Recently, there was a paper on some communities of Northwestern India such as Rors, Jats, Kambojs, Gujjars & Khatris. The primary focus of the paper was the community of cattle herders from Haryana known as Rors.
This is part 1 of my review of the paper. In part 2 I shall focus on whether the evidence furnished in the paper proves a steppe migration into South Asia.
Let me first quote the abstract in full :-
The Indus Valley has been the backdrop for several historic and prehistoric population movements between South Asia and West Eurasia. However, the genetic structure of present-day populations from Northwest India is poorly characterized. Here we report new genomewide genotype data for 45 modern individuals from four Northwest Indian populations, including the Ror, whose long-term occupation of the region can be traced back to the early Vedic scriptures. Our results suggest that although the genetic architecture of most Northwest Indian populations fits well on the broader North-South Indian genetic cline, culturally distinct groups such as the Ror stand out by being genetically more akin to populations living west of India; such populations include prehistorical and early historical ancient individuals from the Swat Valley near the Indus Valley. We argue that this affinity is more likely a result of genetic continuity since the Bronze Age migrations from the Steppe Belt than a result of recent admixture. The observed patterns of genetic relationships both with modern and ancient West Eurasians suggest that the Ror can be used as a proxy for a population descended from the Ancestral North Indian (ANI) population. Collectively, our results show that the Indus Valley populations are characterized by considerable genetic heterogeneity that has persisted over thousands of years.
Pay attention to the bolded part. As per the pre-print by Narasimhan et al, the ANI is the likely population that spread Steppe ancestry and hence Indo-Aryan ancestry among South Asians by mixing with the ASI group. Now this paper on Rors says that Rors (by corollary the Jats) are the population most identical to this hypothetical ANI population. Please note – It is not Brahmins but a herder group from Haryana, which is the vert heartland of Vedic India. This is very significant because it clearly establishes the veracity of our Vedic tradition.
Let us look at this in more detail.
The ancestors of Rors and Jats from Haryana spread the Vedic civilization
As many of you here might be aware, the Vedic homeland was situated on the banks of the river Saraswati in a region which encompassed today’s Haryana and Western UP from where it eventually spread further into Northern India, principally in the Gangetic plains and beyond.
In terms of genetics therefore, one may argue that if there is a genetic signature of the Vedic people, it should be found most strongly in the original Vedic homeland and gradually reduce as one moves away from this homeland. Ofcourse, the caveat would be, that unless the modern people residing in the Vedic homeland had come to completely replace the original inhabitants of Haryana who spread the Vedic culture.
The ancient DNA research has now shown that in terms of autosomal ancestry, there is link between the modern presence of Indo-European speakers across Eurasia and the ‘steppe’ ancestry component.
In South Asia it is argued, that the ‘steppe’ component is highest among the Brahmins and decreases as one moves down the caste heirarchy and this is said to be one of the principal evidences of movement of steppe people into South Asia having spread the Indo-European language and culture. Infact, the recent Narasimhan et al paper, even went so far as to suggest,
Although the enrichment for Steppe ancestry is not found in the southern Indian groups, the Steppe enrichment in the northern groups is striking as Brahmins and Bhumihars are among the traditional custodians of texts written in early Sanskrit. A possible explanation is that the influx of Steppe_MLBA ancestry into South Asia in the mid-2nd millennium BCE created a meta-population of groups with different proportions of Steppe ancestry, with ones having relatively more Steppe ancestry having a central role in spreading early Vedic culture.
However, it has already been known since many years that the population having the highest ‘steppe’ ancestry in South Asia are not the Brahmins but the Jats, more specifically, the Haryanvi Jats. This was also noted by Razib in one of his earlier blogs.
The present study focuses on this elevated steppe related component in Jats and more specifically in a related group from Haryana known as the Rors. It is titled, ” The Genetic Ancestry of Modern Indus Valley Populations from Northwest India “. This study has the advantage that it incorporates the aDNA data from the Narasimhan et al and other recent papers.
The following is the admixture graph from the study,
As can be seen in the selected enlarged portion of the graph, the ‘steppe’ like light blue component, which is highest in some of the Northern European groups closest to the steppe, like the Latvians, Lithuanians, Russians etc., is far higher in Rors than it is in the Brahmins or any other South Asian group.
As per the authors themselves,
Outgroup f3 analysis in the form of (PNWI, X; Yoruba) showed that the Ror (and Jat) have distinct, high genetic similarity to modern Europeans (Figures 1C, 1D, and S5), far higher than the similarity observed in other NWI populations, such as the Gujjar (Figures 1D and S5). Among an extended set of South Asians, this pattern was repeated only in the Pathan population from Pakistan (Figure S5).
And,
Refined IBD analysis highlights the general trend whereby the sharing of IBD segments declines as one moves along the cline from PNWI and NI_IE toward Dravidian and Indian Austroasiatic (IN_AA) groups (Figure 2A). Strikingly, among all PNWI groups studied, the Ror demonstrate the highest number of IBD segments shared with Europeans and Central Asians, whereas the Gujjar share a higher number of IBD segments with local Indian Indo-Europeans and Dravidians than do other PNWI groups (Figure 2A).
In CHROMOPAINTER analysis, as expected, the Ror (and Jat) exhibited a significantly higher number of chunks received from Europeans than do other NWI populations studied (t test, p value < 0.01).
They also state further,
A higher level of European ancestry in the Ror and Jat compared to other South Asians (Figures 1, 2, S2, S5, and S13 and Tables S5–S8) makes these two populations outliers within the broader Northwest South Asian landscape. This could be indicative of either a possible recent gene flow from a population related to Europe or to ancient West-Eurasian-related influx, which would agree with previous studies on adaptation, wherein the Ror and Jat have stood out for their high frequency of the lactase persistence allele (LCT-13910T) and the light-skin-color gene variant (SLC24A5).
The Rors and Jats also have higher frequencies of Lactase persistence and light skin color gene variant which makes the case of their more recent ancestry sharing, compared to other South Asians, with Northern Europeans or steppe groups stronger.
Also,
We also report that, relative to other South Asians, the Ror group has high shared drift with the EHG and Steppe_EMBA groups, higher allele sharing with the Steppe_MLBA group, and higher affinity with the Iron Age (prehistorical) and early historical first South Asian ancient sources (Figures S6A, S6B, S7, S8A, S8D, and S9 and Tables S9 and S16).
Finally the authors argue that the Rors are the best proxy for the ANI ancestry in South Asians,
In summary, we demonstrate a higher proportion of genomic sharing between PNWI populations and ancient EHG and Steppe-related populations than we observe in other South Asians.We report that the Ror are the modern population that is closest to the first prehistorical and early historical South Asian ancient samples near the Indus Valley, and they also harbor the highest Steppe-related, EHG, and Neolithic Anatolian ancestry. However, compared to other adjoining groups, the Ror show less affinity with the Neolithic Iranians. The Ror population can plausibly be used as an alternative proxy for ANI in future demographic modeling of South Asian populations.
