps, when the regional languages were still in their growth process, the right-thinking scholars thought that it was not at all important for any regional language of India to try to grow without borrowing and assimilatting the grammatical concepts and words and word-combinations from Sanskrit, most of the time without changing them in the process. Given (a) and (b), it is absolutely important to foster and promote the study of Sanskrit in all regions of India. This will, in the process, go to greatly tone down linguistic fanaticism which is rampant in the country, and manifests itself in the demand, for example, for reservation of jobs even at a higher skilled level for “”sons of the soil””.
The main role of each of th regional languages was as an easily accessible medium from the viewpoint of the masses. Hence it should not be forgotten at least by the scholars, and the poets [Kavi-s in all languages of India, except in Urdu where the word Shair is used for Kavita] of the respecive languages, that Sanskrit is the real link language of India in the sense that like Latin (mostly) and Greek (less often) for the European languages, Sanskrit was the root language for the Indian languages, and mind you, unlike Latin/Greek, Sanskrit words are not mutilated when taken over into the local languages (99% of the times, the 1%mutilation being usually in the nature of adaptation or slight change).
As far as Tamil is concerned, until recently (that is till around the 1940s), it was a matter of respectability and pride for a Tamil pandithar (or Pulavar) (with an extensive and deep grounding in Tamil wors, ancient, medieval and contemporary) also to be a Sanskrit pandit (only with comparatively less mastery of it), so that there was little scope for the Pulavar to indulge in the kind of hatred and fanaticism indulged in by many Tamil Pulavars in these times, of course due to their total ignorance of what is original Sanskrit, and what is pure Tamil. I am reminded of an incdnet here, which I briefly mention, for illustration of the fanaticism: One Tamil Pulavar, who wanted into not only arguments, but also perverse argumentation (Vitandaa Vaada), began with the premise that the great TIRUKKURAL (of Tiruvalluvar) did not contain even a single Sanskrit word, and hence it was a ‘totally Tamil’ work. [Note, the Pulavar (he was only a semi-scholar of Tamil, by contrast, based on the criteria until the 1940s). I immediately told him that languages need be “”pure”” which, in effect, would mean an inability of them to look at certain subtleties and beauties which would be possible only through a two-way exchange (or at least a one-way reception), and purity ranks far less than elegance and beauty which is sometimes sacrificed if a language artificially tries to resurrect from its archaic vocaulary with dead words. I said to him “”You Pulavars love to call Sanskrit a dead language meaning it is currently not spoken by millions today. But see, even the very first Kural (short, sloka-like stanza) of TIRUKKURAL, has AKARA, AADI, BHAGAVAN, ULAGU (Loka in Sanskrit corrupted). He would not accept this statement at all, and said all the words are Tamil. I said, yes, they have been assimilated from Sanskrit. And Tiruvalluvar, to be sure, was not a fanatic in love with archaic words nor would hesitate to use Sanskrit, in modified form wherever applicable, if elegance and beauty continue to be a finer aspect of poetry, especially to convey wisdom in pithy form. It was almost impossible for me to argue with this man since he was not a semi Pandita, but just a fanatic. The fanatic sgments of Tamil scholarship have made it a meaningless mission of their work to substitute indiscriminately with artificially coined and archaic Tamil terms for everyday use. For example, most of the Tamil ‘TV channels, dominated by fanatics, would no longer use Bhukampam but only Nila adirchi, for Earthquake. The truth is that Bhukampam is both scholarly and layman-friendly, since the commoner uses only Bhukampatam, not earthquake, nor Nila adirchi. Pragmatism would require that such artificiality is after all not necessary, and it smacks of senseless hatred of a language. Also, the Pulavars (like the one who ignorantly maintained Aadi, Bhagavan, Akara, Loka (Ulagu) as “”pure”” Tamil words) are ignorant of the fact that very many words that they assume to be pure Tamil are not so! For example, one Suryanarayana Sastri, out of his zeal for “”pure”” Tamil us, changed his own name as “”Paridhi-maal-kalaijnar””. The zealot circles of Tamil purity hail this as an instnce of the unique viability, without dependence on Sanskrit, for its thriving. But, hey, Paridhi is very much a Sanskrit word, another term meaning the sun. Again, Sastri has been substituted by Kalaijnar. Who on earth can convince a half-ignorant Tamil Pandita that it is just the Sanskrit word, Kalaa-jna. Now, I like the word ‘Kalaijnar’ (or Kalaignar) and treat as a Tamil word, very much (even when it is used as an epithet for Karunanidhi, a great zealot of Tamil also displaying tremendous hatred for Sanskit, Brahmins, Hindus, Aryan ‘race’ (as an ‘enemy’ and ‘conquror’ of Dravidian ‘rce’! (He is anti- many, many things, only he should come out more often for what he is pro- , for. He of course developed deep rooted hatred when he saw some Tanjorean mirazdars calling Naadasvara Vidwans “”Day, Ada, Vaadaa”” etc., the truth being that the former never put hatred in calling them so, but they likely used it with a ‘brotherly’ liberty, and since then, Karunanidhi thought it wise to align himself with the rabid anti-Vedic, anti-religion, anti-God, anti-North, anti-Brahmin personality in EV Ramaswami. See how much Tamilnadu’s politics, Tamil literatue and religion have been so uniformly corrupted due to linguistic an false racialistic notions. Of course, the other, moderate camp prefers to keep quiet due to the tremendous power of the ‘Dravidian’ politicians, and their immense mesmerising skills at mass hypnotism which perpetuates the loot of Tamilians by politicians, with a few crumbs only being made available to the commoners. I pity the vast masses who are so sorely divided among many ‘Dravidian’ parties with modiffying adjects in their names.)
In this respect, I hold that the other languages of India are not suffering from the fanaticism of zealots, and that is a good thing since the fundamental unity of India is strongly deep-rooted and manifest in every Indian language including in Tamil, though due to the perverse zeal of some section of Tamil scholars, thiis has been adversely impacted in the case of Tamil. Kavi Subrahmanya Bharati, “”Vaazhiya Senthamizh Vaazhga Natramizhar Vaazhiya Bhaarata Mani Thirunaadu … VANDE MAATARAM, VANDE MAATARAM, VANDE MAATARAM.
Hi Gurudev
Yes lot of work have to be undertaken to discover Tholkappiyam as it is done for Vedas.
Tholkappiyam book what i have is hard copy. I can make it available to you (and for everyone) as soft copy, but it require some time as iam out of station for few months.
Thank you for offering me Kannada literature.But i dont know to read Kannada.
As far as movies and cinema music is considered,yes, i know lot of people in KA like Tamil stuff. But these movies and cinema music are modern stuff which should never be compared with religion,language,culture as these are brought down generation after genration by our ancestors.
So,comparing Kannadigas’ opinion about Tamil movies,music and my opinion about Kannada and Tamil literature is not apt.
Hi Sunitha
Good. Now thats interesting information about Tholkappiyam. In that case I think just like there is a search for the complete set of sanskrit vedas, there should also be a search for the remaining parts of Tholkappiyam. Yes, I knew about the sangam literature. But I dont think that we need this aryan dravidian divide. For the simple reason that Aryan has never been a race, and the so called other dravidian languages like Kannada and Telugu atleast have their roots in Sanskrit.
It would be great if you could provide any information about Tholkappiyam if you have. Also about any other books or references, so that we all know more about Tamil than we think we know.
But again, I like the modern kannada literature more than modern literature of any other languages I have read :)
If you are interested and know to read kannada I can provide some good references. These are personal preferences.
I have also said that modern Tamil music is the best, and no other language music can even come near to it, nobody can beat Ilayaraja. But then that doesnt mean that some kannadiga should come saying ‘what do you know about kannada music? How can you say Tamil music is better than Kannada’. No kannadiga has asked me that :)
Please provide more info about ancient tamil works that you know or have any references to. I would really love to read them. Yes, Tamil definitely deserves a classical language status.
Hi Urisi,
Reg Water:
Yes, during scarcity it is the general tendency to look after themselves. But it is not the case always. Even if they have water, it?s the same case. Karnataka people are always more hatred towards Tamilians. I am very much surprised, why is this so?. Just the cauvery issue? No, there is something more.
Tamils live in Bangalore for more than 20 years. All these 20 years Blore was not affected. Blore got affected only after IT came. Any city, for that matter, faces challenges when it grows. Why to blame Tamils for anything and everything?
By the way, I am one among a very very few Tamils to sit and converser like this. Remaining are least bothered about what others say, which is really sick.
I don?t want them to fight, but speak up to the point.
Reg Tamilians:
Yes, we don?t encourage Hindi that much. But, as of me, speaking Hindi, doesn?t show any patriotism.
India being a vast and diversified country should have more than 1 language as its national language.
For several decades,TN not speaking Hindi, does not have faced any set backs. Instead, it has grown as a 3rd or 4th developed state in the country. There is nothing with language.Though we don?t speak Hindi, we are never aliens to those who come to TN. We have very good hospitality. Please don?t feel iam boasting about my state.
South India never tried to impose its culture and language on the north. North Indians are not our rulers. They are one of us. You are one of us. We are one country. We have to respect each other?s religions, languages and culture. I want to state that I do not consider people from any state in India to be superior or inferior to another state. People from each state have their good points.
Hi Gurudev,
I have not told anywhere in my postings that Kannada Lang doesn?t have good literature. I am not bringing Tamil in between any of the Indian languages (I am not taking into consideration Sanskrit), because Tamil literature is even more vast and rich.
My point is not against your knowledge about Kannada literature or your respect for Kannada literature, but your views on Tamil literature.
These are your points that made me to start this conversation
1. ?Kannada literature is better than Tamil or other Lang? ? So, I asked ?what do you know about Tamil literature which made you to compare it with Kannada?. What I meant by saying ?Tamil is NOT all about vivek comedies and movies? is that Tamil has very rich and vast literatures, which you should study well and then comment on it. My point is mere knowledge of a language plays little role in true understanding of its great works. I never said you didn?t respect Tamil or Telugu or any other Lang. Also, comparing 2 movies is entirely different from comparing languages. You see languages are brought down by our ancestors so long back that our own opinion on it has to be properly justified. You liking movie A and myself liking movie B is up to us.
If you like Kannada more than Tamil it is your liking, for which I never expressed disrespect (each individual has a different taste and they have the freedom to like or practice any religion or Lang). But you have clearly made a point that ?Kannada literature is better than Tamil or any other language?. That triggered the conversation.
I am not here to fight with you. I would like to substantiate my views on Tamil and that I am not telling this just because I am a Tamilian.
2. You have clearly stated that ?Sanskrit is the root of all Indian languages Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, Hindi etc?.
This is the major trigger for me to converse with you and not the literature aspect. Tamil, Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, Arabic are few of the world?s classical language (among this Tamil and Sanskrit are the only 2 Indian languages).
Few of the criteria for a classical language I would like to list here are
?it should be an independent tradition that arose on its own NOT as an offshoot of another tradition, and it must have a large and extremely rich body of ancient literature?
The first and second Tamil sangam literature are lost in Tsunami called ?KadalKol? in Tamil (Tsunami existed from our ancient times) and what we have got is just third sangam literature, among which Tholkappiyam is the antique one (but we have discovered only 1/10 th of Tholkappiyam).
I strongly reiterate that Tamil ran IN PARALLEL with Sanskrit and DOES NOT has its root in Sanskrit.
?Tamil constitutes the only literary tradition indigenous to India that is not derived from Sanskrit. I have written extensively on the influence of a Southern tradition on the Sanskrit poetic tradition. But equally important, the great sacred works of Tamil Hinduism, beginning with the Sangam Anthologies, have under girded the development of modern Hinduism. Their ideas were taken into the Bhagavata Purana and other texts (in Telugu and Kannada as well as Sanskrit), whence they spread all over India. As Sanskrit is the most conservative and least changed of the Indo-Aryan languages, Tamil is the most conservative of the Dravidian languages, the touchstone those linguists must consult to understand the nature and development of Dravidian. It arose as an entirely independent tradition, with almost no influence from Sanskrit or other languages; and its ancient literature is indescribably vast and rich?
As told by George L. Hart, University of California, Berkeley.
Please don?t think this is the only proof I have to talk about Tamil. If you are interested, I can provide you some great books, which substantiate the fact.
I have great reverence for Sanskrit and Tamil. But I am not saying all other languages are not good. Though all the other Indian languages came from Sanskrit, they have good literature. I am not against it. I am not offensive to any language.
But the fact of Dravidians very well existed. People of southern part of India are referred to as Dravidians. All the people of India had their roots only in our ancient India (not in some European country as proposed by AIT).
When people in northern part of India were using Sanskrit, at the same time people of southern India (called Dravidians) were using Tamil.
If you are interested,I am ready to exchange many more authentic explorations on the above facts.
