Monday, July 11, 2016

Aryan Invasion Theory AIT refuted

AIT is a theory which claims that India was civilized from outside, yet new evidence indicates Aryans to be indigenous to India who spread out to Europe. Some facts such as Hindus religion being of 10000 years support this argument. Below list of commentators on the matter.

1. Edwin Bryant of Harvard 
who states that there is insufficient evidence to deduce either OIT or AIT. He has examined numerous 
linguistic arguments and has concluded that the linguistic evidence is inconclusive and mushy, and that linguistic evidence CANNOT be the clincher in either case. It can, at best, only be secondary evidence to supplement some
other primary evidence. 

2. David Frawely and Navratna Rajaram
 reject linguistic evidence and say that it is a pseudo science which is 90% conjecture and 10%  facts, due to which the data can be interpreted either way with equal validity. Therefore, they adduce other data to support their 
opinions, in particular those from the Internal testimony of the Vedas and now the Saraswati paradigm 

3. B B
Lal, S P Gupta ignore the linguistic evidence and state that the archaeological evidence does not support any AIT but only a shift  of the epicenter of Indian civilization from Sarawati to Gangetic  valley. A similar view is held by
Jim Schaffer and Diane Lichtenstein 

4. Satya Swarup Misra actually tries to prove on linguistic grounds that the IE speakers were originally resident in India and spread from there (See his book 'The Aryan Problem'). His views have been refuted (as far as I know) by Dr. Hans Heinrich Hock 

5. Paul Kekai Mananasala
rejects the notion that IVC was IA on several grounds like genetics, linguistics and so on. However, he is not sure of the exact nature of IVC but points to prominent influences from the Austro Asiatic family. He used to be a believer in the AIT, as was BB Lal, S P Gupta, Satya Swarup Misra 

6. Klaus Klostermeir
 Rejects AIT and accepts an old date for the RV. But I am exactly clear of the reasons for his conclusions. Dr. Elst 
rejects AIT as he things that the non-linguistic data is harder evidence against the advent of IA speakers in 1700 BCE. All the same, he feels that there is not enough evidence for the OIT 

7.
Shrikant Talegeri
 rejects AIT and combines a wide range of Indian literature from Vedas to the ancillary Vedic texts and Puranas/Itihasas to prove OIT. His books are very strong on linguistics and he actually makes effective use of linguistics and philology to reject AIT and prove OIT. His books are academically  very rigorous and as far as I know, no sigificant refutation of even his linguistic arguments has appeared ever since his first book was published in 1993. The names of his books are 
a. Aryan Invasion Theory and Indian Nationalism; 1993 
b. Rigveda, a Historical analysis; 2000 
The former deals with the Puranic legends and their close correspondence with the Internal testimony of
the Vedas and the linguistic basis for concluding OIT. The latter deals with RV itself and its ancillary texts and expands the linguistic arguments further. 

8. K. D. Sethna (a Parsi)
rejects the AIT and has written dozens of articles and books to show that the entire chronology of India is on 
very shaky grounds. He examines Indus seals, Asokan epigraphs etc., to demonstrate that AIT paradigms
are false and fictional. He is low on linguistics but depends more on the internal testimony of texts 

9. S. R. Rao states
the IVC script is IA and not Dravidian 10. N Jha and N S Rajaram reject the notion that Brahmi developed 
from a semitic script. They see a chain of development from the IVC script to the Brahmi script itself and have
used the latter to decipher the IVC script. Of the 2500 seals or so, they have translated 2000 seals and the language turns out to be Vedic or Sanskrit. They therefore reject the AIT. In their recent work (see 
Indology list for reference), they have deciphered the Indus seals found in the Middle East also and have found the IVC script was used to some degree for the Middle Eastern languages as well in those area and so on. 

11. Some traditional scholars like Bhagvad Datta and Surya Kanta etc. state that the IVC was not IA. Rather, it was a 'Assur' culture that was at odds with the Aryan culture of Aryavarta (E Punjab, Rajasthan, Haryana, UP etc.). They bring together an astonishing number of passages to develop their thesis, but these works are very old now. 
They seem to follow the view of Maharshi Dayanand Saraswati that humans originated in what is now Tibet (see below)

12. Maharshi Dayanand proposed that Aryas originated in Tibet ('Trivishtapa') and thence migrated to
India, which was hitherto un-inhabited. He points out that not a single book in the vast literature of Hindus states or even suggests remotely that the Aryas came from outside India.

13. Lokmanya Tilak
suggested that Aryans came to India from the Arctic regions, but much before 1700 BCE

14. Traditional scholars like Pundit Ramagopal Shastri analyze each and every passage of RV which has the word Asura, Shambar, Namuchi  and so on and prove that not a single verse has the racial meaning  that the Old Indologists impute on them. They rather represent the  eternal struggle of supermacy between good and evil.

15. Sri Aurobindo states that the Dravidian and Aryan languages have a common ansector called 'Dravidaryan' and the Dravidian - Aryan binary is invalid. Such a view is also held by Dr. Kak and by Dr. Kalyanaraman.

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