The bar graph below explains it very well, where it can be seen that the proportion of the steppe orange component is higher among Rors and Jats than either the Pathans, the Brahmins or any other South Asian group.
The admixture proportions as per the qpAdm given in the Supplementary Table 11 and it is instructive to observe that the steppe_emba proportion for Rors is estimated at 57 % of total ancestry while for Jats it is 61 %. The same proportions for Brahmins from UP, Gujarat & Bengal are 46 %, 45 % & 44 % respectively. Even for Pashtuns from Afghanistan it is 52 % and for Kalash it is 58 %. Only the Yaghnobis and Pamiris from Central Asia are estimated to have a higher proportion of steppe_EMBA at 62 % & 67 % respectively.
Before moving forward it is necessary to point out that the light blue component observed in the admixture graph which is highest among the Northern Europeans is not the same as the steppe_EMBA or steppe_MLBA ancestry. Steppe_EMBA & Steppe_MLBA are an amalgation of the light blue, the dark blue (Anatolian-Farmer related) and the light green (Iran_N/CHG) components you see in the admixture graphs. So while the light blue component which peaks in Northern Europe is significantly less among South Asians, the light green component which correlates well with Iran Neolithic type ancestry, peaks in South Asia but it present at a lot less proportion among the northern Europeans.
Infact, the authors even stress that,
The Ror and Jat peoples stand out for having the highest proportion of Steppe_ MLBA ancestry (- 63%). The proportion of Steppe ancestry in the Ror is similar to that observed in present day Northern Europeans.
Therefore, the predominance of the light blue component in Northern Europeans is not alone an indication that their ‘steppe’ ancestry is far higher than among South Asians.
Now, if steppe-related ancestry correlates with presence and spread of Indo-European languages, the above data clearly implies that the highest steppe-related and therefore IE ancestry among South Asians is among the Jats & Rors, significantly higher than in other NW groups as well as Brahmins and Kshatriyas. Jats and Rors sampled for the study, live in Haryana & Western UP, which is the Vedic homeland.
It therefore supports the ancient Indian tradition according to which the region of Haryana & Western UP was the homeland of the Vedic people from where they spread out across Northern India. It can therefore be argued perfectly well, that the Brahmins and Kshatriyas in other regions have higher proportion of ‘steppe’ ancestry than the lower classes around them precisely because they have greater percentage of their ancestry derived from the ‘steppe’ rich people from the Vedic homeland. It has long been an argument that the ‘steppe’ ancestry in higher among the Brahmins and Kshatriyas than the lower castes across all regions of India and that this was evidence of IE culture spreading in South Asia with the ‘steppe’ ancestry. But the example of Jats and Rors in Haryana puts to doubt all such claims. Instead, we can argue that the higher ‘steppe’ related ancestry in Upper Castes across India is a function of them having a greater portion of their ancestry from their Vedic forefathers who lived in Haryana & Western UP, just as is suggested by the Vedic tradition.
I may finally add that there is a closely related group based on close fst distances and similar admixture proportions that likely descends from the core group that was responsible for the spread of this ancestry into the Caucasus and the steppe. This group consists of Rors, Jats, Kalash, Pashtun, Pathan, Tajik & Pamiri. They have broadly similar levels of Iran_N (15 to 30 %), Steppe_EMBA (49 to 67 %) & Onge (15 to 25 %) as per the qpAdm modelling in table S11. Fst distances also indicate that they are quite closely related. For example, the Fst distance between Rors and Pamiris (0.0069), Pashtuns (0.0057) & Tajiks (0.0058) is similar to Fst distances of Rors with neighbouring groups like Kamboj (0.0088), Gujjar (0.0064), Khatri (0.0056), Brahmins (0.0052) & Kshatriyas (0.0062). Considering the fact that Rors (& perhaps Jats) haven’t probably admixed with Pamiris, Tajiks or Pashtuns since millenia, their Fst distances would have been even less initially. The other Indus Valley modern populations are also not very far off in terms of Fst distances with each other but the above groups seem to form a subset among them.
https://i.imgur.com/TrNPI1r.jpg
It is conceivable that an ancestral group related to these populations with similar levels of ancestry proportions as exhibited by them (but perhaps with lowel levels of AASI – since BMAC has only 5 % in comparison to Pamiris who have 15 %), spread out from North India to Central Asia and those from Central Asia venturing further towards Caucasus and from there onto the steppe.
1) thought jatts were from lower sindh?
2) when did the jatts start saying they were Scythian? 20th cent?
1. This is a recent speculation among historians about the Jatts having come from Sindh due to the early Arabs who conquered Sindh referring to Zutts in the area whom the historians equate with Jatts.
However, Jats have the highest steppe related ancestry among South Asians while Sindhis and Balochis have some of the lowest. So the speculation does not pass the test of evidence.
2. The Scythian connection is a colonial era invention/myth and is not based on some old tradition.
It is our love for Mother India speaking (Oedipus complex ;). The whole world is saying we are not the true sons of Mother India. We are adopted sons. And we are fighting desperately for the love of our Maa. Kind of a Bollywood potboiler at a national level. 🙂
You’re wrong my Kang Jat clan trace their origin to Afghanistan like many from my caste and not Sindh who are connected to the Kangju of Central Asia by many historians. Plus, it was the British and other historians observing and looking into my castes history said we descend from the Scythians and White Huns and it seems they were correct.
Plus, my Kang Jat clan are famous for producing individuals with blue green eyes, chestnut brown hair, fair skin with Irano-Afghan/East Asians features like those depicted in the famous paintings of Sogdiana Buddhists. Plus, it’s no surprise because my caste have the most Steppe ancestry and tend to be very atypical compared to what the average Indian looks like.
Plus, the Mahabharata groups the Kambojas, Sakas, Greeks and the Chinas and calls them “Mlechchas” (Barbarians). Also, the Manusmriti lists the Komedes Kambojas, Sakas, Greeks, Pahlavas, Paradas etc. and views them as degraded Kshatriyas. Anushasanaparva of Mahabharata also views the Komedes Kambojas, Greeks, Sakas etc. in the same light. Patanjali’s Mahabhashya states the Komedes Kamboja, Greeks and Sakas as Anirvasita (pure) Shudras with Kamboj, Jats and Pathans having more Steppe ancestry than all other communities in India what a coincidence?
Plus, my caste are genetically the closest to the Scythian, Saka and Wusun samples on GEDmatch out of all Indian communities so it’s obvious my caste descend from the Scythians, Saka and Wusun Steppe tribes unlike other Indian communities who tend to have more Indian ancestry.