Have the AIT’ians disproved the possibility of revese migration, that is Aryans emigrating from India into the rest of Asia, Europe, etc. ANY THEORY MUST BE PROVED IN ITS AFFIRMATIVE AND DISPROVED IN THE NEGATIVE, and this is especially important in history. Historians, unlike mathematicians, do not generally bother about this methodology of authenticating knowledge, since usually some guy, with a lot of dare, (pseudo)scholarly aura, push, and a gift of the pen gets away with his “”theories”” which can continue to cause unwanted Tsunamis for civilizations. But let us note that in the case of the AIT, Prof Max Mueller who suggested this, could well have been a scholar lacking in courage and conviction. He, for instance, wrote in a letter to his wife something to the effect that he had exposed the ancient Sanskrit scriptures and literature to the Indians themselves, and the rest of the world, so that their silly notions couched in myths, gods and primitive statements would bare open the real India which, by implication, would appear third-class, downgrade before the great achievements of the West in all spheres! He hoped the Indians would be able to come out of the clutches of primitivity only by conversion to Christianity!! But he, on another front, sort of contradicted himself saying that his proposed AIT was just a preliminary feeling, or something, with no finality or authentication. On yet another front, he sort of prevaricated, saying that Sanskrit is definitely more refined, perfect, much more scientific, and whatnot, with a supreme beauty beyond any human conception as compared to the languages of Europe, mainly Latin and Greek, with which alone scholars before him. This man had sought the help of highly conservative Sanskrit scholars [Pandit(a)s] of India – who normally looked at monkey-skinned Westerners as Mlecchaa’s, or highly polluted people who knew only about body, the senses and animal enjoyments like sex and satisfying of hunger and sex, and the like, and far less about the spirit. These conservative Samskrta Panditas were extremely reluctant, if not they did no refuse, to look at this guy for initiating him into the divine realm of Sanskritic literature, grammar, and great works of spiritualiy and science in a different paradigm (superior to that of the West’s). They would consider him unworthy of being given Sanskrit knowledge, since knowledge had to be for the pursuit of wisdom and imparting of the same to the rest of humanity, for which certain absolutely strict criteria had to be met by the aspirants, and again, the methodology for acquiring scholarship in Sanskrt was far different, and far divinely superior – to that to which the West had been used. But they chose to refer him to go to some second or third rate scholars. In particular the great scholars pointed out to Mueller, that not all are born to become scholars of Sanskrit, though they were welcome to be learners/students, and scholarship would be exacting with great reverence on the part of mere learners aspiring to become scholar, to the methods of how sounds are formed, how they are directly woven with the meaning they conveyed, how letters are to be combined o form words, etc. (Sabda, Alankara, Vyakarana, Siksha, and other great topics, this is no place to delve on them). … Now, let us look at ourselves today! We need authentication of our heritage, civilization, culure, and other spects of our Indianness and universality of our mission, at the hands of scholars, some of them, very pompous, all knowing, if not absolutely arrogant, considering themselves superior specimens coming from other worlds, of Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge, etc. – what a pity, the likes of Prof. Michael Witzel !! I am sorry if any Western scholar feels offended, but I do know that there is such a great surge of interest among Westerners of all hues, simple and scholarly, humble and Brihaspati-like, in the universaliy and eternality of Hindu/ Aryan/ Brahminical/ Vedic message for all mankind. Today’s average Indian’s irresistible veneration of the West, just because of the easily accessible kind of knowlege of science and technology from Western sources, there is also a blind assumpti0n that they are supreme authorities in every sphere. Notwithstanding all this, it is high time every Indian sees the point of keeping at least a margin in our daily memorandum for reflection and introspection about ourselves and the truth about our Rishis and their ways to penetrate the realiy of our existence – or our selves, and of the universe in is limitless expanses – ‘ ARSHAYA GNANA’. Without a legitimate pride in our true heriage, par excellence, rooted in perfect understanding, India cannot grow, but has to plod wearily with the baggage of slavish mentality cultivated through 200 years of British colonialism. Let us stop squabblles about Dravidian, Aryan, and other silly nonsense perpetrated by some of our Western brethren.
Dear Sunitha
You have provided good points to ponder.
Happend to find very interesting topic on Rsi Agastya w.r.t aryan invasion theory.
***********************************************
North-South Divide
Indologists have concluded that the original inhabitants of the Indus Valley
civilization were of Dravidian descent. This poses another interesting question. If
the Aryans had invaded and forced the Dravidians down to the South, why is there no
Aryan/Dravidian divide in the respective religious literatures and historical
traditions? Prior to the British, the North and South lived in peace and there was a
continuous cultural exchange between the two. Sanskrit was the common language
between the two regions for centuries. Great acaryas such as Sankara, Ramanuja,
Madhva, Vallabha, and Nimbarka were all from South, yet they are all respected in
North India. Prior to them, there were great sages from the South such as Bodhayana
and Apastamba. Agastya Rsi is placed in high regard in South India as it is said
that he brought the Tamil language from Mount Kailasa to the South. Yet he is from
the North! Are we to understand that the South was uninhabited before the Aryan
Invasion? If not, who were the original inhabitants of South India, who accepted
these newcomers from the North without any struggle or hostility?
***********************************************
More over it would be easy to conclude which is the root language for all once we
find the language of first work of human race ie., Rig Veda. Otherwise We can also
say a language existed in parallel with another one if that language was used as
media in any work dated during same time of Rig Veda (if it weren’t to be the first
work).
Reg: Tamilian
It is general opinion through out India about tamilians. Not just Karnataka.
Really wonder how come there is such hormony btwn Telugu and Kannada native speaker
even though they have long standing dispute like Krishna river sharing (spurring up
occasionally). Again Maharastrian too have Belagau dispute with Karnataka. Karvar
is the dividing aspect bwn Karnataka and Kerala. One observation about Andrites,
that as long as they are respected they don’t mind others tamtrums. Otherwise they
do demand respect if not treated well.
When a southindian lands in North indian states, he is more recognised as Tamilian
than any other s.i. origin. He must educate localites that there are 3 more states
in south.
Thanks to globalization, changing scenario and needs, there are changes in
pro-tamilians too in terms of tolerance. Even Bengalis are sometimes looked in
different way. Initially if anyone goes to WB say to Kolkata, pple hardly speak in
Hindi even if they know hindi. same case in Germany too. But things are changing.
It takes times for rest of the world to change long lasting impression about such
ppl. Only persistent effort and patience is required to prove a community that they
really are.
Reg: Water
It is general tendency to look after themselves first during scarcity rather than
providing more to others. One may have to look in other angle what if Kaveri were
to flow from TN to Karnataka? Would TN have agreed to share water (in reality)?
Krishna is dispute bwn AP and KN. (occasionally).
Brahmaputra is international matter- among three nations. Mutual understanding is
required to solve this matter rather than making political issue.
(Drafted before Gurudev’s comments. Most of points are already answered in his reply).
Hi Sunitha
Nice to know that you are already aware about the non-existence of AIT :)
Now look at one of my earlier comments where I have said “”I have a great respect for tamil because it is the oldest surviving language in India after Sanskrit””. So what does it mean? I have a great respect for Tamil and I acknowledge its ancient heritage. Right?
I respect your views of NOT accepting my words. But at the same time I also expect you to respect my views. You said “”If you dont know , it is better NOT to talk about that.”” Well, I have read Tamil. Have you read Kannada literary works? Without reading them how can you say anything about kannada literature or compare it? :)
Nor did I say that “”I am the final authority on this subject””. If I have given any wrong information or if you feel I need to know something more, then please tell me about that, instead of saying DONT TALK.
Now coming to what I said “”But in terms of literature Kannada is the best language in India””.
Look at the context that follows what I said. I was talking about the Jnanpeeth awards and about MODERN literature there, NOT about ancient literature. It is well known fact that Kannada has the highest number of Jnanpeeth awards in India today for modern literature. And I have also read all this kannada literary works too. So I wrote what I felt. Is that wrong? I didnt say Tamil literature is bad. Did I? I only said Kannada literature is the best compared to other languages.
Let me give you an example. Suppose there are two movies that we watch. I like movie A and I will say that its better than movie B. You feel otherwise and say that movie B is the best (probably without even watching movie A). So? your views and my views about what makes a good movie might be different. So should we start fighting on that?
I respect your views that Tamil literature is the best. Please respect my views on the kannada literature.
I dont understand why are you taking this offensively! I havent said anything AGAINST tamil language, nor will I ever say. As I said earlier, I simply love Ilayaraja music, Vivek Comedy, Shankar movies etc. But then again that doesnt mean that I am saying “”Tamil is all about vivek comedies and movies””. Does it?
Before we discuss anything about the origins of Tamil and Sanskrit, I want to make sure that we dont end up in an ego clash using arrogant and unparliamentary language, because I really dont like to block comments of any readers in my blog.
If you still feel that we can talk more and exchange views, you are welcome, else I will continue to respect your views :)
Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Sanskrit, Telugu are all Indian languages, and that matters more than anything else to me.
By the way my mother tongue is NOT Kannada :)
You are such a coward to delete all my postings.
If you have some culture, publish all my postings and let all people know the truth.
So, its very well clear now that you are such an unprofessional,biased and bigot to publish only postings that support your point
If you are a human, try to give proper evidence that Kannada is a good language. By deleting my posting, you have confirmed that Kannada and Kannadigas are cultureless idiots.
Hi Gurudev,
Tamil came from the mouth of Lord Subramanya. And that is the reason he is referred to “”Tamil God””. Why should GOD himself create a language and teach that to Sage Agasthiyar, instead he could have allowed it to sprung from Sanskrit as all other Indian Languages and European Languages.
I verily agree that Sanskrit came long back Tamil came.
But Tamil is a friend of Sanskrit. Both of them lived parallely and both have their indigenous characters independent of each other. Whereas all other Indian languages are children of Sanskrit. This doesn’t stop them from producing liteartures.
Later Tamil adopted some words from Sanskrit. And this is the reason, people like you without properly studying Tamil, think that it came from Sanskrit.
Tamil movies what is present these days, is not Tamil at all. They kill it.
Tamil literature is vast. I come from a Tamil scholar family (but iam not one). I can give you lots of books and sources where you can know about Tamil well.
Tamilians these days know nothing about Tamil and they believe whatever people like you tell.
First of all, you tell me how many languages in India has got the classical status and what are the criteria for a language to be declared classical?
Hi Gurudev,
What i meant above is comparing Panini’s and Tholkkapiyar’s work there were absolutely NO relevance between Tamil and Sanskrit.
Tamil RAN IN PARALLEL with Sanskrit and not an offshoot of Sanskrit as told by you.
Hi Gurudev,
You have talked as though only Kannada has greatest literatures and Tamil is nothing infront of Kannada.
How many Tamil literatures have you read. Tirukkural and Bhardhiyar’s books and poems are not literature.
Before you comment on anything you should have conducted a deep study and vast analysis (hope you know this well by yourself).
Why do you want to give some wrong information to people through your blogs.
And you have also said that Tamilians wont talk Kannada even though they live in Karnataka for a long time. How far is this true?.I lived in Blore for so many years and i can very well talk in Kannada. Iam not hatred towards Kannadigas.
But y do you want to tell bad about Tamilians??. Are the North Indians in Bangalore talking in Kannada??. But I know lots and lots of Tamilians talking in Kannada in Blore.
If you want to blame, then you should have mentioned in general, not particularly Tamilians. If you see, its really the North Indians who spoiled Blore by paying more money for anything and everything.
You say all are Indians but you target only Tamilians. My Q is why is it so?. What problems we Tamilians created for you in Blore?. Are we not living just like other state people live in Chennai or any part of TN. Chennai has vast number of Telugu people and we never talk about them like this.
And again cauvery issue is just a matter of water. Politicians are making it dirty. Say, iam your neighbour, feeling very thirsty and asking for a glass of water, wont you give me???
Dont develop hatred against Tamilians.
And Gurudev, what they have excavated in Tholkappiyam now is just a meagre. Lots of remaining portions of Tholkappiyam are yet to be discovered.
Hi Dev,
Telugu is NOT a offshoot of Kannada. Please read something about your own language before actually making some wrong comments.
Telugu has majority of its roots ONLY in Sanskrit and the remaining are indegenous to it. The scirpt of Kannada and Telugu are more similar but you should not misinterpret that Telugu is an offshoot of Kannada.
Hi Pandian,
Iam very sad that most of the Tamilians are like you without even knowing a bit of knowledge about Tamil.
We are not against Hindi or Kannada or telugu or any lang for that matter.
But our mother tongue being as ancient as Sanskirt, we Tamilians dont know anything about that.
Know something Pandian, no one till date are able to trace back the origin of Tamil. Tamil is a divine language as Sanskirt is.
Hi Gurudev,
Iam not here to discuss the AIT. I very well know even before reading your bolg that there is nothing called AIT.
Iam a Tamilian and proud to be so. I can NOT accept your words “”Tamil language dates to around 200-300 BCE.So what were the tamil speaking people of today speaking before 300 BCE?””.
Even great scholars cant trace back the origin of Tamil language. How come you are abe to do?. If you dont know , it is better NOT to talk about that.
Tamil is NOT just about vivek comedies and movies.
You talk as though only Kannada has rich and vast literary works.
Your words “”But in terms of literature Kannada is the best language in India after Sanskrit, neither Hindi nor Tamil can beat it,
it has such wonderful literary content,
I am simply amazed, and sometimes think whether I am not getting biased because I am a kannadiga”” has really WOUNDED me like anything.
What do you know about Tamil?. Do you think Tamil is all about only Tirukkural and Bharathiyar. These were the people who came later. For your information,TIRUKKURAL is NOT the ancient work in Tamil.
Oldest surviving literature in Tamil is Tholkappiyam by Tholkappiyar which defines the rules and syntax of Tamil grammar. Try to read Panini’s Ashtadhyayi and Tholkappiyar’s Tholkappiyam. There were absolutely relevance between Tamil and Sanskrit. Tamil came from the mouth of Lord Murugan (Lord Subramanys) who taught it to Sage Agasthiyar who in turn bought Tamil to Bharatam.
