There are two distinct theories, which deal with the origin of the Vedic people. One theory proposes the Aryan invasion or migration in India and other deals with indigenous Aryans migrating from India to the west. Though the Indian Urheimat Theory had its origin in the 18th century, it was put forward in renewed enthusiasm by the Indian nationalistic scholars like Shrikant Talageri, Kalyanraman, Frawly and supported by the eminent scholars like Kazanas. We have discussed earlier how the migration of entire society or tribe, deserting its original habitat, is a wrongly founded hypothesis. It is not possible that a comparatively backward society like of Vedics, that immigrated to India to overwhelm a culturally advanced society like that of Indus and yet did not leave any archeological or anthropological mark, is something that is not plausible. The linguistic evidence that has been produced all the time to prove the migration theories are so fragile that it does not support any IE language theory on that ground. We have also discussed elaborately whether the Ghaggar River could have been the Vedic Sarasvati on all geological and mythological grounds as there is not even a slightest proof to connect Ghaggar with the mighty Rig Vedic River Sarasvati. The Invasion theory has now been almost abandoned by the scholars because there is not even slightest evidence that can remotely prove the invading tribes defeated the IVC and to establish their rule to enforce their culture and languages overwhelmed their population. As Allchins observes in regard with the invasion theories, “The intruders would have been able to rename the rivers only if they were conquerors with the power to impose this. And, of course, the same is true of their Vedic language: since no people would bother of their own free will to learn a difficult, inflected foreign language, unless they had much to gain by this, and since the Aryan immigrants had adopted the ‘material culture and lifestyle’ of the Harappans and consequently, had little or nothing to offer to the natives, the latter would have adopted the new language only under pressure. Hence, here again we discover that the substratum thinking is invasion and conquest. ( “Origins of a Civilization”, Allchin Bridget and Ramond Allchin, 1997, Page 223) Dr Nicholas Kazanas says, …But invasion is the substratum of all such theories even if words like ‘migration’ are used. There could not have been an Aryan immigration because (apart from the fact that there is no archaeological evidence for this), the results would have been quite different. Immigrants do not impose their own demands or desires on the natives of the new country: they are grateful for being accepted, for having the use of lands and rivers for farming or pasturing and for any help they receive from the natives; in time it is they who adopt the language (and perhaps the religion) of the natives. You cannot have a migration with the results of an invasion. (Kazanas, “The AIT and scholarship”, July 2001). Both the Alchins and Kazanas support what we have discussed in the second chapter of this book. In both cases, the scholars agree that there was no invasion in India. Applying the same logic, apparently, there could not have been migration of the indigenous Aryans from India to the West because we do not find any archeological proofs to support this theory. Hence, there was no migration in India of the Vedic tribes or there could not have been any migration of the indigenous Vedic Aryans to the West on the same ground. We do not find any archeological or cultural elements resembling to those of IVC anywhere in the West. If human beings move to another area in masses, they will naturally carry their culture along with their language. We do not find any proof to support the migration theory from either direction. Bryant discusses both the theories on linguistic basis and finally concludes, “… there is not likely to be more consensus in this regard among scholars in the present than there has been in the past.” (“The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate”, Page 156.) There cannot be the consensus because both the parties to the debate have stuck to the migration theories, from either direction. Dr. Nicholas Kazanas, interestingly, wants to stretch back the time of Rigveda by almost one and half millennium to adjust his theory with the preconceived time when supposedly Satlej or Yamuna was feeding into the Ghaggar channel, i.e. the pre-Harappan era. However, unfortunately, as we have seen in the last chapters, geological surveys do not support his theory. Hence, the possibility of Vedic Aryans being indigenous can also be ruled out. Kenoyer remarks, “….Although the overall socioeconomic organisation changed, continuities in technology, subsistence practices, settlement organisation, and some regional symbols show that the indigenous population was not displaced by invading hordes of Indo-Aryan speaking people. For many years, the invasions or migrations of these Indo-Aryan-speaking Vedic/Aryan tribes explained the decline of the Indus civilisation and the sudden rise of urbanisation in the Ganga-Yamuna Valley. This was based on simplistic models of culture change and an uncritical reading of Vedic texts....” (Kenoyer, Jonathan Mark, “The Indus Valley Tradition of Pakistan and Western India”, Journal of World Prehistory 5 (4): 331–85, 1991) We must understand that all scholars do not support migrations of the Indo-Iranians from Andronovo culture. CC Lamberg-Karlovsky emphatically states, “There is absolutely no archeological evidence for any variant of the Andronovo culture either reaching or influencing the cultures of Iran or Northern India in the second millennium. Not a single artifact of identifiable Andronovo type has been recovered from the Iranian plateau, northern India or Pakistan.” (“Out of India theory”, Indo Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inferences in Indian History, edited by Edvin F Bryant any Laurie L Patton, page 155, 2005). This is in line with our argument that the migration theories, including peaceful trickle-down theories etc. need to be abandoned in the light of the material evidences. Lamberg-Karlovsky further confirms that the BMAC culture that was spread in Iran and Afghanistan was independent of other cultures of those times. The skeletal remains of BAMC sites and of Harappa, too, were profoundly different showing ethnic diversity of both the people. This defeats the purpose of Vedicist scholars those blatantly want to claim Vedic Aryans homeland being India from where they dispersed to the west. Having stated and quoted as above, we see that the both sides of the migration debate mostly agree that at some stage, Indo-Iranians were situated in present day Afghanistan from where they took different routes. It means that at the least for a few centuries, from wherever they might have come, the so-called Indo-Iranians lived in the regions of the Iran that included modern Afghanistan. The Indigenous Vedic Aryan theory, even if no migration attached to it, is problematic because the material evidence does not prove so. The language of the Avesta and the Rig Veda are quite close to each other. So much so, J. Harmatta observes, “In Antiquity, for example, the Avesta stood so near to the Vedic Sanskrit that by making use of the phonetic correspondences between the two, we can transpose whole Avestan sentences word by word, sound by sound, into Vedic Sanksrit.” (“THE EMERGENCE OF INDO-IRANIANS: THE INDO IRANIAN LANGUAGES, edited by A. H. Dani, Page 358). (From my forthcoming book)
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 13:06:09 +0000
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