Amandeep Singh, many of the common people were described to have become Mlechchas. However many of the leaders were described as Arya. The common people were not always Mlechchas, but had over millenia become Mlechchas. Either through immigration or gradual decay or loss of interest in Arya spirituality and saucha (purity) over time.
Hi AnAn, you’re wrong the term ‘Mlechchas’ was applied to all Scythians, Kamboja, Greeks, Pahlavas and Paradas it didn’t matter what position they had in society. Plus, I’m glad DNA studies are proving my caste has an amazing history and background from the Steppe tribes.
Which ‘steppe’ tribes you are mentioning? What was their language? What were their genes and how old they are? Whose mother tongue was Sanskrit? How do you explain thousands of Serbian toponyms in SA? Have your language originated in India and later spread in whole Europe (how, when) or it came from Europe and was adopted by locals? What does it mean ‘singh’ in Sanskrit? Thanks.
Jaggu your English and grammar is terrible it makes you look stupid. Plus, I doubt you’re Central Asian and I bet you’re one of those Muslims in South Asia who wishes they had such a strong connection to the Steppe tribes like me. Plus, you live in the past my caste are very powerful and successful such as my relatives are Maharajas, Misl leaders, Government Officals, Police Officers, Army Officers and Landlords. Also, why would I want to convert to Islam dirty terrorist?
Hi AnAn, why are you praising that dirty Muslim terrorist? He’s neither handsome or have superior genes to me because my caste have better connections to various Steppe tribes in history compared to other South Asians. Plus, why would I want you to send me texts from the Mahabharata? I can look it up myself and bother because what it says about the Scythians, Kamboja, Greeks, Kushans etc… is proof enough they were never fully incorporated into Indian society.
“Jaggu your English and grammar is terrible it makes you look stupid. Plus, I doubt you’re Central Asian and I bet you’re one of those Muslims in South Asia who wishes they had such a strong connection to the Steppe tribes like me. Plus, you live in the past my caste are very powerful and successful such as my relatives are Maharajas, Misl leaders, Government Officals, Police Officers, Army Officers and Landlords. Also, why would I want to convert to Islam dirty terrorist?”
:LOL:
Love this performance. Ustad Jagguji, looking forward to your counter performance!
“Plus, my Kang Jat clan are famous for producing individuals with blue green eyes, chestnut brown hair, fair skin with Irano-Afghan/East Asians features like those depicted in the famous paintings of Sogdiana Buddhists.”
Sounds like a factory with quality controlz :p
If ure village factory still producing individuals of the same specs for like 2000 years, it sounds like ure inbred matey, lulz…
Hi Jaggu, don’t be jealous it’s not a nice trait and don’t feel inferior because you look like shit. Plus, I don’t think you can read and understand English because our Steppe genes must be strong and more recent because these trait such as blue green eyes, chestnut hair etc… still show within my clan and we’re not inbred dirty commoner. Plus, in the U.K. it’s mainly Hindus that do factory jobs and not Sikhs that’s well known.
Hi Jaggu, don’t be jealous it’s not a nice trait and don’t feel inferior because you look like shit. Plus, I don’t think you can read and understand English because our Steppe genes must be strong and more recent because these trait such as blue green eyes, chestnut hair etc… still show within my clan and we’re not inbred dirty commoner. Plus, in the U.K. it’s mainly Hindus that do factory jobs and not Sikhs that’s well known.
Plus, us Kang Jats through a Misl leader are related through marriage to the Patiala Royal Family, Punjab Royal Family, Carnarvons, Rothschilds, all the the Royal Families of Europe and Asia what about yourself? I doubt you have a much more impressive connections than that dirty commoner who’s impure with dirty South Asian blood and don’t feel inferior.
Lololz kangaroo bro u gettin het up.. who u kiddin? Am the dude whoz grand daddy had carnal knowledge of your grand mommy… Half Uzbek Half Tatar Full Turk, get me??
C Asians rule bro. and they rule your kangaroo punjabi ass too. Convert to Islam and you’ll be safe.
#StaniInTheHood
#KangaroosAreHalal
PS: your truck’s leaking oil…
Guruji Murshid Sarkar Sheik Auliya Pir Faqir Ustad Jaggu, the universe knows that you have the best DNA gene haploid admixture in the universe and are in the top 0.01% percentile in physical attractiveness.
I pray that the evil eye (jealousy of others) never afflicts and curses you.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Amandeep Singh Kang; Hum sub ek hai. Sub ka malik ek hai. Nanakji sub ka Guru thaa. Hamare sab ka Guru thee. Saare Jati, saare dharm, saare bhaava, saare sansar, saare manushya ka Guru thee. Hum subhe Nanakjee ko maanthe hai.
Jagguji ke sath raag mat keejeya. Jagguji accha Ustad hai. Ahamakaara todana unka kaam hai. Murshid Ustad Jagguji kee Jai!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Amandeep Singh, many great Arya Kshatriyas and Brahmins came from the west and north west. At one time–during the time of Budha, Illa, Pururavas, Urvashi, Ayus (also known as Ayu) and Nuhusha–Uttara Kuru (Xinjian province China, Turan, perhaps some place further North and West {not sure, pending further information}) was the heart of Arya varsha, culture, spirituality and civilization. Now yes, After Yayati’s five sons (Yayati is the son of Nuhusha) . . . gradually thing changed and there was a degradation of spirituality and culture. There might have been migration of immigrants from other parts of the world too.
During the time of the Mahabharata war, many great saints and Arya Kshatriyas came from Turan and perhaps eastern Iran. For example Sudakshina–king of Turan. If you want further elaboration, I can reread the Mahabharata text and find additional names.
Amandeep is basically a Sikh Jaggu. Finally found your match.
Ranjit Singh was from a Rajasthani Jaat background (Sandhawalia). Punjabi Jatts have no history except rape by Jaats
Kangs are related to Rothschilds? No but even if they are, what’s there to be proud of? Rothschilds are Jews/baanias just like pappeh. Jatts are not real Jats they are products of rape by Jaats of pappeh (business community)
Haryana, Western UP, Punjabi Hindu, Delhi and Rajasthan Jaats have a higher percentage of European DNA than Sikh Jatts because of strict endogamy. All results show that not only do Hindu Jats have a higher proportion of steppe and NE Euro DNA, but also a lesser percentage of South Indian DNA than Sikh Jats.
Many Jaat surnames still correspond with known ancient Caucasian names such as Geta (Getae Scythians), Sakwan (Sakas/Indo-Scythians), Hun (Huns), Kamar (Scythians), Shaka (Shakas/Indo-Scythians), Kushan (Kushans) etc. All of these originated north of Tajikistan.
Jaats are much stronger than Jatts and our bone structure is more European than that of round-faced, long nosed Jatts. Jats also have more European DNA than Afghans, which is why we are much taller than them.