And you have told “”Sanskrit is the root of all Indo-european languages.”” This shows your total lack of knowledge about Tamil language. Just watching movies and reading Tirukkural doesn’t mean you know about Tamil.
There were greatest Tamil scholars who had done extensive to most extensive research about Tamil language and could not trace back the origin of Tamil.
If you are interested, please go through books written by P.S. Subramanys Shastri “”History of comparative literature”” and also.
“”Comparative grammar of the Tamil language””
P. S. Subrahmanya Sastri (these are few among innumerable books written by great Tamil scholars)
And finally Tamil has been given the status of classical language. Do you know the eligibility of a classical language.There are many eligibilties among which one is
“”A classical language should not have its roots in any other language””.
I have due respect for Sanskrit. I totally agree that Sanskrit is a divine language. Similarly Tamil is one which run in parallel with Sanskrit and DID NOT have its roots in Sanskrit. Iam not saying this just because Iam a Tamilian.
Before you pass a statement, you should read well and then should do it.
Hi Gurdev,
Want to have a authentic conversation with you.
Erwin
You have said things about the so called ARYAN INVASION without ANY PROOF. but you havent answered even a single argument that I have raised both in the article and in my comments.
About Sanskrit, its not some ‘we’ saying sanskrit is the root of all Indo-European languages. It is experts like Will Durant who have said that “”Sanskrit is the mother of all Indo-European languages””. Also please see what prof Dean Brown has to say, http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4ush_thinking-allowed-sanskrit-tradition
As for your argument that “”present day we too have lot of english words in every indian languages too some extent the words from persian ,arabic,languages into our local indian languagess .for that will you ever accept that all our indian languages borned out of these languages””
Well, today even oxford English dictionary officially contains dozens of words from Indian languages and slang, especially from Hindi. So what does it mean? Can we also conclude that English came from Hindi? :)
present day we too have lot of english words in every indian languages too some extent the words from persian ,arabic,languages into our local indian languagess .for that will you ever accept that all our indian languages borned out of these languages . the relation between the languages is not determined by the words thwy are having as common .it is purely determined by the gramaticcal structures of that language .by this point you can never prove that the norh and south indian languages are having same origin. it is the fact that race and creed is certainly determined by peoples physical features such as color of eye skin and hair.and shape of the face ,eye and nose.according to this you can never consider that both south indian and north indian have come out out of the same stocks. but one think we must accpect as a native people we were all manipulated by invading armies .as it is in the history any region which is being blessed with fertile land would have filled with peopled who are having lesser fighting skils .these lands must have patronized arts and cultures and must have been the peaceful way of life .so when ever such armies of tribes from central asia invaded the old indus civilization the native people were easily defeated .at this point you should rememeber that the old civilization raided by numerous central asian nomadic tribes and to some extent from the east europe. all these tribes sole aim was to conquer local tribe and to control the fertile land .in this occation they formed an unified army. ass all these people have come out of different stocks each and every one have their own myths.but later all of them fused into single culture ane they stared to talk among themshelves with the newly formed language which has borrowe the words from the all the invading tribes language.some of the nomadic people could find the women from their own stock but others forced to depend on the womwn from the local dravidian tribe .when the children borned out of theis new relation they were put into the lower rungs thus the differents caste were created .when the marriages between the aryan tribes and local women , the people in the higher echelon wanted to cement their position ,so they gave an religious twist
Sarat,
Max Muller who was the primary person responsible for this theory himself in his later years realized his mistake and said
“”I have declared again and again that if I say Aryans, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair nor skull; I mean simply those who speak an Aryan language? in that sense, and in that sense only, do I say that even the blackest Hindus represent an earlier stage of Aryan speech and thought than the fairest Scandinavians…To me an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar.””
Even then, I will still answer your points, one by one :)
1) You asked “”What is the proof you have that Aryans migrated prior to 4500 BC?””
I will give you the proof that they never migrated at all. Any such migration would have been reflected in the so called Aryan texts. Yet there are none!
Any such external invasion by the so called Aryans would have been mentioned in the ancient texts of the so called Dravidians. Yet there are none!!
If Aryans and Dravidians were two different disconnected races then both would not have had same ancient stories!!
Why both pray to same Gods, same names?
2) You said replying to “”Why is there no mention of AIT in Dravidian literature?””, that “”Dravidians mustv been spread across india. Before Aryans came.””
You mean to say, after the so called myth of Aryan Invasion, the so called Dravidians never recorded even a single bit of this invasion in any of their texts? There is not a single folk story which says anything about aryan invasion!
You said “”Are there tamilian/ kannadiga/ telugu literature corresponding to mahabharata/ramayana age””.
The answer is, as you said literature in all these three languages came about later, because even these three languages themselves came about later.
There is no non-ramayana non-mahabharatha literature in kannada tamil telugu which belong to ramayana mahabhartha period.
Also if aryans invaded dravidian territory then why will dravidian languages will contain aryan literature??
More than anything else,why are dravidian languages derived from sanskrit which is the so called aryan language? Search Thirukkural, the oldest work in tamil and you will find actual sanskrit words there itself!
The very fact that there is no kannada tamil telugu literature during ramayana mahabharatha period, and also the fact that these languages are derived from Sanskrit proves that the so called dravidians are nothing but descendants of so called aryans! In fact there is nothing like Aryans and Dravidians, but only people of ancient vedic culture who originated and lived in India.
Brahmins are said to be aryans and of vedic period. Why are there so many brahmins whose language is tamil, kannada, telugu etc?
Some say Ravana was a dravidian and Rama was an Aryan. Haha, Rama was not a Brahmin, Ravana was a Brahmin. So who is a dravidian now???
3) You said “”Someone started in Europe and moved down to Asia””
If you read the locations in Mahabharatha, the vedic culture was spread not just in India but all over europe and asia. Indus valley is only the last leg of that civilization.
Ramayana has locations mentioned as far as Tashkent in today’s Uzbekistan! That explains why sanskrit is the mother language of all Indo European languages. Note that during the vedic age there was no other culture in entire Europe and Asia! Even China is mentioned in the Mahabharata war.
If as you said people in Indus valley spoke dravidian languages, then where is the proof for that? All the idols retrieved from Indus valley are the gods of so called Aryans, and even the so called Dravidians worship the same Gods!! Even the most recent date of Indus valley is 1500 BC, but even the first dravidian language literary work available is only 1500 years after that! So??
If Dravidians were in Indus valley and Aryans invaded and destroyed them, then Ramayana and Mahabharatha should have taken place after this invasion, because all the geographical locations mentioned in these two stories are in India!
Also if that is the case then how come the vedas talk about Saraswati river which predates Indus valley civilization?
Also why are the so called aryan symbols like Swastika found in the Indus valley civilization then?
Finally, neither has the so called Aryan literature mentioned anything about their European homeland or their invasion of India, nor is there any dravidian literature that talks about an aryan invasion!
Still I would like people to come forward with all kinds of arguments trying to support the Aryan Invasion Theory, because it will help to prove that Aryan Invasion Theory is wrong in every possible way :)
Coming back to Hitler. Hitler used this myth called Aryan Invasion Theory as a basis to support his actions of mass murder of the jews during the second world war. He considered his ancestors to be Aryans who originated in Europe, and the jews to be non Aryans! Just like people today are fighting in the name of Aryans and Dravidians.
So the danger of using this racist, false, divisive theory might result in another Hitler being born in India resulting in another genocide. That was all that about Hitler :)
I don’t find your blog really disproving the Aryan Invasion Theory …
1. Indus Valley Civilization existed at 4500 BC. How does that disprove AIT?. Aryan could have still migrated post 4500BC.
2. Why is there no mention of AIT in Dravidian literature? Dravidians mustv been spread across india. Before Aryans came.
Aryans occupied the northen parts – and penned down their conquests in the form of Ramayana etc.
Are there tamilian/ kannadiga/ telugu literature corresponding to mahabharata/ramayana age? Literatuire in all these 3 languages came about later.
3. How come places in south india are mentioned in Ramayana if the war was fought in the north.
This one is tough. But, let just assume – Aryan expeditions to south india…
Ok, i know you would ask me to prove all this .. blah ..
but the point is — We simply do not know enough!.
Aryans as a race could have started in North India/ Central Asia – and migrated south as well as north… that could explain how Sanskrit is common to so many Indo-European languages…
or
Someone started in Europe and moved down to Asia..
You rule out the second – for reason i still cant understand. Btw, I do not think ppl in Indus Valley spoke Sanskrit – they spoke early Dravidian languages //
So dude, just dont blog-off a theory. it takes more!
and what was all that about hitler? it diluted the discussion in the blog without adding a pie of info to the debate.
Sure Che, will post more Sanskrit lessons in the days to come.
Its best learnt through ears than through eyes :)
There is one which I posted from youtube at
http://hitxp.wordpress.com/2007/06/23/sanskrit-lesson-1/
Namaste, GD.
I have been looking for sanskrit lessons. Thank you for your help.
Language and Script
==============
That?s nice chance to take part in discussion. Thanks Gurudev for starting the thread and too all participants.
It was our Sanskrit teacher who listened to my question patiently and gave more insight to evolution of language. Posting it for the general benefit of interested.
GOD holds the Patent of Language.
The first language ever existed was Sanskrit.
Immediately my question was, as we see at any corner of India, the root tradition being same then there must have been one language to understand and follow initially. Then how come there are so many languages which are just variations of same language now?
For that the teacher explained:
Knowledge in ancient days were passed on to next generation in the form for Shruti (by hearing) and Smriti ( by memorizing). There wasn?t any need of scripts as life span of man was more than 1000 yrs. Students were sent to Gurukul at appropriate stages. They were able to visualize, understand what they learnt with undivided attention. Shruti says that one can not see if mind is elsewhere, one can not listen if mind is elsewhere. Therefore to see with one?s mind and to listen with one?s mind are mere act of seeing and listening. Even teachers were evaluated (Ref: Drona being agreed to be and later requested to be royal teacher to kauravas and pandavas by elders like Bhishma).
As the time passed, the life span of man reduced. And memory power reduced due to Asura shakti (demonic influence) within him. Moreover, mind is more unsteady. Getta says ? Oh Lord Krishna! Mind is unsteady, disturbing, powerful and firm?. Further it says ?Oh Almighty! Doublessly, the mind is too unsteady to control.?
More information on Hindu Scriptures: A full overview of the Hindu and Vedic Scriptures: Section: The Srutis
According to legend, 14 sutras were revealed to Panini by Shiva, who then composed his grammar to be dependent on them. They are also called the M?heshvara Sutras, using an alternate name for Shiva. Legend also claims that these sounds spilled from Shiva ‘s damaru, or hand-drum, as he played and danced.
TABLE : Source Shiva Sutra
Text of the Sutras
IAST
Devanagari
1. a i u ṇ (simple vowels)
2. ṛ ḷ k (sonorant vowels)
3. e o ṅ
4. ai au c (diphthongs)
5. h y v r ṭ
6. l ṇ (voiced fricative + semi-vowels)
7. ñ m ṅ ṇ n m (nasals)
8. jh bh ñ
9. gh ḍh dh ṣ (voiced aspirate stops)
10. j b g ḍ d ś (voiced unaspirated stops)
11. kh ph ch ṭh th ca ṭ t v
12. k p y (unvoiced stops)
13. ś ṣ s r (sibilants)
14. h l (voiced fricative, the only phoneme listed twice)
१. अ इ उ ण् |
२. ऋ ऌ क् |
३. ए ओ ङ् |
४. ऐ औ च् |
५. ह य व र ट् |
६. ल ण् |
७. ञ म ङ ण न म् |
८. झ भ ञ् |
९. घ ढ ध ष् |
१०. ज ब ग ड द श् |
११. ख फ छ ठ थ च ट त
व् |
१२. क प य् |
१३. श ष स र् |
१४. ह ल् |
END TABLE
These 14 sutras encompass the phones of the Sanskrit language. The first 4 sutras cover all the vowels and the last 10 sutras include all the consonants. Again, all vowels and consonants of Sanskrit have been arranged in such a way in these sutras that they can be referred to without mentioning them separately.
The beauty is every grouping of letter, compound word, Ach letters means all short and long letters mentioned in those sutra starting with letter a and ends with ch excluding the ch. We can observer that letters of 1 to 4 sutra- a , aa to au. Same way hal letter corresponds to 5 to 14 sutra, excluding la of 14th sutra. They are consonants. One can appreciate grouping of letters to a sutra is according to phonetics (ignore last letter of each sutra).
I am afraid, it might be too heavy if different example given which is part of sankrit higher studies syllabus.
More info about History of Linguistics
For this purpose the teacher mentioned that knowledge is passed on to the learned, suitable people by God, so HE holds the propriety of any kind of knowledge. HE holds the patent of anything and everything.
As the generations moved to different parts, for their benefits or whatever the reasons, the dialect started. And the scripts were developed to represent them.
Thus current educational system inclined more Dhrushya Shiksha(visual) than Shravya Shiksha(listening).
When the time came to understand complicated words and emotions, it was Bharata Mahamuni, who started expressing sitations in different stances thus the discipline Natya(dance) came into existence. It is well known BharataNatya Shastra.
