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Aryans In India: Old Debate Triggers New Debate
deepikaglobal.com ^ | 11-11-2002

Posted on 11/11/2002 3:08:30 PM PST by blam

Aryans In India: Old Debate Triggers New Debate

New Delhi, Nov 11 (UNI) An Ancient India historian today said his remarks on academic debate over Aryan invasion were torn out of context by the Director of the New Delhi-based National Council of Educational Research and Training.

''He should read my book,'' Prof D N Jha said, commenting on a suggestion by Prof J S Rajput that his remarks perhaps implied a shift from the theory of Aryans' foreign origin.

Prof Rajput's suggestion came in a statement voicing satisfaction over scholars' ''professional'' remarks on the publication of the Council textbook on Ancient History for XI graders.

''Even Professor D N Jha, an esteemed scholar of Ancient India who has himself authored several books, has accepted that the Aryan invasion theory is a matter of academic debate,'' Prof Rajput said.

''This admission, coming from Prof Jha, is particularly significant in that his books never mentioned anything else than the Aryans' foreign origin theory,'' Prof Rajput said.

''The previous authors of NCERT's textbooks on Ancient India, Professors Romila Thapar and R S Sharma, had also shied from mentioning the India-origin theory of Aryans,'' he went on. ''We are happy that the new NCERT publication has already made an impact.'' Reached for comment, Prof Jha said, ''He should read my book. My position is clear that the Aryans' origin was foreign. The debate I referred to is on the manner of their arrival-- whether it was migration rather than invasion, as I held in my earlier writings.'' He said in his book 'Ancient India-- An Introductory Outline' published in 1977 he took the view it was an invasion, but he updated it and duly recorded it in another book called 'Ancient India in Historical Outline' published in 1998.

Prof Jha said the overall view in the debate-- which scholars say is more than 100 years old-- was balanced in favour of migration of Aryans as opposed to an invasion by them. ''I don't think there is much evidence of Aryans having an indigenous origin in India. They came from outside.'' Another scholar, Prof Arjun Dev, a former Professor of History and Head of the Social Science Department in the Council, said the Council remarks appeared intended to mislead by portraying a debate on the manner of Aryans' arrival as one on their origin.

He said it reflected eagerness of the establishment and its ideologues to try to prop up a communal ideology. The insistence on the Aryans' Indian origin is integral to this ideology.

He cited how Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Sarsanghchalak Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar accounted for nationalist leader Bal Gangadhar Tilak's view that Aryans hailed from the Arctic by saying Arctic had been a part of India


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: aryaninvasion; aryans; debate; godsgravesglyphs; india; indusvalley; indusvalleyscript; new; sarasvati; sarasvatiriver; saraswati; saraswatiriver; triggers
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To: blam; akash

The Nazis did use some aspects of Hinduism (which they twisted) as part of some of their ideological philosophy.


61 posted on 06/09/2006 8:21:32 PM PDT by Jedi Master Pikachu (www.answersingenesis.org)
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This topic is from 2002

One sees what one wants to
by Iravatham Mahadevan
I agree with Rajaram that it is time we put this 'horse business' behind us and look at the decipherment itself. I have done so. The Jha-Rajaram 'decipherment' is completely invalid. It is, in fact, a non-starter for the simple reason that the direction of reading adopted by the authors is wrong, as demonstrated by Witzel and Farmer (Frontline, October 13, box item at p.12). The 'decipherment' makes as much sense as you would get out of this page if you try to read it from a mirror reflection.
Of Rajaram's 'Horses', 'decipherment', and civilisational issues
by Asko Parpola
It is sad that in South Asia, as elsewhere in the world, linguistic and religious controversies are the cause of so much injustice and suffering. We should remember that from the very beginning, Aryan and non-Aryan languages and associated cultures, religions and peoples have intermingled and have become inextricably mixed. Every element of the population has contributed to the creation of Indian civilisation, and every one of them deserves credit for it.
From the following title:
Parpula's two volumes of photographs covering the collections of India and Pakistan, which appeared in 1987 and 1991... and his 1994 sign list, containing 386 signs (as against Mahadevan's 419 signs), are generally recognized as fine achievements, not least by Mahadevan... This is a significant figure. It is too high for a syllabary like Linear B... and too low for a highly logographic script like Chinese. the nearest comparison... are probably the Hittite hieroglyphs with about 500 signs and Sumerian cuneiform with perhaps 600+ signs... Most scholars therefore agree that the Indus script is likely to be a logosyllabic script like its west Asian contemporaries. [pp 281-284]

These Dravidian speakers are presumably remnants of a once-widespread Dravidian culture submerged by encroaching Indo-Aryans in the 2nd millennium BC... The Indo-Aryan hymns, the Vedas... recount tales of conquest of the forts of the dark-skinned Dasa or Dasyu... the Vedas repeatedly mention the horse in their descriptions of warfare and sacrifice, and this animal was clearly a vital part of Indo-Aryan society... But there is not horse imagery at all in the Indus Valley civilization and virtually no horse remains have been found by archaeologists. Hence the Indus civilizations is unlikely to have been Indo-Aryan. [pp 290-291]
Lost Languages: The Enigma Of The Worlds Undeciphered Scripts Lost Languages:
The Enigma Of The World's Undeciphered Scripts

by Andrew Robinson

62 posted on 06/09/2006 10:24:43 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (All Moslems everywhere advocate murder, including mass murder, and they do it all the time.)
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63 posted on 07/07/2016 9:33:19 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (I'll tell you what's wrong with society -- no one drinks from the skulls of their enemies anymore.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 56 | View Replies]


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