MANUSMRITI CHAPTER 10:
43. In consequence of the omission of the sacred rites, and of their not consulting Brahmanas, the following tribes of Kshatriyas have gradually sunk in this world to the condition of Sudras;
44. The Paundrakas, the Kodas, the Dravidas, the Kambogas, the Yavanas, THE SAKAS, the Paradas, the Pahlavas, the Kinas, the Kiratas, and the Daradas.
I really do not get this fascination for patrilineal descent in Indian culture. It should be enough what we are culturally. Never known the French to lose sleep over whether their forefather was Julius Caesar or Vercingetorix. I find it primitive and brutish that the locus of kinship in India is still (primarily) based on genetic information…
You really are quite clueless my dear. This is not about trying to prove or disprove patrilineal descent from some group. It is trying to uphold the veracity of the Indian tradition.
Indian historical tradition and a lot of other things have been devalued ever since the colonial period. We have a very ancient tradition that dates the Mahabharata War in 3102 BC. And a lot of Vedic history is dated anterior to this date of 3102 BC. The Brits massacred all of that and said all of our historical tradition is post-dating 1500 BC. And this was done primarily because of the ridiculous notion prevalent in Europe of that time that Earth was only 6000 years old.
If you find this acceptable that’s your choice but I find it rather problematic and frankly just rubbish. If Indian texts and their information is dated correctly, a lot more about ancient Indian history can be known and confirmed than what it is right now.
Indian historical tradition and a lot of other things have been devalued ever since the colonial period. We have a very ancient tradition that dates the Mahabharata War in 3102 BC.
I thought these dates were inferences based on a mix of astronomical calculation and speculation. Do any of the older texts say flat out that the Mahabharata war happened in 3102 BC? Otherwise, what exactly is the problem if these dates can be re-calibrated with more knowledge that has been gathered over the past century or more?
Indian historical tradition is hardly the only tradition to have been “devalued” thus. Few informed British people likely believe in the Arthurian legends as authentic history. So if “devaluing history” is a sign of contempt (or humiliation), the British did it not just to us but to themselves too.
Most Westerners also don’t consider the events surrounding the Exodus story to be history either, as it doesn’t pass historic or scientific scrutiny today. (And they adopted the Hebraic tradition as their own a long time ago.)
It seems other people are willing to reconsider and reinterpret their historical traditions without being humiliated or psychologically shattered. Why can’t we do the same?
PS: And of course, if you or anyone else makes a cogent case for an OIT in light of as-yet undiscovered evidence, we all need to change our priors.
Numinous,
We can discuss it somewhere but for now let us stick to the topic. Slaptik came up with this irrelevant stuff and I took the bait unfortunately. Let us not derail from the topic. This is really very interesting data.
Numinous,
I have replied to you in the Open thread, please check.
Numinous, the date 3102 BC appears in the Bhagavad Purana.
Hi Jaydeep:
Keep up the good fight. You are sure to win. I have always maintained that the root of the problem is philology and the questionable methods with which they classify languages (the curious can refer to Joseph Greenberg’s work) and come up with phylogenetic models. Sturtevant’s Indo Hittite hypothesis in 1962 was quite irrationally and Eurocentrically suppressed by the Indo European linguists. They had to have the word “European” in it!
https://www.jstor.org/stable/410871?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
“Mahabharata War in 3102 BC. And a lot of Vedic history is dated anterior to this date of 3102 BC.”
Here is Subhash Kak reviewing the various proposed dates of the Mahabharata war based on Indic traditions alone.
http://www.ece.lsu.edu/kak/MahabharataII.pdf
“This leaves us with the dates of 1924 BC and 3137 BC. I don’t think we have evidence at
this time to pick one of these two as the more likely one. ”
Personally, I prefer the lower date of 1924 BCE. It fits well with S. R. Rao’s excavations of Dwaraka. It also squares well with Tilak’s dating of Rig Veda around 4500 BCE .
https://archive.org/details/orionortheantiqu021979mbp/page/n1
Working within the AIT paradigm in the 1920’s Tilak quite innocently thought that the Vedic people came from the North Pole (!) because it would have taken them that long to get to South Asia. Herman Jacobi has reached the same conclusion as Tilak independently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Jacobi
“Jacobi’s studies in astronomy have regained importance today in the context of the Out of India theory, because his calculations led him to believe that the hymns of the Rigveda were to be dated as early as 4500 B.C”
There were no Hindu Nationalist and BJP at the time Tilak and Jacobi was working. So no reason to question their work. Nilesh Oak’s proposal of 4500 BCE seems quite outlandish.
Also, please look into Russian linguistic Anna Dybo work if you have not already. She proses the steppe as the homeland for Proto Altaic languages and maintains that PIE came from a mountainous region with large water bodies nearby.
“Working within the AIT paradigm in the 1920’s Tilak quite innocently thought that the Vedic people came from the North Pole (!) ..”
Sorry, Tilak passed away in 1920.
“Also, please look into Russian linguistic Anna Dybo work if you have not already. She proses the steppe as the homeland for Proto Altaic languages and maintains that PIE came from a mountainous region with large water bodies nearby.”
Should read
“Also, please look into Russian linguist Anna Dybo’s work if you have not already. She proposes the steppe as the homeland for Proto Altaic languages and maintains that PIE came from a mountainous region with large water bodies nearby.”
Jaydeep wrote
“You should also know that far more Europeans are interested in their genetic history than the Indians.”
Genetics is fine but when Telugus and Lithuanians start clustering on a principle components map one wonders what the 0-30% “steppe ancestry” really means and the agendas lurking behind such studies. After all,
“Humans and chimps share a surprising 98.8 percent of their DNA. How can we be so similar–and yet so different?”
https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent-exhibitions/anne-and-bernard-spitzer-hall-of-human-origins/understanding-our-past/dna-comparing-humans-and-chimps
Thank you for the encouragement. I shall look into Anna Dybo’s work. I haven’t read or heard of it so far.
It is interesting that a lot of people don’t know how even in the 18th century there were European scientists like the Scottish mathematician John Playfair and French astronomer Bailly who had argued for the great antiquity of Indian traditions. Jacobi and Tilak carried on this work. But their propositions were marginalised by the ‘fair-minded’ Western Indologists and scholars.
You should also know that far more Europeans are interested in their genetic history than the Indians.
As a hobby, or shit retired people do. Even that is really about local family trees and as concerned about matrilineal descent. Nobody goes crazy (or political) over deep ancestry – except the Neo-Nazis of course.
LOL @ colonial Brits thinking earth is 6000 years old. Victorians invented modern geology cf. James Hutton.
PS: mahAbhArata pre-3000 BCE (i.e. before the iron age) is crank history. In the not-even-wrong category.