For simple reason to remember for a longer time, our Sanskrit teacher insist to concentrate, listen and repeat in our own words. It seems we remember those we hear that we repeat.
yes sainath, translators can do a lot of things within India itself :)
btw guru with this idea translators job openings will increase within india itself ;)
and i liked the quote :)
Be Indian, Think Global
Be Indian, Talk Local
Sure.. ursri.. I will take up Learning Thirukural..
Sorry for spelling mistake in M.S. Subbu Lakshmi..
Dear Pandian, its nice to know that you have taken initiative to learn Kannada. No doubt you soon will get regards of true Kannadigas. Meanwhile you can also develop passion towards language. the best option is to start with Thirukkural.
Works in a language helps one to understand that society, human psychology and are good guides indeed.
Now coming back to The Myth of Aryan Invasion Theory, it is high time that we appeal for history correction. This requires mass movement like Mc Donald case/ TajMahal for 7wonders of world/Turmeric many herbal patent declain cases. Let India be first in this direction. Let us inspire other countries in same direction and make them feel proud of their history.
Dev,
Well said.. References to MS Subhalakshmi really good..
I did nt mean Bangalore is bad.. But see.. It take 60 years for Bangalore to become bengaluru..
When I was in Bengaluru, I started learn reading Kannada scripts from the bus boards. its really good to see Buses that show the pride of the language.
but these techies has raised concern against it.. wat can i say about these Literates :) ?
Ursri..
Cool.. Gr8.. “”Language is independent of script “”
anyways, I was looking in details for each scripts.
I would recommend Wikipedia, It would be helpful for rough sketch..Talk page + References on wikipedia is also worth a visit..
Well Said.. Gurudev..
Your re a great Indian.. I believe I will try to be like you…
three language is a good idea.. But consider my story..
when I was studying in school.. I hate language papers, be it Tamil / English / Hindi..
In TN, I studied in a English medium school where Hindi was taught upto eighth standard..
(It’s a common misconception that Hindi was not taught in Schools of TN..
In Most of BIG Gov schools, the student can chose the Hindi as a first / second language.. )
As I hate language papers, my language knowledge is always just for marks..
I have got passed in Prathmik & Madhyama in second class, just by replacing “”kya”” in questions with some Hindi letter. I can read Hindi but I was limited in understand/speak Hindi.
may be its due to confidence..
Like you, I would watch movies from any language…
Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Hindi, English , German… so i know a bit in each of the south indian languages..
I like Rajini movies. his punch dialogues were attractive because it takes its words from other language. (katham katham.. Cool.. Mathadu maathadu..ippudu soodu)
unlike you, I like dappankuthu songs..
and I know only a few stanza of Tirukural.. some of which I came to know because of some tamil cinema songs / dialogues..
Amendment in 1st para of prev. post.
Dear Pandian, the links provided were to mention about how language is independent of script. Thanks to you for the informative site AncientScripts Timeline
It clearly mentions Brahmi script died even before Tamil came into existance. Brahmi is mentioned to be the root for Devanagari script, Kadamba (Telugu and Kannada’s parent script), Granta (Tamizh, Simahalese and Malayalam’ parent script) .
We can write hindi, tamizh, telugu, kannanda in English to express what we means.
It would be more helpful if you can provide us authenticated link on Timeline for Languages.
Dear Pandian, the links provided were to mention about how language is independent of script. Thanks for the
We can write tamil, telugu, kannanda in English to express what we means.
I resisted to comment on Government of Tamilnadu policy/ whoever implemented it previously. But would like to bring this to notice. If ?Satyameva Jayate? is Sankrit sentence and they were not against it unlike hindi then it is the only state to have emblem with quote as ?Truth Triumphs?.
Frankly speaking, it is my opportunity that our family is in Indian Army services. So we have exposure to almost all states of India. For unbiased discussion I have kept my native language at bay while we know not less than 6 languages. Added to that we got to dwell in Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad (I still feel I missed staying in Kerala) not less than decades. We are fluent in all these languages and relatives are combination of 3 of these language native speakers. We have best frnds who are tamilian. One thing we noticed is that they had good exposure to world and they have mind to the open up to the world. This is what I meant that they are not Koopa Mandooka (explained in earlier posts). So our ppl get respect based on their attitude irrespective of their mother tongue. Any good works/movies/signers/artist/individual of any profession or religion in any language is welcome at home. Even a child at home speaks not less than 4 languages and most admired among peers and places we visit.
Meanwhile my intention of mentioning Sanskrit as educational media based on the practical implementation by thinkers of western as mentioned in last para of
Sanskrit – The Mother of All Languages
In the present scenario, Sanskrit is considered by many scholars to be a dead language. But Sanskrit continues to display the same amount of persistence it had displayed across these many millennia. The Government of India actively promotes Sanskrit as a third language throughout the primary education system and modern scholars across oceans now have begun to study and encourage conversations in Sanskrit, among a steadily growing student community. It seems manifest that Sanskrit will endure and bridge across centuries to live on in the consciousnesses of future generations of humanity.
For the general benefit of public if they learn Sanskrit, so that they can acquire scientific knowledge faster and lead a better life asap. This would definitely avoid investment of time, money and mind for supremacy.
It is good to c western are open to accept Sanskrit as first language for their knowledge pursuit. Also good that Indian gov., considered to promote Sasnkrit as 3rd language atleast now.
well said Gurudev i agee with you…though my mother tongue is telugu i more comfortable in kannada because i can read write and speak in kannada and lived all my life in karnataka (anyways telugu is offshoot of kannada). i can read and speak tamil ,telugu ,hindi ,understand malayalam.i belive knowing another language is like living another extra life. i listen to P.Susheel,T M Soundarajan ,PBS ,rafi lata kishore gantasala, tamil comedies nagesh,vivek,vadivelu, or vemanna vachanas like Sarvagnya or thiruvaaluvar ( if u had MGR shivaji, there was NTR ,nageshwar roa our own Rajkumar udaykumar etc)
M.S Subhalakshmi is an excellent example,whether its hindi tamil, kannada ,telugu,bengali,gujarati etc she never thought it was barrier for music (bhakti) its siad that she practised with the native teachers to get the perfect accent. Similalry To feel INDIAN why should it matter what we speak?Iam INIDIAN first then u can say ur kannadiga or tamilian etc let say u have elder or younger brothers and sisters to parents does it make any difference whos is younger or elder.they are children isnt? .I see all the indian langauges(states) as differnt color flowers threaded together to form a garland called INIDIA.can any one sepratly identify or smell the the fragance of each flower in a garland when its blended together and tell which is which? no
Dear Pandian the situation in bangalore is not that bad,still Kannada Rules here as local language . u go to any taxi or autoguys its still kannada, he will say namskara saaar yellige(where u want to go).if he is smart and knows ur language he may greet in ur language thats culture here,it does not mean its dominance of foreign language and hindi is not foriegn its one of own my brother’s language . I think its time we start to feel and think like INDIAN rather than the on state boundaries where we live. when we are overseas the identity is INDIAN if say iam kannadiga or a bihari it would not make any sense to them. JAI HIND
excellently put together Gurudev…
Very interesting debate!
Let me tell about myself first. The Indian languages I know very well are Kannada, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Konkani.. I also know Urdu to some extent, a bit of Marathi, a bit of Malayalam, a bit of Tulu.. and of course Sanskrit
What does it mean to me? I have access to the knowledge of great writers and works like Kuvempu in Kannada, Tirukkural in Tamil, Kabir in Hindi, Yendamuri in Telugu, Vedas in Sanskrit….
And whats more? I can communicate with a lot more number of people in this country in their own languages, unlike a person who knows only the language of his state and has to use sign language outside his state! I feel that in India knowing “”only your native language”” is a handicap, and that’s how it should be in a country of this vast diversity. Knowing other languages is not giving up your language. It’s being Indian instead of being only a Tamilian or a Bihari.
Even in north its not that all speak only Hindi. There are Gujarati, Rajasthani, Bengali, Oriya, Kashmiri, Bhojpuri, Manipuri, Nepali, Punjabi, etc and many people know atleast one of these languages in addition to Hindi.
For me, the very fact of having so many languages is such a beautiful aspect of this country. The entire rest of the world put together, Indians have more languages and dialects and scripts!!
A soldier protecting the borders of India is not protecting only those who speak his language. He is protecting the whole nation. So why fight inside the country in the name of language? It should be a uniting factor instead.
Just like religion, language is a personal choice and should not be imposed upon others. Indian culture always makes space for others, not dominate and subdue others. There is no ‘only one’ Indian culture, there are many, although most of them have their ‘roots’ in the vedic culture!
Just like the way we cant have a national religion, similarly national language is not feasible. As we are taught in the schools, the very beauty of India is ‘Unity in Diversity’
If some person has the opportunities and is interested in learning more languages, its his/her choice, even though I recommend parents encouraging their kids to learn at least 3-4 languages as this adds on a lot to their knowledge. I myself would have missed so much literature and knowledge in other languages had I not known them!
All I want to say is let there be no kind of imposition about this on anybody, but definitely encourage people to learn more than one language. Karnataka and Andhra are classic examples of wonderful states where more people speak multiple languages. It is a symbol of being open to the rest of India. In fact inside Karnataka itself the local languages are not only Kannada, but also Tulu, Kodava and Konkani!!
Especially when people of one state go and settle in other states, or live for years together outside their native states, and without making any attempt to learn the local language there, it simply indicates the existence of a false ego. When they can learn and speak english which is a foreign language, why such an ego about another Indian language?
And this ego of people from other states leads to divisive thoughts in the minds of localites. For instance, a friend of mine who is also a kannadiga once asked me, “”people from all over the country are coming to Bangalore to earn a living here because their states cant provide them jobs. Fine, welcome. But these people who get settled here never even speak a word of Kannada even after years of living here! Dont you think we are better off without these people who are destroying our language and culture? Look at the Bangalore Traffic jams caused because of this migrant influx into the city and the rise in prices, Bangalore has become a mess and on top of it these people blame bangalore’s traffic! Who asked them to come here? In their states they wont even get a take home of 2000 rupees per month, Bangalore has given so much to them, and yet there is not even a thankfulness in their hearts about this place and they talk all crap about Kannada. DOnt you think with all the resources, investments, opportunities, talents etc that we have in Karnataka, if we were to become a separate country, we can even beat Singapore in no time and at the same time save our language and culture? Just imagine that even cauvery issue will become an issue between two countries then!””
This was SHOCKING for me to hear, that such thoughts could ever come in the minds of a person who always was and still continues to be a patriotic Indian in my eyes! But when he started seeing his own language and culture’s existence being at risk, this is what results in. When it comes to either save your family and leave the village, or stick to the village and see your family being destroyed, most opt to vacate the village!
Today he might be alone, but tomorrow that might not be the case! And this is something we should stop right here at this point.
India is not about spreading Tamil/Hindi in the rest of the states. It is about being an Indian all over India. For instance, Kannada people in Tamilnadu speak Tamil while most Tamilians in Karnataka won’t speak/dont want to speak Kannada. And this is a serious issue causing unnecessary divide!
So if you ask me the solution. There are three things here:
1. A single national language is ruled out. India can never have one single language all across the country.
2. In every state make it compulsory for kids to learn as a part of their curriculum any other Indian language apart from their state language.
3. Encourage a third language in the form of Sanskrit to maintain the rich linguistic heritage of the country. And there should be no reason to fight against Sanskrit because its not a language of any state, so there is nothing like one state imposing on the other here
Be Indian, Think Global
Be Indian, Talk Local
Let there be no false egos. Knowing/Speaking just another additional language will not do any harm to your own language, instead it will increase your communication and knowledge opportunities. Remember that your language exists because India exists, and India exists because all other languages exist as well.
I simply love Kannada language, kannada poetry, kannada literature, its so rich and vast, and even kannada movies. But I also love to watch Vivek comedy in Tamil, to read Yendamuri novels in Telugu, to listen to Kishore kumar songs in Hindi, beautiful Shayari and Ghazals in Urdu, etc
It’s just another language that makes all the difference and makes me feel like a complete Indian. You wanna try it out? :)
panadian,
i undersatnd that Anti hindi agitation is not against Hindi language but its against making Hindi as Official national Language?
is hindi tought in schools in tamilnadu…? whats the harm in it……I have heard many dont speak hindi if you try to speak hindi with tamilians….now if its not against hindi why is that ????
i am also not saying that hindi should be the national language…
but sadly i have also heard some tamil peson say either tamil should be the national language or english is also good…now how good is that ?
whatever information i am reading from these blogs sanskrit should be the national language of india….
please let me know what should be the national language according to you ????
sainath..
Tamils were not against Hindi..
Anti hindi agitation is not against Hindi language..
its against making Hindi as Official national Language… please read the wikipedia anti hindi agitation..
also please go thru.. references 13,14,15 in the wikipedia.
the link put up by ursri..
Making Hindi national official language.. will lead to Economic discrimination..
Like Hindi people, Tamils were also against English..
as veronica said.. Similar to English Supremacy in world.
There is Hindi supremacy in India.
In India, Most of Hindi speaking people would never learn any other indian languages.. but They expect other language people to learn Hindi..( in the name of patriotism :) )
Tamils were the first to ignite fire against Hindi in India..
now, Every state in India has started realising it ..
