My paper presented at SI3 conference in IIT Chennai on Dec 23, 2017 is basically a refutation of the ideas of Aryan
migration to India and Dravidian migration to south India. These two were
primarily the assumptions on which the famous epigraphist, Mr Iravatham Mahadevan built his research on Indus
script. His main evidence was the presence of Brahui in North West India, in
the region where Indus civilization flourished. But recently he reversed this
idea while conceding that Brahui was originally spoken by the people of North
east India. This shakes the very foundation of his research and therefore I
took up his works as Purva paksha to check the veracity of his assumptions and
methodology of research to find out how far his inference of Dravidian
substratum for Indus is reliable.
The paper can be read here
The ppt slides of the paper can be accessed here:
The following ideas
were mooted by me in the paper.
The Aryan issues:
1. Vedic society was not rural as it is made out to
be.
2. The Harappan script “fell into disuse” not because
the Aryans could not follow it owing to the oral transmission of Vedas.
3. Indra-Dhvajā was found in the Indus seals and its
continued presence can be seen as the Dhvaja-stambha (flag-posts) of temples
even today.
4. Absence of horse in Indus motifs is because horse
was never an emblem of anyone anytime in India in the pre-Common Era. On the other
hand Unicorn, the most recurring sign of the Indus seal was the emblem of
Jayadratha of Mahabharata who ruled over the Indus region.
5. The early Harappan phase coincides with the end
of Mahabharata war giving scope to theorise that the losers in the war became
Vaisyas and started the trade. All the prominent Harappan animal motifs are the emblems of the losers of Mahabharata war.
6. Varaha emblem continued as the emblems of many
dynasties until a few centuries ago. Varaha’s presence pre-dates Jayadratha and
can be traced to Manu’s times.
7. History of Manu heralds the Vedic history of India,
not Aryan Invasion.
8. Manu’s previous location was in what came to be
known as Pancha Dravida, in the west coast of South India. First sea floods of
Holocene pushed him into River Saraswathi which was a mighty Himalayan river
draining into the Arabian Sea at that time.
9. Manu’s new home is traced to Kashmir and
Brahmavarta located in between Saraswati and Drishadvati.
10. Manu explored the east of India and chose Sarayu
for setting up Ayodhya thereby ushering in the Saraswati –Sarayu culture.
11. Sarayu of Rig Veda was the Sarayu in east India,
not Haroiiu of Afghanistan as claimed by the supporters of the Aryan Invasion Theory.
12. Evidence shown from Ramayana that Sarayu of
Rigveda was indeed the Sarayu of Ayodhya. This also means that Ramayana did
happen and happened before the composition of that Rig Vedic verse on Sarayu.
14. Archaeo-botanical studies are cited to show that
Sarayu - Gangetic and Vindhya region was a rice-bowl around the 6th millennium
BCE – during which time the Ramayana had happened. This period concurs with Pushkar Bhatanagar’s date of Ramayana.
15. Migrations had happened from India to West- Northwest
India. Amāvasu, whom Witzel claims to be an incoming Aryan, was from the Indian
stock as he was the 12th fore-father of Vishwamitra.
16. The location of Kekaya of Ramayana is established as
Bactria (and nearby) to show that Bactria was Vedic land and not a stop-over
region for the invading Aryans and Dasyus as claimed by Witzel and Parpola
respectively.
The Dravidian issues:
17. Brahui was not Dravidian.
18. No Dravidian words in the Rig Veda (as claimed by
Mahadevan)
19. Jyeshta Devi whom Mahadevan calls as the indigenous God
of South India was the sister of Lakshmi (whom Mahadevan calls Aryan) and her
cult was spread as far as Kekaya in the Ramayana times.
20. Mahadevan’s version that Mahabharata was a civil
war that led to the decline of Indus civilization is disputed.
21. Mahadevan’s version that Krishna was a Dravidian
is disputed by showing that Krishna is mentioned in the Rig Veda four times along
with his family (son and grandson – Pradhyumna and Aniruddha) which gave rise
to the Vyuha concept of Vaishnavism.
22. Further disputed by showing 2 verses in the Rig Veda
on Krishna offering Soma to the Asvin-s. This concept continues even today in the festival
of Sharad Purnima by capturing the image of the Full
Moon (Soma) of the Asvin month in the milk offered.
23. Mahadevan’s notions on Velir and Agastya
disputed.
24. Agastya’s time established.
25. Agastya’s time concurs with the period of rice
cultivation at Sarayu which once again concurs with the date of Rama by Pushkar
Bhatnagar.
26. No Aryan or Dravidian element in the legends of
Agastya.
27.
Coming to the Tamil substratum for Indus seals, there is no ‘an’ suffix in old
grammar (Tol Kappiyam).
28.
Tamil Brahmi as the basis for Tamil letters is false.
29.
Brahmi was basically the product of Jains and Jain connection to Indus is
shown.
30.
Indus script found in Hathigumpha inscriptions and not in Tamil nadu.
31.
No loan words and loan translations in Tamil.
32.
Disputable nature of derivation with an example of “Muruga”.
33.
No loan words from Sanskrit. As per Tol Kappiyam’s definition of ‘Vada sol’ (Sanskrit)
‘Meenam’ is as much a Sanskrit word as it is a Tamil word. Therefore wrong to
say that (Indus) Meen was a Tamil word.
34.
Tamil and Sanskrit were sister
languages: proved by the Tol Kappiyam sutra on Vaikhari vaak.
35.
Pali and Sanskrit were sister languages. Proofs include Pali word in Rig Veda.
36.
Pali in vogue in the Indus and beyond and seen in Mitanni treaty. Mohenjo in Mohenjo-Daro
sounds like Pali.
37.
No parallelism with Tamil, only hints
from Tamil.
38.
Hint 1 from Silappadhikaram: The Great Bath likely to have been built by the descendants of the assistants of Maya who built the indoor water pool for Pandavas.
39.
Hint 2 from Silappadhikaram: The script on the Indus seals are about the name of
the goods, their size, number and the stamp of the trader.
40.
No Dravidian substratum for Indus as Mahadevan’s assumption of Aryan Invasion
and methodology of using Tamil stand disputed.
1 comment:
Leave aside Aryan Invasion theories! Tamizh roots and cognates abound in *PIE roots cited in the English etymology online. Several. Points to tamizh being the pre-prakritic language, in the sense tamizh preserves the old roots!
*mul - root for the word Amma - mul -> mur-> muru -> marmam -> mArbu (breast); marmam => mammam (breast, breast milk) -> ammam ( ammam uNNatuyilezhayO - Azhwars) -> amma. Many NE languages still have single amma for both parents!
*kal -> (stone, black, sharpness) -> (kUrmaipoRul) -> kannam (hollowess) -> cane -> cannon (ruler with a cane - hence body of rules). kannam => kaRNa, kaRNika(maNiKaRnika is a pond - claimed meaning not in Samskrt dictionaries), Sata kARNI - nuTRukkannar - 100 boatmen that helped SenguTTuvan - where kannam enters as a word for the hollow boat. Finally kRShi (farming, ploughing - hollowness), KRShNa (Blackness - kannangarEL).
*kAl - (neDil - long vowel signifies movement) - wheels of a tER (Chariot) -> *kwel -> wheel
These 3 are a start!
Ever a word like smara -memory has a old word preserved in Malayalam tamizh people as - Ormai (focus)!
There is no way samskRt can deform to provide these words. Given the nature of tamizh people that we observe today - that is anthropologically impossible!
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