I don’t agree much with slapstik. But here I agree fully. The best is sometimes the enemy of the good. Rather than working with accepatable facts to establish native-ness we have gone for crank history which delegitimizes everything. The sooner we get out of this whole thing it’s better for the hindu right
Hello Slapstik,
I tend to sense that it is all majorly about the question of the origins of Vedic culture and tradition for all of the folks- in my experience Indians of any type don’t care anything much about the genetic information regarding their ancestors at all; it seems all that matters for Indians regarding ancestors is caste and nothing else. (For example, I would imagine if some historically lower caste or SC person finds out he has some historical upper caste Y-DNA haplogroup through genetic testing, he would not suddenly consider himself as part of the relevant historical upper caste group. Similarly, I don’t think Brahmins or other groups leave their caste consciousness if they find out that they have a Y-DNA haplogroup more found in historical lower castes and SC groups.) It’s all mainly about culture, I think. That’s why, there is this probably-remarkable-to-others tendency on the part of some particular sub-groups of the AMT-opposing Indians to even fully accept and even promote the idea that Y-DNA haplogroup R1a1a… got to India pretty late and with Iranics and argue that the genesis of the Vedic culture was independent of R1a1a and mainly mediated by people having Y-DNA haplogroups like H, (L too?), etc. Basically, eternal cultural continuity with the subcontinent is the only major thing that they crave. (But I sometimes think that all these people do tend to ignore the unbroken line of maternal ancestry native to the subcontinent that a lot of Indians have. Rather, people perhaps do this everywhere probably, so what you say is perhaps there underneath all this to some extent.)
@Santosh
How does it matter to Hindus today whether 100 generations ago their paternal ancestor was an Iranic or some other Indo-European speaking chap? The phylogenetic categories of languages are a modern technical classification, not categories of social discourse. E.g. pashtuns, an Iranic people by language, were always more Indic in their culture and preference than Iranian. Just as English are technically Germanic, but in closer cultural and social intercourse with the French.
It is a matter of historical fact that the Iranic shaka-s did come to India and established the Western kSatrapa kingdoms (centred around modern-day Gujarat). And one of the greatest of shaka-kSatrapa kings, rudradamana issued the earliest known inscription in Sanskrit.
It took a king of C Asian Iranic origin to write India’s Classical language down for the first time in recorded history! There’s no reason to believe the original Arya-s didn’t do the exact same thing.
“Pashtuns, an Iranic people by language, were always more Indic in their culture and preference than Iranian.”
*Everything* I ever heard about Pashtuns sounded nomadic-Iranic to me. (I do know that Pashtuns’ ancestors may have been Buddhist at a point – which other nomadic-Iranics also were.) Can you elaborate?
Yes I agree with all of your sentiments of course. I was majorly highlighting my perception that the most important factor in the traditional/modern opposition to AMT, at least in a large portion of that community, is the anxiety about cultural continuity and not at all about real/imagined native/foreign genetic ancestral components. This sub-group that I’m talking about has been more than willing to sacrifice the indigenity of the paternal Y-DNA haplogroup R1a… (which they kinda tentatively accept as arriving from outside India after the Indus civilisation which in all these peoples’ view tends to be the most important source of Indian culture but this point I think is fundamentally incorrect because as the indescribably brilliant commentator Saurav noted once before, the definition and the conception of India and the Hindu religion and culture lies with Indo-Aryans and Indus Civilisation is kinda irrelevant for Hinduism and the cultural conception of India. I think people need to let go and try to become more accepting of the fact that the conception of the motherland and association of the people with it goes as far as the early Indo-Aryans but not any deeper. What is the big deal in considering this? People should stop worrying about the Indus civilisation – that civilisation went extinct and failed for a reason – who knows how many humans they may have sacrificed to their gods.) for the Out-of-paleolithic-Caucasus/Iran (and more radically Out-of-India) theory because it ensures a more robust continuity of culture as perceived by them, and in the bigger scheme of things, culture is always paramount to them than any paternal-origin associations. I personally don’t bother a lot about any of these (I don’t even bother much about the Arya-mleccha civilizational conflict stuff because me or my family have never been part of the traditional high culture at any point in our history on this planet) things because I cannot afford to, but it is all rather interesting and funny; an enjoyable side-result of my Dravidian linguistics pastime, I guess.
Sorry for my large rants within the brackets but there is another rant: I never understand why people forge a pyschological alliance between the ancient Indian hunter gatherers and the early Indo-Aryans and give them the top rank in mind compared to the others (but don’t disrespect the others too much) because they are the two pillars on which India rests. It is really as simple as that to avoid conflicts, at least for an average Indian person, I believe.
Wow I meant to say “why people don’t forge…” of course and not what I wrote in a hurry above.
@Santosh
Once you realize that Dravidians , Aryans or Tribals have the same amount of Steppic like ancestry depending on where they are located on the North South gradient.
But for that realization you need to critically assess the data put out by these studies especially the ones which show correlation between social status and some components.
With that realization, you will begin to question the categorization of genomes by languages and castes and join the other side, which is a minority at the moment I agree.
PS: based on the way you write I do know you under different pseudonyms at different forums.
Wow CallingBS, seeing a nick like that on your name and reading what you wrote, people are now gonna think that I’m this very shady and more-untrustworthy-than-normal internet character or something! So please clear up the air a bit if possible (without disclosing my other identity which you say you are privy to) and assure the world that I’m not really a shady character but a very sAdhu-jaMtuvu-type one (well, okay; I tend to get a bit passive aggressive at times but am harmless really lol!)!
Regarding the other stuff, I perhaps tend to think too simplistically ultimately as you point out but linguistics is the major edifice I use to evaluate my theories about these fields. (My IQ is not sufficient to master genetics.) And the subject of reconstructive linguistics makes such a lot of sense to me and I believe is incredibly useful when evaluating many things of this kind, but that may be only me. And I never brought up Proto-Dravidians just to clear any misunderstandings up. I believe they are totally evil and all that lol- recently I have even superstitionistically severed my associations with some particular Dravidian-mother-goddess movies and songs, after experiencing a particular type of hardship and subsequently being told by my family that Dravidian mother goddesses are better left alone and not associated with.
Santosh, the reason is that the artifacts from IVC heavily suggest a significant Sanathana Dharma influence. IVC helps us learn about eastern philosophy as it existed then. And perhaps how it has evolved since.
I for example would love to find out how Samkhya, Samkhya’s subset Yoga existed at that time(did laya Yoga, raja Yoga, hatha Yoga, mantra yoga exist yet . . . what forms did they take if they existed). To find out how Tantra existed at that time. Maybe we can find lost scriptures (Vedas, Vedangas, Agamas, Smrithis). Almost all the scriptures are lost. So it is natural for Hindus to seek for lost wisdom from ancient sites. Whether it be IVC or ancient Persia. I personally am eager to find if Gunung Padang [portions carbon dated to between 13,000 and 28,000 years ago . . . . very large pyramid] in Java Indonesia has information on ancient wisdom and ancient Sanathana Dharma.