India Population : 1,120,000,000
Europe Population : 710,000,000
France being a separate country can able to promote french, even with in India..
but, How many of us know that Telugu was more widely spoken than French..?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers
yes veronica…smarter in the way to hide or use a policy that will make them superior….
guru
i sometimes think had tamlians rebled against english language instead of hindi how nice it wud have been..:D
has anyone seen movie 300….it tells how 1 should try to protect its values and avoid becoming slave …one of the best messages this movie gives…
Hi Guru. This is my 2 cents worth.
Many languages are spoken in India today, it would be nice if there was a national language whereby everyone speaks his or her own native language plus the national language making communication easy especially when travelling through India.
I was told that the European races have their roots in India in other words they are descendents of the Indian race.
British people of the past and present are unable to master any foreign language that is why they always demand that the other person speaks English. There are very few English people who can speak a foreign language while a vast number of foreigners speaks English.
Some people believes that their language is connected to their feelings of nationalism or identity. I came from Guyana south America a former British colony and am living in Holland for the past 34 years. A wonderful thing about the Dutch people is a vast amount of them speaks more than one language. English, French, Spanish, German etc. Most Dutch people before they go on vacation learns at least a few sentences in the language of the country they are visiting. While an English speaking person expects wherever they go to be understood in English. This proves to me that their so called superiority is a mask for being inadequate at mastering another language and being superior cannot make mistakes so the inferior nations must learn English. So the inferiors knows more than one language, the superior only one. This is funny.
If a book is not written by a native English speaking person I prefer to read the Dutch translation of that book and not the English translation. To tell the truth I read a book written by an English author in English also the Dutch translation, you would not believe it but the Dutch translation did more justice than the original English version.
I am presently reading a book written by H.P. Blavatsky called The Secret Doctrine. This book is filled with knowledge over the Vedas and the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus. Maybe you have heard about her as far as she is concern Sanskrit is the language of the Gods.
Sainath..
the problem is there..
Anti Hindi is not against learning Hindi.. Its about using Hindi for official purpose..
Hindi is the language spoken almost 1/4th of Indian populations.. If hindi becomes national official language..
In a government job, these 1/4 th can easily dominate over other 3/4th of indian population.. which further leads to economic discrimination… or Hindi speakers domination on other race..
Just Imagine, Police Official in Kerala was selected because he has a good score in Hindi..funny :)
http://www.hindu.com/2006/07/19/stories/2006071923840400.htm
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4992.cms
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/18998500.cms
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1672736.cms
To rule a people, the laws should be on the language of the people.. laws should not be on foreign language..
Any languages literature/history was always limited to its boundary.. Hindi is no exception for that.. Delhi people cant understand the supremacy of tirukural.. Tamil cant understand the importance of kabir ke dohe..
URSRI..
that link is a good one..
after going thrught the link provide by panadian…i admire britishers for teh divide and rule policy they used….hats off to him (in sarcastic way) who thought of such a policy into which every indian had to fall…and kept falling till date….they made it so easy by using divide and rule policy…indians were ready to learn english (foreign language) but not hindi (indian language)…:)… i also feel they were smarter by not imposing english to be used as national language then, since they new if indians mastered there language it can go against them in future (which is current state)…but it somehow failed as english still remained in india ….smart people i must say….
URSRI..
“”Sanskrit Devabhasya””
“”Hindi Rastrabhasha””
“”Tamil formed before sand and stone””..
These were some lines in a language that boast itself.
I dont know how much truth in this lines..
Please read etymology para of Devanagari script..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devan%C4%81gar%C4%AB
Scripts itself a good place of research.
http://ancientscripts.com/ws_timeline.html
shows Timeline for existence and prevalence of each
scripts..
Tamil Script… :) look at this picture..
http://ananthmv.info/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/history_of_tamil_script.jpg
how it has changed in last 2000 years.. I dont know how they made this chart.. :)
i am unable to understand what is the problem in having hindi tought in schools and it becoming national language??
pandian i am unable to understand your view…do you mean that whatever is going now should continue and entire india should start speaking english as its national language….i am unable to understand if tamilians didnt allow hindi to enter there schools how did they allow english to enter..?..english is not even our land language…
Dear Pandian, yes it is agreeable that literature in native language should not be translated to Sanskrit.. and at present even when English is the medium, literature is taught in native language itself. It was mention about other syllabus or textual materials in sanskrit. We can find the progress in Sanskrit studies in rest part of the world. Sanskrit – The Mother of All Languages
I request to ignore terms like indo-aryans as they are disputed. EvenThe neutrality of this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Hindi_agitations requires
is disputed.
Moreover script is independent of any specific language
If a language satisfies all grammatical rule and there exists any suitable script one can write that language in such scripts.
One can appreciate a language’s value if language and script are understood. More info LANGUAGE AND SCRIPT IN INDIA: SOME CHALLENGES by J.C.Sharma, Ph.D.
Indian (alias Sanskrit Supporter),
I am sorry… I have hurted your ideology by any means..
“”french, russians, german, japanese etc who are living better life than us”” I require some citation.
“”Can you write a compiler in english? You can write one in sanskrit.”” – I could nt understand.. do you mean 0’s and 1’s?
I accept what you said. I believe that it is true…
If India was formed after the fall of Aurangazeb, all India would be speaking URDU.. If India was formed after :) roman empire (just funny)… India would be speaking Latin or Greek.. :)
Whatever has happened, has happened for right. Lets think forward.
pls..don’t say that let’s start civilization from the scratch :)
URSRI
Sanskrit is powerful.. No doubt in that…
but In sanskrit dictionary – there is no word called English..
But in English dictionary, there is a word called Sanskrit..
that makes the difference..
English as second language – communication with rest of the world.. Must read this – Anna durai’s speech on parliament…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Hindi_agitations
“”small dog – Small door , Big dog – big door””
If every one study sanskrit, kannada / telugu / Hindi/ tamil all literature would be lost…
Is Sanskrit devabhasha or manushyabasha?
Then what is devanagari script it is for which language?
hi according to me in India Sanskrit must be a compulsary language in all the schools throught India…..
Every individual or the coming new blood shud be tought 3 languages hence forth Sanskrit(since its mother and all vedas and prayers are in it), English (since due to current situation it is must to know it for future) and Mother tongue
I have already started a bit of this with my Kid…atleast started playing some Sanskrit prayers….I remember even my elders use to ask me to do prayers in the morning and evening but always felt bored and never really understood the importance….:(
I hope our kids will understand it and we will play a sufficient role in making them understand the importance so that they dont get bored while saying them….
but the crux here is making sanskrit compulsory in all schools may it be eng/convent mdeium or of any other local language.
I just read the comments by DEV on me and Tamilans….
“”The against- hindi campaigns by some non tolerent TN politicians who brainwashed the people in the late 50s and 60s to till date””
Its not SOME TN Politicians.. Its ALL TN politicians at that time and even now.. Must read This…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Hindi_agitations.
If they have accepted Hindi by then..now, Chennai would be like Bangalore, Mumbai.. where Indigneous language loose their importance and foreign language (Hindi/English) would takes commanding role..
I am not against any language. I believe in all languages and each of them has got long existing tradition..
But, Every state has to wake up against Hindi Imposition.. Has to develop their language..
Agastya is always credited by Tamil.
He discovered Tamil(elder) in south India and contributed to tamil and he is not inventor of Tamil :)..
May be, elder tamil is same as Sanskrit itself..
Sanskrit is a perfect virtual language.. It takes script form only with other language scripts.. Many assumes the Script of Sanskrit as deva nagari… But, How many of us know that sanskrit does nt have a script?
A correction in prev. post
By the way Pandian, as per the general belief about languages, which one would be better? God(Sanskrit) or Heaven(English)?
By the way Pandian as per the suggestion, which one would be better? God(==Sanskrit) or Heaven(==English)?
Dear Pandian, I really agree with you that English brought we Indians together to talk in single language without problem of native speakers apprehensions.
We can see that native speakers in a group are objected to discuss in their language by others. Others feel that they are left out. In order to balance this situation a third party/foreign language like English is forced to be depended upon. One more thing is most of educational materials are purely in English. If we change the medium of all the subject to Sanskrit in phase manner and English as second language to communicate with rest of the world.. we may achieve what we desired for.
But comparing Sanskrit with English may serve only for communication but not for ultimate knowledge gain/ scientific way of learning.
I have seen children learn many languages faster than others if they are taught how to speak, read and write first in any Indian languages.
For example: I take Sanskrit as representative of Indian language
???? ??? ???????
Ramaha vanam gaccati.
The beauty is, if you rearrange these words in any fashion, all sentences means the same.
If we try to do the same to “”Rama goes to Forest””
it becomes “”Goes Rama to forest””/””To Rama Goes Forest””/””To Forest Rama goes””, one do not get the desired meaning.
Pandian, BY the way go and see french, russians, german, japanese etc who are living better life than us, and without using English. That is called giving true value for one’s language and culture.
Pandian
We dont need English to connect all Indians.. India has been connected even centuries before English came to India.
ENglish is only giving us advantage to get work offshored, which is fine and should limit ENglish to that
Not bring it even inside out house and make our languages extinct. IF kids dont speak their mother tongue with their parents, then where else you can expect Indian languages to be spoken??
Such Indians for the sake of money and false prestige will sell every bit of their culture and are no different from the corrupt politicians.
YOu dont even have an idea of what sanskrit is and how dare you compare sanskrit to english? There is no stupid concept of spellings in sanskrit. You write what you speak. Dont ever dare compare sanskrit to english. Can you write a compiler in english? You can write one in sanskrit.
Gandhi said, “”I dont mind other cultures coming near my house, but if it is going to destroy my own culture, then I wont allow it to come anywhere near me
And finally, get your history right buddy. English has not become famous because it is some great langauge or knowledge based crap or whatever bullshit you said. Indians did not go to UK and learn british and come back. nor did native Americans.
It is only because of colonial british who plundered and ruined cultures all over the world under their colonial rule. British went to America, Austrialia, India, South Africa etc and ruled these places for centuries and only because of that you have English there today.
If French or Dutch had done that instead of british then you and I would be speaking French or Dutch today. Got it??
Just for ex, say now, if India starts colonising all the world and stays for centuries there, then you will find Indian langauges all across the world
So stop praising English with blind western prejudice, else nobody will be left on this planet to talk to you in Tamil
Hi gurudev,
Don’t Blame the English Speaking Indian Parents..
Just like everyone, they too limited by knowledge..
These were the people who were giving Indian Touch to English..
For Hindus, Sanskrit is the Language of God,
For English Speaking Indian Parents, English is the language spoken in Heaven (America :) )..
Atleast we know that English is just another language. Also, English is the only language that can possibly connect all Indians..
Unlike all languages in India, which were reviving their History, English is evolving… its knowledge base growing at a rapid rate.
I think, I can even say… “”English as Sanskrit of Modern World””.
I agree Divya and Guru
divya i want to clarify ,i may be wrong but i have seen mostly its the girls than boys who feel shy or inferior to speak the tamil or any indian language.may be men or women want to show off that they are sophistcated educated …etc its the empty vessels make more nosie.
“”Tamilian endru solladda talia nimrindu nillada”” u can remind them .Tere are some schools who punish students if they speak in local languages other than english. There is saying”” nobody can hurt your self respect unless you permit “” In the begining we didnt standup united, agianst colonial rule ,but they are not to be blamed for what happened bcos they were traders to make profit here. Atleast now we should make an effort not loose our identity . I admire france or thailand for that matter where english is bare mininum.Mind u french is just another languge but in india they say ooo ,ah, wow “” french”” i never understood the hype. i want to see in future somone from north says wow tamil, ah kannada
I started to write about english in this blog but, discontinued http://infinitezeroo.blogspot.com/
Sorry, it’s Arkaim in central asia , and not arkem.
Hi Dev & Gurudev,
I have gone through this comparision some 2 years back. Shri Aurobindo had told this to some baltic / russian visitor. You can go through wikipedia articles and it’s talk pages on related subjects. Western world will interprete Sanskrit texts differently than our gurus or Wheeler will confirm Aryan Invasion of IVC based on finding some 10 – 20 people’s bones from a city of 50,000 people and misguide the world. AIT or whole Aryan concept is total misguide to the world. On talk pages of Wikipedia , I was once told by a dictator like guy that telling dravidian & Indo Aryan languages as a single group is against `Peer reviewed’ process. I know that Sage Agatsya is credited for development of Tamil language and he was major rishi from Vedic era. i.e. Tamil is off shoot of Sanskrit language. This is though traditional belief , gives idea that there was no cultural difference between north & south.
Also, Buddha was born during social turmoil time and in 550 BC there was no such turmoil of that exent. As per one view Buddha was dated in 1800 – 1700 BC ( even some ancient Chinese texts say so ) and this is the time when Saraswati river dried totally , causing mass migration of IVC people to Gangetic plains.
It’s found that Mesopotamia witnessed a great economic depression ( like US’s in 1930 ) in 1700 BC. My understanding says that it’s directly related with decline of IVC. IVC was very affluent and it’s decline can cause economic depression in Iraq easily ( combined with their internal reasons ). US depression can cause greater effect on Mexico or France , than vice versa. And, same is the reason which caused BMAC settlements like Arkem to abandon with it’s burning by the original residents as they wanted to protect their secret knowledge of astronomy , metallurgy from local nomad people. The same is observed in ancient Switzerland ( Harvatia — see similarity with Saraswati name ) , in which druids had burnt their own settlements while permanently moving away from it.
I am not scholar of the subjects, but my observations are highly startling.
Yes Divya
tell those who feel shy that Tamil and other Indian languages are centuries and centuries older than English :)
I was happy to see Tamil boards on the streets of East Ham in London when I had been to UK!
English is just a language for international communication (as of now) :)
Its irritating to see some Indian parents speaking english with their children at home.. no self respect, no education, they look like slaves to me, without any knowledge! English is just another language, not any knowledge
But dont worry, we shall revive Indian languages not only within but even outside India and across the world by the end of this century.
Yes Dev
You are right.. tamil is also one of the most ancient languages.. and this is definitely worth doing research on it.. there definitely have been even some other lost civilizations of which we dont know much yet!
dev,
I am a tamilian from chennai, i feel even here people shy away from conversing in tamil. I dont understand why, i feel its cos the foreigners have acheived by large in making us feel inferior of our own self . Most of us in India feel conversing in English is a matter of pride. Its good to know English and we have the advantage in International arena. At the same time we shudnt feel inferior of our own native tongue..
Hi WIN
somtime ago i accidently bumped into this page which compares latvian and sanskrit and was suprised to find so much similarity and that cant be just coincidence
http://www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi51.htm
I read somewhere that baltic people still remember that their acnestors were indians is that true? can u tell me why people make easter eggs? somewhere in manusmruthi they mention the world heaven and earth beign formed by havling an egg “”That (seed) became a golden egg, in brilliancy equal to the sun; in that (egg) he himself was born as Brahman, the progenitor of the whole world.””….manusmriti. u can find most of the ancient texts translation here like vedas, zenda avesta etc
http://www.sacred-texts.com/sbe/index.htm
Guru have u read zenda avesta i read few hyms which is almost the same as in vedas except that the “” sa”” becoming “”ha”” in their version i think thats how sindu became hindu (hindukush)
Aslo i found an interesting paper “”Etruscan a dravidian tongue?””
http://www.verbix.com/documents/etruscan-dravidian.htm
Etruscan civilzation which is of unknow orgin(Pre-Roman civilization) and their languge could be of dravidian link, not just on some assumptions but the authors have compared root words from dravidian.Its interesting to note that there are some loan words in sankrit from dravidian. These authors have used tamil for comparsion bcos Tamil language has more dictonaries,than say kannada or telugu
what u say Gurudev?
Gurudev
no doubt ,janapada(folk music) sahitya is example for such beautiful poetry.Good to hear that ,bcos couple of years back oddly any kannda movies were screened in these malls I havnt had chance to watch mungaru male and duniya yet. 6months ago when i landed at bangalore aiport somtime in midnight 2am ,first thing i heard was melodious kannada song Nee nadeva haadiyekli nage hoovu badadirali””playing in the background there as if it was wishing me and happy to tune into 8 or 10 kannada fm channels before that 91fm was playin just 2hrs of kannda music on sundays.
ursir and dev,
The ancient text Kaviraja marga says about kannadigas as ‘Kuritodadeyam Kavya Prayoga Parinathamathigal’
???????????? ??????????? ????????????
meaning even illiterate kannadigas can pen beautiful poetry
Every part of India has its own distinct beauty :)
Enjoy the success of Mungaru Male and Duniya , it was nice to see bengaluru’s forum mall flooded with people wanting to watch these movies which ran housefull for months together..
You are absolutely right WIN!
Nice to know more and more people like you coming forward.. We need to learn, investigate, debate, research and understand the facts, spread the knowledge, and put past wisdom into future action :)
Hi Gurudev, your blog is very nice. I always wanted to speak with somebody who knows south indian language and have interest in AIT, IVC , languages etc. And, I found you.
I have presented many points like Arkem in Central asia, BMAC houses burnt but IVC just left deserted, similarity of Baltic languages like Lithuanian & Latvian with Sanskrit ( they have similar grammer form ), ancient civilization of Croatia before Christ which had astronomical base as found from pot, similarity of Hebrew with Sanskrit as found & written in some detailed book in 19th century ( but it’s knowledge is suppressed ) etc. etc.
My mind was always deep in this topic from childhood. I am not having any acedemic degree in this matter. It’s just some unknown force which prompted me to dig more details ( as if I was knowing something lie deep in it ! ).
Astronomy is very very deep rooted in our culture than any people on the earth. Astronomy is impossible without knowledge of Maths. And, hence India invented Zero, Algebra, Trignometry, Calculus etc. ( even Indian music is mathemetical in nature like Sanskrit language ). So, to go very very deep in knowledge was motto for ancient Indian genious. Such depth of thinking & knowledge can not be achieved by some nomadic people named as `aryan’.
Yes Dev, It is Kannadiga’s who lack self respect. Respect to all language is a general statement to both kannadiga’s and non kannadigas.
Surprise is that pple who know kannada talks rather than a kannadiga. Its still pathetic that i have to contiue replying in kannada to a kannadiga talkiing in English who is insensitive respect kannada & lack ????? ??????.
I agree with u Divya we should respect other cultures just as we love our own language or culture.In india as well elsewhere (currently iam overseas) i find it here too stereotypying other cultures,for eg a asian who dont speak english to be dumb ass like the madrasi sterotypes in india made famous by comedian mehmood.Thats bcos i guess people hardly travelled too far to interact and mix with people other than thier so called own. some one in remote corner of rajastan or even delhi they think telugu tamil kannada malaylam are same and some from south can easily speak all the four .Igonarnce is not a bliss all times. In bangalore we have strange hate- love relation with kannda we are ourselves to blame for it .i have a cousin who thinks speaking in kannada is for the less educated country brute so she speaks in hinglish or english which gives her a “”air””
this attitude toward local language is unfound in chennai or hyderbad. that explains the sorry state of kannada and kannada movies in bangalore and why people from other states who live here view kannada as some tribal dialect and reluctant to learn it. Because we dont encourage them to learn. we are happy to speak in hindi or tamil if so why cant others happy to speak kannada,as one wud try to speak french or german when in france or german
i find it funny and stupid somtimes if someone who live in karnataka and say proudly i dont speak kannada. wud that be accpted else where?
Language is knowledge. As many languages we know, we get exposure to good works in those languages. More we distant from other speakers/culture- like “”koopa mandooka””(frog in a well(not moved out of it even once) tries to convince ocean frong that well is wider than anything), less we get the knowledge.
We are respected by those native language speakers if we are fluent in their language. Life becomes much more easier and friendlier.
Hi Anonymous
sometime ago i read about Califorina textbooks debate or debacle where group of indians protested against the depiction of indian history religion etc in poor light in the school textbooks of 5th or 6th year students.But it seems some people (academicians) seem to gain by such false theories(aryan myth) on whcih they have built their forts without any proper scientific base.
Aryans invade California and more plz see
http://intellibriefs.blogspot.com/2007/05/aryan-invasion-of-california-global.html
Well said dev. Language is a means to communicate. No language is superior to another. Its time we Indians start respecting the culture of every other state.
Hi all thanks for posting interesting views. Gurudev keep up the goodwork. First lets put a full stop to Aryan and Dravidian divide myth May be we look different in different parts that becasue we hav adopted to that enviroment but genetically we all are one thats INDIAN Similarly Tutsi invasion myth was created in (Rwanda and Burundi )Africa whcih led to unfortunate catastrope more on that plz see the link
http://intellibriefs.blogspot.com/2007/05/aryan-invasion-of-california-global.html
A scientific research says that very early as a child who are exposed to atleast 2 or more languages are more tolerant and appreciative of others(culture,people, language etc)
i was lukcy to be one such can speak kannada telugu tamil just like a native wud speak.iam trying to learn sanskrit
i want to answer to Pandian and like him i have met many tamil friends who take pride in thier tamil language and culture its good but they ignore and deny the fact that there are other languages of similar antiqiutyand richness. i guess their basis is common sayings like “” kal thondra mann thodra kaalathu mun, thondriya mootha tamil “”( even before the sand and stone were formed , orignated, first born or (elder)Tamil ).Also the against- hindi campaigns by some non tolerent TN politicians who brainwashed the people in the late 50s and 60s to till date. Language is just to communicate,just like C,C++ java,VB etc to program . does it make java programmer more superior than VB or C programmer . language should not form the basis for superiority or inferiority as happend or happening.A mere english speaker is considered to be intelligent person in india as well abroad(colonial legacy). The first written record in the Kannada language is traced to Emperor Ashoka’s Brahmagiri edict dated 230 BC, there is a kannada word “” Isila”” as a place name in the inscription. Recently some Tamil inscriptions were found at Sittannavasal in Pudukottai district, these inscriptions have contained some Kannada words like Gavudi, hosilu, tenku etc. The date of these inscriptions is found to be second century BC.
Only recently Tamil got classical status during the tenure of Dr.Kalam.Likewise Telugu is asking for classical status Kannada should have got classical status by now. Its mere recognition tag,Gandhi didnt get a Noble for peace,but the world recognises his work and achievements.lets not get into politics of it.
Tolerence is the motto of india since ages
I think you should contradict them (if they are reachable to you) by telling them the facts and ask them to prove you wrong :)
Because its not just about just them but all others who are listening and getting misguided. In fact you should start spreading the facts everywhere to make people aware of the truth.
Don’t get angry, instead give that energy of anger a direction and purpose, for instance take all your friends there and discuss the truth with them patiently answering all their questions ;)
I am taking a history class in America; In the unit on India, we not only studied the Aryan theory, we also went into Hinduism. It seems that the writers of the book are trying to make hinduism seem like some stupid tribal religion with random sacrifices. They even analyse the Pususha sukta, and say it is about how the gods sacrificed a hundred headed, hundred eyed, hundred legged hydra to make the human race and its different castes. (It is really about the vastness of God.)They also say Chandra-gupta-maurya was a war-king who ruled by brute force. It really makes me angry.
Vijay
Thanks for those great words!
Next time somebody says negative about India or the Indian culture, just provide them few facts, facts need not be convinced, they are but plain truth. :)
Which is why whenever I argue, all I do is to present facts most of the time, if not available, then try to supplement missing facts with logic without being prejudiced by a view as far as possible.
I have just one word for your blog site – AWESOME. By going thru your writings I feel like I got back my breath, as I always read negative comments about India and Hinduism on the net, sometimes by our own countrymen, and felt I couldnt convince them of its supreme features. I am a bad writer and arguer, but a very deep thinker, hence I felt as though u were my tongue. Thanks for being the voice that most of us need in such bad times of negativity and hatred need.
Thanks a lot Vaidya.
Good post. I really appreciate your work of imparting the knowledge and sharing it to others through this medium. I have read some of your posts and found it really wonderful and thought provoking. Do continue this work..
Yes ursri and anonymous, you are right, we were made to ignore and forget, and to criticize our culture.. which is why english introduced western education into India to make the kids feel that all that west is superior and Indians are only snake charmers! That was the picture given to our young then!
So this view is the one that we need to change first.. and that we can do only by making Indian kids and youth aware of the facts.. educate them with the facts
Thanks a lot Anirudh for your comments and the information. Look forward for more information sharing.
Anirudh Sharma, that’s a nice pointer about lokas mention Sri Gayathri Manthya. Learnt new info.
Sainath, http://www.Stephen-knapp.com also has many references about Jesus and relevance of what Kaaba is in true sense.
Here are some more links would be on Bhavishya Purana.
http://www.salagram.net/Jesus-Went-To-India.htm
to be precise http://www.salagram.net/Jesus-Went-To-India.htm#Vedic
Yes anonymous, either we neglected our vedas or we were forced to neglet. Recently, respected elderly person informed us the history, why our ppl lost faith in Vedas/our way time tested way of living. It seems, initially our textile industry was crippled by the British. Later during draught or flood period only those who were servant/british loyal were taken care off. So the slow financial crippling was the first strategy to make pple weak. Later divide the pple by region, religious, castes with in religion, language with in religion. I shall try my best to get more information from the learned person.
Well, I think few of us are aware that most of our sacred books are not with us. It is laying and are highly protected in british library/museum (not sure which among these two places). Why we are unable to find such books in India? Why, how,who, and when these books were moved to UK is the 5 * question?
Could any one through some light on this matter too?
If it is true why are we silent?
Hi all,
Please surely go thru below link…secrets revealed…woderfull…
http://www.hinduism.co.za/kaabaa.htm
Gurudev one more in ur 2 do list…raja vikramaditya details to be gathered…..also above info can be put on a blog in good way by you….Thanks
and also we are thinking that it was the britishers who invaded india and made us believe that west is superior in all sense and we started loosing our culture…but i think it has to be well before that our ancestors had started to forget about our vedas etc…..i mean 99 blows were already given, but the last blow made by britishers (coincedently) started the disrupt of our old beliefs and culture…can we get more info on this ?????
Thanks Gurudev….
Dear Gurudev,
I would like to congratulate you on creating an exceptional blog and sharing your knowledge with people. You are working in the true sense of a Brahmin, which unfortunately is percieved as a caste deemed by birth. Truth is that all the sections of society must have focused dharmas to perform, in order to balance their karmas and move dedicatively towards unity with the Brahman. Maharishi Vishwamitra were a Kshatriya by birth.
To what Ursri mentioned about: Bhuloka, Bhuvarloka and Svarloka. Our Rishi’s have always used cyphered language to create hymns, to complete the humongous task of compiling universal knowledge. The concept is mentioned in the revered shri gayatri mantra as Om Bhu Bhuvah Svah! In fact, understanding the gayatri mantra itself can explain Shrishti Kriya and Laws of creation.