It is Hindus’ love for their Mother India speaking (Oedipus complex 😉 ). The whole world is saying they are not the true sons of Mother India. They are adopted sons. And they are fighting desperately for the love of their Maa. Kind of a Bollywood potboiler at a national level. 🙂
Lol. Totally true.
Kind of disagree, lets say India had been some sort of Pakistan variant (no significat muslim pops and a hindu state) , it would not have mattered to hindus to that degree what the world says. Hell they might have just accepted the AIT, AMT with much gusto just like the pre 47 Indians did to certain extent. Just like it happens in Pakistan where history starts from Bin Qasim.
The edge in the whole debate is the corollary drawn of AIT,AMT with the later Muslim invasion (No one to stick their hands up to own the poor Brits). That what gets their goat.
[rant]
It is tragicomic that Indian psyche has been so battered and bruised that they will hang on some silly/fantastical notion of greatness cooked up by some pre-medieval pot-bellied “paNDita” than try to learn proper Science and evaluate evidence without silly personal biases. The world does not owe Indians an effin’ lunch. You got screwed up by Turks and then the Brits, tough! Grow up and deal with it like adults, rather than play victims ad nauseam.
The founding fathers of the Indian Republic, the ones who actually lived through colonial occupation, were far more psychologically self-assured than this current Hindu victim rondoo pandey crop!
[/rant]
I have deleted a few of Slapstik’s comments because he is derailing the thread with his tripe. If he will not stay on topic I’ll delete all of his replies. If he does not like this he can stay away.
LOL. You are most welcome to delete all my replies 🙂
The real gist of the paper is in the supplementary materials.
The main paper intentionally has been worded poorly to not create many ripples, till supporting ancient DNA data arrives.
Also they have not abandoned the “A Pre-Existing Isolation by Distance Gradient in West Eurasia May Partly Account for the Observed
“Steppe” Component in Europe ” theory, and the data in the supplementary materials backs this up.
The current genomic situation for South Asia can be summed up in one sentence as such,
“All the real South Asian ancient components have been cannibalized by other ancient components, and the papers in the past few years have
been only considering/discussing remainder of the real South Asian components as the only South Asian components”.
I do have a question for Jaydeep/Razib or whoever understands qpadm.
Why the qpadm ancestry proportion in table S15 of Pathak et al and
Vagheesh et al are significantly different, despite using the same promixal model of the same source components?
https://www.biorxiv.org/highwire/filestream/90171/field_highwire_adjunct_files/1/292581-2.xlsx
I do see that the std.error in the former are higher. So is this an artifact of curve fitting in Vagheesh et al or simply the non variance of the available samples to them.
i noticed that too. i had heard that the steppe % was going to drop in the future. i have always felt it seemed too high in earlier reich lab papers, and this is even higher.
Thanks for bringing this up to notice. I don’t know why this is so. Let me mail it to one of the authors and see if they can explain.
btw, the title may be correct. though i think those ‘vedic forefathers’ lived btwn 1500 bc and 1000 bc and had recent ancestors from the steppe.
I’m a bit confused by what the author is trying to say.
We’ve known for quite a while that those who inhabit the region between the Indus and Ganges, where the Aryans burst onto the scene in South-Asia, have the highest percentage of Aryan admixture. Brahmins were notable for having the highest percentage of Aryan admixture among their respective sub-groups.
I’m also confused about this “Vedic homeland” in Haryana. The region is certainly became important (Kuru), but the Vedic religion had already been propagated by the Aryans for centuries prior, almost entirely in the regions west of the Sarasvati (Punjab basically).
I have already given references in the article which show the evidence for Haryana and Western UP being the Vedic homeland.
It is a mistaken belief, that the Rigveda was composed in Punjab. It’s core area was Haryana and Western UP and early Rigveda is concentrated there. Later on, there is a geographical expansion with areas from Afghanistan to Eastern UP/Bihar finding mention.
The Rigveda is essentially the book of the Purus and their subgroup the Bharatas and their home was centered in Haryana & Western UP. The Kurus were the descendants of these Bharatas.
The Purus themselves were one of what Rigveda calls the 5 tribes or Panchjana who dwelt on the river Saraswati i.e. they dwelt in the same region that later on was inherited by Purus.
The other 4 tribes were Druhyus, Anus, Yadus & the Turvashas. The Yadus and Turvashas were more distant and are believed to have migrated further inland in South Asia while Druhyus, Anus and Purus were more closely related. Eventually even the Druhyus are said to have been forced westwards, as they had become very warlike and belligerent, by a coalition of various tribes including one from interior UP. These Druhyus are said to have eventually migrated into Central Asia where they established many kingdoms among the mlechhas. The Anu migration is not so clearly established but it is they who are found ruling Punjab during the Rigvedic period when the Bharata king Sudas attacks them from the east ( the Battle of Ten Kings ) and defeats them. There is good reason to believe that these Anu were the Iranians.
Read the 1st link I have given on the Vedic homeland.
I read the introduction, which seems to argue that the Aryans migrated out of India and journeyed westward.
These types of theories are generally regarded as flat-earther nonsense at worst, and a highly unlikely scenario at best.
Everyone has been given a brain to see the data and make up their mind. If you do not want to see the data but focus more on who is presenting the data , that’s your problem.
We people of India and Pakistan have a habit of cutting off our noses to spite the face. If textual evidence indicates people migrated out from India to Central Asia than vice-versa, is that so bad for the Pakistanis ? Or is it that because Indian Hindus are arguing it, they must be faking it and the White man is always to be trusted with his scholarship ?
It’s your choice. Believe what you want. I really do not care for people who are always looking to confirm their own pre-conceived biases.
The evidence, whether historical, textual, or genetic, point overwhelmingly in one direction. This is why the conventional theory on the Aryan Migrations is agreed upon by virtually all academics.
You accuse me of “focusing on who is presenting the data”, but no fair reading of my above comment supports this. You appear to be projecting, as its you who reduce the above scholarly consensus to, “trusting the white man”. Your bizzare references to Pakistanis are equally embarrassing.
I’m actually stunned Razib allowed you to post this nonsense, especially since the field you are cannabalizing to promote your ideology falls within his expertise.
Pro AMT camp, please answer –
1. Why do earliest Aryan texts not retain any cultural memory of a long distance migration? If the traditional time-frame of 1500-1200 BC for the migration, and around the same time-frame for Rigveda’s composition is to be accepted, then it would imply that parts of Rigveda were actually composed by a people in transit. In fact the whole Rigveda should have been composed within couple of centuries of the putative migration. Yet the texts is completely silent on any such migration. No mention of crossings of high mountains and narrow passes and as such.
2. India is known to have experienced repeated migrations/invasions from northwest through out its history. We have definite records of tribes of Sakas, Hunas, Kushanas, Turks and Mughals who established kingdoms and empires in India and stayed put there. Common senses dictates that most of these tribes would have caused male mediated admixture events too. (People in power naturally take local women as consorts). Yet the recent DNA studies are picking only the original “Steppe admixture” event at 1500 BC, and silent on subsequent Steppe admixture events? Could it be that researcher are simply confirming their preconceived notions? A
3. Sweep of IE languages across north India is absolute. As far east as Assam, the local IE language doesn’t show any traces of a non-IE substrate. Given that India must always have been an overpopulated country, it would have required an overwhelming number of foreign population to cause such a massive language switch so quickly. How do the existing model explain this anomaly?
3. No new species of cattle or sheep seem to have been introduced in India around 1500 BC. Kind of odd for a people who were primarily pastoralists, isn’t it?
Anti-AMT camp please answer
1. Why is the highest diversity of IE languages outside India rather than within India?
2. Why is the highest diversity of R1a haplogroup outside India rather than within India?
(I may not have formulated above 2 questions in correct scientific language, but the gist is obvious. A language group or a DNA will show maximum diversity around its place of origin).
3. Why is there a complete lack of any horse bones in the excavations of all Harappan sites. Given that horse was such an important animal for Vedic people, shouldn’t its remains be abundant in excavations?
Good points my friend,
Due to want of time I cannot answer your queries but the answer for the 3rd query is quite straight forward.
Here is the upcoming aDNA evidence –
https://mobile.twitter.com/NirajRai3/status/1082618644566364161
Here is the upcoming aDNA evidence –
https://mobile.twitter.com/NirajRai3/status/1082618644566364161
Huge news. This came in just in time. Eagerly waiting..
Why do earliest Aryan texts not retain any cultural memory of a long distance migration?
i’ve addressed this many times. this is typical. the greeks have no memory of migration either. both the greeks and indians cannot both be simultaneously indigenous indo-europeans. one group forgot. or both (most likely).
this post addresses this common indian objection:
https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2019/01/02/how-the-english-abolished-their-british-celtic-ancestors/
the english seem to be mostly non-english (german) in ancestry, but they eliminated the memory of this, and their language even has very little brythonic influence. this occurred over a few centuries at most.
Could it be that researcher are simply confirming their preconceived notions?
no. most it is the other way around. e.g., martin richards, david reich, etc., all were surprised by the magnitude of the migration event.
As far east as Assam, the local IE language doesn’t show any traces of a non-IE substrate.
SEE MY ABOVE LINK! the same objection applies to the british ancestry in the english. the aDNA confirms that german ancestry is a minority, but the culture is all ‘germanic’ (overwhelmingly at least).
Razib,
I have read your previous posts about how other cultures have forgotten their foreign roots after migration.
However, once the epics started they recorded a kernel of truth as Trojan war shows. In fact, Illiad was inspiration to dig up and find Mycenaean culture initially if I recall correctly. (English never did have any epics, which is what JRR tried to remedy)
No culture kept any continuous record so diligently as Vedas. Even older Greek and Roman records survived mostly as translations of translations (to Arabic and back). (Correct me if this is wrong, I am recalling this off the top of my head). So, are those lack of memories from other cultures equivalent to that of hyper memorization sticklers of Vedic tones?
Clearly, other Indo Europeans are not like Vedics just for the reason none of them managed to maintain their Indo European traditions to modern times (even when Hinduism changed wholesale, keepers of sanatana dharma maintained Vedic transmission and ritual continuity).
How can we treat them as equivalent to these?
In case any Chinese migrations weren’t recorded inspite of their diligent history recording of other events of same period, that would be of some evidence for selective forgetfulness of cultures.
Otherwise we can’t objectively compare wholesale forgetfulness to selective forgetfulness. Don’t you think?
I used to have the same migration memory doubt even though I tend to lean mostly on razib”s hypothesis on the whole issue. It’s the only puzzle which I don’t find answers satisfactory. Razib does give good examples of brits and the Greeks. But we have expamples like the Turks and Magyars clearly keeping their migration memory in the oral traditions. So don’t know what to make of all of it
how would they forget? these pastoralists quickly encountered literate civilizations who recorded all sorts of details about them, and magyars and turks immediately became partners in those civilizations. eg a turk in baghdad even wrote a weird justification of his ‘race’ in the 9th century (how they were superior to arabs and persians).
basically, the cases where ‘forgetting’ happens seems to be instances where the barbarians totally overturn the old order. the anglo-saxon, greek, and arguably indian case are instances of that.
In his old age, with 3 kids, I see Razib has gone soft. He might have done this in his own blog (one can hope he will do this here again).
“No culture kept any continuous record so diligently as Vedas”
What record? What culture? Myths are products of beliefs, and beliefs are products of experience. The myth reflects the concerns and experiences of a community based on agricultural or pastoral lifestyle, where water is seen as one of the most valuable assets. There is little or no historical record in vedas, except some river names in Afghanistan or Haryana. You should not confuse Vedas with the two epics or Puranas, or Brahmanas, or Upanishads, which came in later.
By Vedic time, there was a belief that rituals were critical to maintain the order of the cosmos and such sacred ceremonies helped the universe to keep working smoothly. Ceremonies were seen as part of a deal between humans and the gods: Humans performed sacrifices and rituals, and the gods would return their favor under the form of protection and prosperity. None of this really worked, the Indian geography and climatography was not susceptible to rituals.
The whole thing fell apart by 500 BC, where Brahmanas were added to specify in a very detailed way, how rituals had to be performed, the precise quantity and quality of material to be used, and the exact pronunciation of sacred formulas.
This too fell apart in a few hundred years when nature could not be bothered by the pleading and begging. The priestly class was seriously questioned. The rituals, the sacrifices, the detailed rulebooks on ceremonies and sacrifices, all of these religious elements were being rejected. Some of their speculations and philosophy of those ascetics who rejected the vedas were compiled into texts called The Upanishads. A number of practices were linked to this new spiritual approach: meditation, celibacy, and fasting, among others.
Even this was rejected soon; by Charvaka, Jainism, and Buddhism, among other movements, originated around this time, encouraged by the gradual decay of the priestly orthodoxy. This would result in the end of the Vedic hegemony. But I digress too far from the Vedic beginning.
I do not get the readers of this blog from India; they are too Brahmin, too Sanskrit-loving, and too puritanical to understand the complexities of history. The vedas today are a superset of what was written originally; the idea that vedas are a preserved history and culture is nonsense.
I am so sad that, in my lifetime, the ideas of Jyothibhai Phule , Ayothydasar and EVR never reached the people, but nonsense pervades even the minds of the ultra-educated.