I feel, I will communicate a lot with you in the future.
There has been absolutely no genetic evidence of any “”Aryan”” race occupying The Subcontinent. Moreover, all Northern latitude cultures have mythologies based around the Aurora Borealis because it is the one single phenomenon that totally overwhelms northern latitudes. But, of course, Local Subcontinental mythologies have no mention the aurora.
Wonderful link and material ursri, thanks a lot for that…
this will really help me a lot :)
coming back to sanskrit, it is called deva bhasha.. meaning language of the gods.. and these gods are probably semi gods, the gods on earth during the vedic age.. the aliens, whose ancestors were the creators of sanskrit!
Here goes the abstract on Geography as mentioned in Brahma Purana. There might be slight variation in other purana. but information can be generalized.
It is only in our hindu customs, we can find “”Sankalpa”” the oath to reach goal or for material gain. It starts with manvanta name to the current date’s thithi, vara, start, karana and yoga, with self identifcation and reason to perform puja/yagnya(Very scientific indeed. combination of time, place and entitiy). This forms a cosmic code and recorded in cosmos similar to our karma.. They bear the fruit on its own time which no one know except HIM.
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Here goes info on Geography
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http://www.bharatadesam.com/spiritual/brahma_purana.php
Having heard accounts of the solar and lunar dynasties, the sages requested Romaharshana. Tell us a little about the geography of the world. What does the earth look like? What are its limits?
Romaharshana obliged.
The earth is divided into seven regions (dvipas). Their names are Jambudvipa, Plakshavipa, Shalmaladvipa, Kushadvipa, Krouchadvipa, Shakadvipa and Pushkaradvipa. These regions are surrounded by seven oceans and their names are Lavana, Ikshu, Sura, Sarpi, Dadhi, Dugha and Jala.
Jambudvipa is in the centre and right in the middle of Jambudvipa is Mount Sumeru. To the south of Sumeru are the mountains Himavana, Hemakuta and Nishadha and to the north of Sumeru are the mountains Nila, Shveta and Shringi. Jambudvipa itself is divided into several regions (varshas). For example, Sumeru is in the middle of Ilavritavarsha. Bharatavarsha is to the south of Sumeru. To the east of Sumeru is Bhadrashvavarsha and to the west is Ketumalavarsha. Harivarsha lies to the south and Ramyakavarsha to the north. Still further northis Hiranmayavarsha and beyond that , Uttarakuruvarsha.
Brahma?s city is on the peak of Sumeru. It is there that the river Ganga descends from heaven and gets divided into four tributaries. Sita flows eastwards, Chakshu westwards, Bhadra northwards and Alakananda southwards into Bharatavarsha.
There are seven major mountain ranges in Bharatavarsha and their names are Mahendra, Malya, Sahya, Shuktimana, Riksha, Vindhya and Pariyatra. Bharatavarsha itself is divided into nine regions (dvipas). The names of eight of these regions are Indradvipa, Kaserumana, Tamraparna, Gabhastimana, Nagadvipa, Soumya, Gandharva and Varuna. The ninth region is completely surrounded by the ocean in all directions. To the east of Bharatavarsha live the Kiratas and to the west the Yavanas.
Below the earth lie the seven regions of the underworld (patala). Their names are Atala, Vitala, Nitala, Sutala, Talatala, Rasatala and Patala. The daityas, danavas and the snakes (sarpa) live there. The underworld is a wonderful place, more beautiful than heaven itself. The sage Narada once went on a trip to the underworld and was bowled over by its beauty. It is full of palaces and jewels. The sun rises there, but does not radiate too much of heat. The moon also rises, but its beam are not at all chilly. The forest are populated by beautiful trees and the ponds are thick with lotus flowers, the songs of cuckoo birds are heard everywhere. Below the underworld sleeps a great snake, known as Shesha or Anata. It has a thousand hoods, all covered with jewels. In fact, this snake is really Vishnu in one of his various forms.
Also part of the world are hells (naraka), presided over by Yama, the god of death. Those are full of weapons, fire and poisons and sinners are sent there to be punished. Sins that are punished by despatch to one of the several hells are lying, murder, killing cows, destroying cities, drinking, killing brahmanas, theft, selling wine or hair, criticizing the Vedas, insulting elders, making weapons, selling lac or meat, dabbling in astronomy, selling salt, destroying forests needlessly, killing sheep or deer, cheating and studying under one?s own son. Each sinner receives a punishment that is in proportion to the severity of his sin. Of course, if one performs penance (prayashchitta) for one?s sin, one need not go to naraka. The best form of penance is praying to Krishna.
The earth (prithivi or bhuloka) extends upto those parts of the sky that can be lit up by the rays of the sun and the moon. The expanse from there to the solar circle is known as bhuvarloka and holy sages live there. Above the solar circle is the lunar circle and beyond it, in succession, come the regions of Mercury (Budha), Venus (Shukra), Mars (Mangala), Jupiter (Brihaspati), Saturn (Shani), the Great Bear constelation (saptarshi) and the Pole Star (Dhruva). The region from the solar circle to Dhruvaloka is known as heaven (svarloka or svarga). Beyond Dhruvaloka is Maharloka and further away, Janaloka, Brahma?s sons live in Janaloka. Beyond Janaloka are Tapaloka and Satyaloka. At the end of a kalpa, all the three lokas (regions) of bhuloka, bhuvarloka and svarloka are destroyed. But the four lokas of Maharloka, Janaloka, Tapaloka and Satyaloka are not destroyed.
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Cool Pandian. Good joke. Yes man made computers can understand C language. (with lot of bugs.. mem leakages..)
But what about language for human brains?
Dennis Ritchie.. Creator / Author of C language .. :)
I shall provide info in my next post on same topic how the world is formed. That would be in reference with Puranas.
Gurudev, kindly confirm whether you have already mentioned about such reference in any of your prev. posts
Meanwhile I got very interesting info about recognising universe with body parts – by yogis. Thought would help in understanding how one source is categerorized to different strata. OR how to learn everything which are unique are originating from one ultimate source.
http://www.urday.com/universe.html
Universe In Human Body
Triloka ( World In Human Body)
Curious to know.
Any name of atleast one author/creator of any language in the world?
I didnt say God created Sanskrit, I doubt it is some advanced alien civilization :)
I know I am posting this after a long time from the blog. But I agree with your take on the defunct AIT. Dr. Subramanian Swamy mentions DNA studies that were carried out to prove all Indians have the same DNA structure and are hence not racially different…but I am unable to locate this study. Can you help me please? Thanks!
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/1114_051114_india.html
One study clearly shows that early humans settled in India much before in Europe.
DNA studies clearly have proved that all non-african humans came from India ie India has actually has been a exporter of humanity to the world outside Africa. Early humans migrated to India from Africa and from India they spread to the rest of the world.
Coming to genetic studies of DNA differences between the so called Aryans and Dravidians, it has been proved by the genetic study Kivishield and colleagues who conducted a detailed gene pool study of western eurasians and Indians that the mtDNA combination which is found in 70% of western Eurasians is found in only 5% of Indians and most importantly this percentage in Indians is the same in both northern India and Southern India. So the AIT which says that aryans who invaded northern India and moved the native dravidians to southern India is WRONG because if that were the case then there should have been significant difference between mtDNA traits of people in northern and southern India, and the mtDNA traits of northern Indians should have matched with that of Europeans which definitely is NOT the case.
Reference: T. Kivisheild, 1999, ‘Deep common ancestry of Indian and Western-Eurasian mitochondrial DNA Lineage’, Current Biology, Vol. 9, pp. 1331-34.
AIT has always been a politically motivated theory with no science behind it, be it genetic evidence, or linguistic evidence or cultural evidence or literary evidence – none of the available data in these fields support AIT.
Great.. your words are inspiring me to learn Kannada & Sanskrit..
Votebank politics and Democracy were always goes together.. I heard that this free concept was brought to Tamilnadu from Andhra.. So I think, this strategy or promise has a good role to play in Indian politics and soon, it will be rocking in each of the states of India..
Anyway, Let’s Hope that other states won’t take this strategy in future election..
God Save India.. :)
UFO Connection.. God Created Sanskrit.. No Comments.. Eagerly Waiting for your book..
Oh Yes Pandian
I am a great fan of Tamil movies, in fact I love tamil movies more than hindi or kannada or hollywood movies :)
At the same time I am not saying I dont watch other movies.. in fact in kannada I have watched recent hits like Mungaru Male and Duniya, which are simply amazing movies again, with the former having really great original tunes !
I love the comedy of vivek in tamil, the best comedian in India, with a lot of moral behind his comedies at the same time. I am a great fan of Ilayaraja who I feel is the best musician in the world, sivamani the best drummer in the world.
About Hindi, you can read in one of my earlier comments in some other part of the blog, I have clearly said, it should not be the national language. India is a country of ALL, not only of its majorities (nor, only of its minorities). Making Hindi a national language of India just because the majorities speak it, is like making Hinduism a national religion just because majorities practice it. It has no logic and doesnt make any sense :)
I have a great respect for tamil because it is the oldest surviving language in India after Sanskrit. Sanskrit is not an extinct language because it is still a spoken language in the village of Mattur in karnataka. Also I have seen people speaking sanskrit in places like Vidyapeeta in Bangalore, etc
But in terms of literature Kannada is the best language in India after Sanskrit, neither Hindi nor Tamil can beat it, it has such wonderful literary content, I am simply amazed, and sometimes think whether I am not getting biased because I am a kannadiga :)
As you might be aware, kannada has won the highest number of literary awards in India – The Jnanpeeth award till todate, higher than Hindi! Even today Kannada literature continues to grow and there are wonderful writers. I feel there are some kannada literary writers who were unfortunately not given Jnanpeeth award, like D V Gundappa. His Mankuthimmana Kagga is a wonderful work on human life and psychology, somewhat on pars with Bhagavadgita!! Literature of Kuvempu, Bendre etc are simply amazing!
Kuvempu if he had been writing in English instead of Kannada, he would have got nobel prize for literature!! Infact Kuvempu’s first work was in English called Beginner’s prose, and then some good soul suggested him to write in Kannada, his native language, so that he can express himself more and thankfully we have Kuvempu’s works in Kannada today :)
The Bhakti movement in karnataka (with great contributors like purandara, kanaka, basavanna, akkamahadevi, allamaprabhu etc), the initial jain literature in kannada (by great writers like ranna, ponna, pampa), writers like kumaravyasa, nrupatunga, etc have made kannada literature the richest in India after Sanskrit.
I mean I can simply write a detailed blog about kannada literature :)
And then when we come to immediate pre Independence era, we see wonderful literature in Bengali too!!
And we all know, old Hindi songs are the best in India today in terms of melody and quality, and are more popular than any other songs even today. I love old hindi songs a lot.
While a large part of sangam literature is actuall lost, which is unfortunate, Lemuria was a misguiding idea before the continental drift theory was confirmed. Lemurs existed in madagascar because before the drift, madagascar was a part of the larger indian land mass, not because of some lost submerged land called lemuria in between madagascar and India, because in that case the continental drift cannot happen and world continental plates should have been static :)
Having said that, just like all around the sea shores of India, a large part of land which were human inhabited in ancient India, thousands of years back, has today been submerged in the seas. Like we have found dwaraka in the arabian sea near gujarat. Similarly I feel there are parts of ancient tamilnadu that have been submerged in the sea. But this has nothing to do with Lemuria, its a part of tamilnadu that has been encroached by sea, just imagine if the recent tsunami was due to rising sea level, then a lot of land would have been under sea today, if the water did not go back.. So we need to do research into our seas all over India to shed more light on ancient India. Unfortunately government has no time for it.
Tamilnadu government I simply dont understand why people even vote for them. How on earth can in Modern India, people go and vote for the sake of Television and Gold? it is nothing else but bribe. The government’s job should be to empower people so that they on their own are able to buy anything and everything they want including Television. Government is not a charity organization. Nothing comes for free. Yes of course it should help people in cases like Tsunami, earthquake etc, thats a different story. That is under unavoidable circumstances, which any and every human being should do.
But coming to power saying, we will donate televisions, is totally unacceptable, and the worst part is the country’s finance minister supporting it! This will make people dependent on governments forever. All bloody votebank politics. When the parties have nothing to show as part of their achievements to ask for votes, they resort to such cheap tactics.
And who is going to pay for these televisions? the tax payers. Our tax is to build a better India, not to create a beggar India
I had nothing to argue you about Aryan Invasion Theory..
My Concept of Ramayana (monkeys) was some thought that I heard somewhere..
Anyway, I am happy atleast I have convinced you in “” Hindi is not the national Language of India “”.. :)
You are amazing.. I never thought that you would be knowing so much about Tamil.. but still wanted to know ..
Do you have anything to say about Lemuria Tamil or sangam Literature?
Pandian
Aryan Invasion Theory is a closed chapter. To reopen it you need to answer all the questions that I have posed in this article above.
For me it really looks like you are pretty much obsessed with Tamil and the Dravidian idea, and hence somehow want to prove that Dravidians,especially Tamil is different from Aryans and rest of India :)
The fact is, earlier when the German Max Muller created the Aryan Invasion theory, British supported it because they wanted to tell Indians that they were the descendants of europeans, and also used this theory to divide north and south Indians as Aryans and Dravidians. But later the indus valley civilization was discovered, which proved Aryan invasion theory wrong, and today even older saraswati river and its civilization is also discovered, and since this dates back to earlier than 4500 BC, and this is a final death blow the Aryan invasion theory, because the theory said some Aryan race from europe invaded India in 1500 BC and pushed native north Indians down to south. The British didnt take the date beyond 2000 BC because according to Bible God created the world during some 2000 BC!!
Now, if Aryans invaded India in 1500 BC, how did they already exist in India in 4500 BC and also much before that?? Why dont we have any proof of aryan existence in europe? No archaeological evidence, vedas never mention anything about europe, they always talk about the Indian geography only. Dont you think a race will have its origins documented in its texts?
Also if the so called Dravidians existed in the north, and then moved down to south, then where is the proof for that? Why are there no dravidian stories which talk about aryan invasion, about dravidians in the north and how they came down to south, etc??? Why is there not even a single scrap of paper about it?
And note that it was belief in the same aryan invasion theory that prompted hitler to mass murder jews and caused world war II, because Hitler thought germans who being europeans were also aryans and jews were non aryans who existed in middle east. Aryan invasion theory was the only basis for hitler’s actions, and this fake theory, creates another artificial divide in India in the name of aryans and dravidians, which in fact is absolute nonsense.
Tamil is not the only so called Dravidian languages, even Kannada,Telugu etc are in this list, and Sanskrit is pretty much the mother of all of these.
I know tamil, telugu, kannada, hindi and sanskrit. I can assure you that tamil, telugu and kannada, including of course hindi have sanskrit roots in them.
Tamil language dates to around 200-300 BCE . Sanskrit dates to much before 4500 BCE! Even 4500 BCE is only because of the saraswati river proof that we have got today, which was mentioned in the vedas, and later dried up. So what were the tamil speaking people of today speaking before 300 BCE? It has to be some language, right?
I am a Kannadiga and I love kannada, but just because I am a kannadiga, I dont want to get obsessed with Kannada and deny everything before Kannada was born and start saying, kannada never originated from any other language, kannada has no roots in sanskrit etc by putting up some fake theory. I will never do that, because truth is undeniable.
See one of the most ancient Tamil works, Thirukkural, in that, Ayyan Thiruvalluvar’s first kural
‘Agara mudhala ezhuthellaam aadhi bhagawan mudhatre ulagu
What is Bhagawan? it is a sanskrit word for God
What is the symbol of the dravidian party DMK called? It is called Udhaya Suryan. Both Udaya and Surya are sanskrit words.
What is Manidhan in Tamil? It means man, which in sanskrit is called Manushya. You can also see how the same sanskrit root word got converted into ‘Man’ into english, which came from european languages which in turn had their origin in sanskrit.
I dont know why such a confusion (I feel is actually obsession) exists among common man today. Sanskrit is the root of all Indo-european languages.
Even the very word Dhravida is sanskrit. No tamil word starts with ‘Dhra’.
Tamil poet Bharthi says, “”Nirpadhuve, Nadapadhuve parapadhuve neengalellaam soppanam dhaano””
What is soppanam? It means dream derived from the equivalent sanskrit word ‘swapna’
Unfortunately some believe in the separation of India as Aryan and Dravidians based on the aryan invasion theory (which of course never existed, there were never two different races called Aryan and Dravidian, there was only single ancient vedic culture in India which was born in India, and which never called itself aryan, aryan in sanskrit simply means “”gentleman””/””noble person””).
As I said, Hitler in the past used this fake aryan invasion theory as a support to his action to slaughter jews. The british intended to divide north and south India based on this theory, dividing Indians into aryans and dravidians, and unfortunately some in India still believe in this false history and want to divide India based on these lines.
Why do south and north Indians have same ancient literature of ramayana and mahabharatha? If they were really different cultures, then they should have had completely different epics, not the same epic twisted a bit here and there.
And where did you get this idea that ramayana says north Indians are humans and south Indians are monkeys? monkeys were not in entire south India, read Ramayana properly, it is only one place called Kishkinda which is a hill in today’s karnataka, near bellary I believe. Kishkinda is not even as big as a district in Karnataka, how can you equate it to South India. And for your information during the period of Ramayana, entire deccan plateau (south India) was a thick dense forest called Dhandaka Aranya, there are scientific evidences for this fact, so what is surprising in it if you found monkeys here then?
If you still refuse to believe it, well, what else can I do? :)
Seeing the world from one side does nt give the entire picture..
I think, it requires some more investigation on Aryan Invasion Theory…
As per my knowledge, Ramayana was classic example of Dravidian vs Aryan( or north India vs south india)… I dont remember who imprinted this on me..
Aryan version of Ramayana by Valmiki..
Rama was sent to forest for 14 years. At that time, Ravana Kidnapped his wife.. Rama with the help of Sugriva defeated Ravana.
According to Dravidian, The story was different.
But if we watch India & Ramayana as per valmiki…
North Indians were Gods (Rama, Lakshmana)
South indians were Monkeys (Sugreeva & his sena)
Srilankans were Rakshasas (Ravana & his empire)..
I feel that story was biased .. dont you think so?
Just 4 days back.. I came to know that.. Hindi is not the National Language of India.. I felt ashamed of not knowing this silly facts.. Now, I felt happy because atleast in this silly fact, I know India better than more than half the population of india.. Chak De India…
http://smartpandian.com/archives/57
More over, There is two classical languages in India..
One is Sanskrit.. and Other is Tamil..
if you think or belive,… Sanskrit is the mother of all Indian (esp..dravidian) languages.. please edit wikipaedia.. which is coveying misinformation about south indian languages esp.. Tamil..
Please, dont think that I am against sanskrit and its history..
What I am saying is, India has got more wealth in each and every language.. not just shukram bhartham sasi vartham…
Pls.. dont jump to conclusion..
Comments Welcome…
“”Known is the drop and Unknown is the ocean””
Oh yes, its sick. But we will change the situation soon :)
but now-a-days i have heard some think that either there mother toungue shud be national language or english shud be national language and this is really sick…
Sainath
I completely agree with you that Sanskrit should be the national language as it is the mother of all Indian languages.
Hindi was adopted as national language because it was spoken by a majority of the people in the country, and I think it simply doesnt make any sense, since almost the entire south India doesnt speak Hindi.
India is not about majority, its more about minority :) Except in the case of Hindi, this rule is violated!
Making Hindi national language is like making Hinduism the national religion just because the majority of people are hindus!! That’s absurd. We cant force a language or a religion or a culture on other sections of the society.
Given the fact that Sanskrit is not a spoken language anywhere in India today, except in a small village in Karnataka called Matthur, and given the fact that it is at the root of all Indian languages including Urdu, Sanskrit is the true candidate to be designated as the National language of India. This designation will also help us in preserving and carrying this language forward.
Gurudev
why sanskrit didn’t become our national language is surprising, how Hindi suddenly came into picture and became national language which is not compulsory and people don’t teach/learn and speak in some parts …any theory behind that?
once again thanks for the info…
really nice links dev.. thanks a lot for that
I have downloaded the entire vimanashastra for a detailed study :)
Hi all interesting discussion
aryan invasion myth debate and origins can found here
http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/aryan-invasion-history.html ( good scholarly research)
http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/downloads/books/aid.htm
complete vimanashastra translation source from ADA
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vimanas/vimanas.htm#menu
http://hitxp.wordpress.com/2007/06/23/sanskrit-lesson-1/
Have posted a very basic sanskrit lesson here.. some good soul has been posting videos online to teach sanskrit…
sanskrit has a great deal of sensitivity towards how one pronounces words.. a slight alteration in the pronounciation might lead to completely different meanings.. so it is good if you learn sanskrit via audio lessons by listening to it..
Will try to post more lessons on sanskrit.. have really not found any good sites which can teach sanskrit via audio lessons…
you actually gave me a very good idea.. will try to record sanskrit lessons in my voice and post them :)
Yes ancient sanskrit text Vymanika Shastra originally said to have been written by Sage Bharadwaja is about aeronautical engineering.. you can find the english translation of this text here
http://www.hiddenmysteries.org/freebooks/history/vym1.html
Very interesting. I have not studied Sanskrit so I really have no specific linguistic knowledge. As a beginner with no Sanskrit knowledge what book/translation would you recommend for people interested in the Vedic texts?
Also, have you heard of the theories that Vedic texts speak of “”Vimana”” (sp?) which were flying machines with mercury engines? If so, I would be interested to know what you think.
I think there is of course common ancestry.. which goes further back.. the issue I have with PIE is that sanskrit dates back even long before PIE.. and for PIE there is no actual proof of this language, just a guesswork.. I still believe that other languages evolved out of Sanskrit much like in India… looking at the linguistics of Sanskrit it doesnt look like a language that evolved over time, it more of looks like a language that was CREATED on lines like that of computer programming languages.. the clarity in the grammar is amazing… no other language on this planet has such a scientific accuracy… I still believe it was an alien language of some advanced civilization :)
as for the timings I think it goes back to the previous ice age.. because rigveda talks about vega being pole star, which actually was a pole star in the last ice age, some 12000 years ago! It is either that vedic people knew about the earth’s precession and had wrote about this, or that it was written when vega was actually a pole star..
No there is no “”hard”” evidence, but it would not be completely unfounded that a culture from that time period did not have written language. Before 4000 BCE most cultures didn’t have written language, even after that there are a lot of cultures without written language. What do you think of linguistic evidence? Or I guess I should say “”evidence.”” I really don’t know much about the nitty gritty of linguistic laws but it is generally accepted amongst linguists that this group of languages has many similarities in words and structure. Do you just think common ancestry goes much further back, or do you think similarities are bogus?
Good points. It reminds one of all the useless blather regarding “”race”” and how difficult such a thing is to define. The more objective predecessor of the Aryan theory is based only on linguistics, the Indo-European theory. Attempting to explain why European languages, Sanskrit and languages derived from it, and Persian all follow similar linguistic patterns. The idea is that eventually all these languages came from the same language, Proto-Indo-European, and thus the same people. However, this is of course an extremely long time ago, roughly the time you speak of 4000 BCE that dialects began to split off from Proto-Indo-European. Of course, any theories on place and culture of these proto-indo europeans is hard to prove. Although most think now they originated closer to India than to Europe. I would say linguistic ties are indisputable. However, calling this a race is impossible and saying there was an invasion is also impossible. Most likely migrations took place over long periods of time and many generations resulting in completely independent, autonomous cultures.
I hope there is no one left in academia who espouses the Aryan theory–I have not met anyone. As for the British divide and rule strategy, I totally agree, often times theses theories also fit in with British inherent prejudices and desire to prove their supremacy. In reality, cultures can be created in 200 years (look at the U.S.) so is there really any significant division in Indian society if Vedic peoples didn’t settle in Northern India until 4000 BCE?
@Bachodi
Yes, Volga Ganga is a good book. I read it while I was in my college, some 5-6 years back! :)
Thanks for the comments. Readers like you keep inspiring me to write more. Only time is a constraint :)
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Those are some wonderful information .. thank you.
Saraswathi river ipctures are completely new for me.
One book I would like to suggest to you. Volga-gunga … have you read it ? Its collection of 20 stories starting from ice age near volga banks to pre -independence INDIA near gunga banks. worth read… one view on aryan migration theory
@Phanindra
You have an elegant blog too! I liked it.. Good one :)
@balumuthu
I am in total agreement with you. You are absolutely right!
History has to be presented AS IT IS. It should not be WRITTEN!
I have been reading your blog posts from about a month now… and i must admit i am a great fan of your compilations….
Keep up the good work!!
All the best.
I too have a blog where I mostly post science/tech/history related news and facts….. of course its not as elegant as yours….
http://personalfavourites.blogspot.com/
There are some American and British university professors who epitomize arrogance and superciliousness of the highest order. These people turn an absolutely deaf ear to reasoned argument regarding the total absurdity of the AIT, and jump to roar that the ‘Hinduttva zealots’ have gone crazy in order to oppose their pet AIT to suit their own ‘agenda’ In other words, these guys behave much like some of the most peevish local Indian politicians who keep on labouring on their theory that Manu-smrti was sole mischievous basis for casteism practised in the country. The Christian missionaries, backed by astronomical resources deployed for them by the US government and routed through Evangelical and Roman Catholic organizations are being illegally brought into the country in various ways, and the latter are having a heyday in dividing the millennia old Hindu society with the ultimate objective of balkanizing India into Christian, Muslim and Hindu countries. Much of the nonsense perpetrated by the AIT is also used as handy tool by these anti-Indian forces. The US is interested in wrecking the unity of Inda, like it is in the case of so many other countries on earth, and one major instrument to do this is to drive a wedge between various sociio-economic segments by instigating missionaries (read mercenaries) and paying them a handsome amount per person converted. The great sense of hatred and animosity that has come over the Hindu society through religious division is very visible in many parts of the country. The question is who are these Harvard and Stanford guys to act as the final authorities in questions of eons-old phenomena of ancient civilizations ? It is pathetic to see many Indian university professors with next to zero knowledge of the cultual hstory or even an elementary language of the ancient Indians, join these guys and propound more theories supporting them, and of course get enormous publicity in the academia and pocket huge amounts of money in the guise of contracts for writing more rubbish desecrating the glories of ancient India.