” I am so sad that, in my lifetime, the ideas of Jyothibhai Phule , Ayothydasar and EVR never reached the people, but nonsense pervades even the minds of the ultra-educated.”
Are you dead now? Are you writing from the other side?
Vijay,
I don’t get you either. This discussion is not about some universal truth of Vedas.
Vedas are unique for strict verbal transmission over a long period that hasn’t been attested elsewhere. Every other language changes (the whole basis for building ‘proto’ Languages), and only long memory histories were written ones (Egyptian, Chinese, Roman).
Granted, I could be ignorant but I am asking a logical question, why have Intonations of Vedas persisted? Is it unique or not? If it isn’t, please cite an oral culture that lasted with near perfect transmission even under heavy foreign presence. We could all learn.
Why should detailed specifications of archaic rituals persist only as Vedas? Why isn’t some ritual of Zeus, Woden or Thor memorized with equal zeal?
That would be an interesting discussion to have rather than some tangent about old dead Tamizhs. We get it that you aren’t in love with Vedas but frankly, that isn’t relevant.
Hello Snake Charmer,
Nice to meet you. I would like to express my thoughts about point number 3 in your first category and point number 1 in the second category.
There is a significant non-crackpot view among many people who specialise in Dravidian linguistics and Indo-Aryan/Indo-Iranian/Indo-European linguistics that Indo-Aryan shows an increasing amount of Proto-Dravidian- and later-Dravidian-like substratal influence. I’m not even talking about retroflexes here – there are some other possible striking substratal influences of Dravidian like the shift of the position of quotative marker in relation to the quoted speech, etc. (I might be making it sound quite weak here but they list all these possible substratal influences exhaustively in some papers and books which are mostly fairly easily accessible.) The other types of views regarding the matter are to deny that there is a Dravidian grammatical influence on Indo-Aryan and to argue that the influence seen is more of an adstratal kind and not substratal.
The idea that a language family shows the maximum diversity close to the location of its proto-form may not be correct universally. For example, the Dravidian language family currently shows its maximum diversity in the more eastern areas of Maharashtra and further east in northeast-central India but that area is probably not the Urheimat of Proto-Dravidian speakers (or well, it may be too, who knows! I undid myself there, didn’t I? But the thing is that given the problem that we don’t know where North Dravidian (Kurukh-Malto at least) developed, we are left with just two branches (Central Dravidian and South Dravidian) to use to apply the centre of diversity principle and that leaves us in a significantly weaker position than we were in before). But anyway, this problem I highlighted in the previous sentence and the text inside the brackets may only be a unique feature of Dravidian and may not apply to more mundane and highly successful language families like Indo-European.
Snake Charmer Wrote:
“1. Why is the highest diversity of IE languages outside India rather than within India?”
http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/downloads/books/aid.htm#Chapter3Section2SubSection1
“Another aspect of geographical distribution is the allocation of larger and smaller stretches of territory to the different branches of the IE family. We find the Iranian (covering the whole of Central Asia before 1000 AD) and Indo-Aryan branches each covering a territory as large as all the European branches (at least in the pre-colonial era) combined. We also find the Indo-Aryan branch by itself having, from antiquity till today, more speakers on the Eurasian continent (now nearing 900 million) than all other branches combined. This state of affairs could help us to see the indo-Aryan branch as the centre and the other branches as wayward satellites; but so far, philologists have made exactly the opposite inference. It is said that this is the typical contrast between a homeland and its colony: a fragmented homeland where languages have small territories, and a large but linguistically more homogeneous colony (cfr. English, which shares its little home island with some Celtic languages, but has much larger stretches of land in North America and Australia all to itself, and with less dialect variation than in Britain; or cfr. Spanish, likewise). It is also argued that Indo-Aryan must be a late-comer to India, for otherwise it would have been divided by now in several subfamilies as distinct from each other as, say, Celtic from Slavic. To this, we must remark first of all that the linguistic unity of Indo-Aryan should not be exaggerated. Native speakers of Indo-Aryan languages tell me that the difference between Bengali and Sindhi is bigger than that between, say, any two of the Romance languages. Further, to the extent that Indo-Aryan has preserved its unity, this may be attributed to the following factors, which have played to a larger extent and for longer periods in India than in Europe: a geographical unity from Sindh to Bengal (a continuous riverine plain) facilitating interaction between the regions, unlike the much more fragmented geography of Europe; long-time inclusion in common political units (e.g. Maurya, Gupta and Moghul empires); and continuous inclusion in a common cultural space with the common stabilizing influence of Sanskrit. From the viewpoint of an Indian Urheimat hypothesis, the most important factor explaining the high fragmentation of IE in Europe as compared to its relative homogeneity in North India is the way in which an emigration from India to Europe must be imagined. Tribes left India and mixed with the non-IE-speaking tribes of their respective corners of Central Asia and Europe. This happens to be the fastest way of making two dialects of a single language grow apart and develop distinctive new characteristics: make them mingle with different foreign languages. Thus, in the Romance family, we find little difference between Catalan, Occitan and Italian, three languages which have organically grown without much outside influence except for a short period of Germanic influence which was common to them; by contrast, Spanish and Rumanian have grown far apart (lexically, phonetically and grammatically), and this is largely due to the fact that the former has been influenced by Germanic and Arabic, while the latter was influenced by Greek and Slavic. Similarly, under the impact of languages they encountered (now mostly extinct and beyond the reach of our searchlight), and whose speakers they took over, the dialects of the IE emigrants from India differentiated much faster from each other than the dialects of Indo-Aryan.”
The issue of IE linguistic diversity vis a vis the OIT has been debated extensively by Hock and Talageri.
http://ancientvoice.wdfiles.com/local–files/article%3Arigveda-and-avesta-the-final-evidence/The%20Out%20of%20India%20Theory%203%20-%20The%20Linguistic%20Case.pdf
Even Hock has conceded that the present distribution of IE languages does not preclude an Indian (South Asian) homeland though he of course thinks it is unlikely.
Thank you for reply, Kelkarji. Much appreciated.
However, once the epics started they recorded a kernel of truth as Trojan war shows.
the logic here is strange. it is totally true that oral memory can preserve a lot. i’ve blogged on that. what you are saying here is that oral memory is so strong that it wouldn’t forget. this is more than a ‘kernel of truth.’ this is assuming a very high fidelity.
No culture kept any continuous record so diligently as Vedas.
well, the egyptian tradition went from 3000 BC to 500 AD (philae). that’s pretty long.
Even older Greek and Roman records survived mostly as translations of translations (to Arabic and back).
this is complicated. there are three primary vectors of classical stuff
1) frankish kingdom 9th century (mostly latin work)
2) abbassids 9th century (more greek stuff)
3) byzantines 10th century (greek, more humanistic stuff)
so it wasn’t just greek->arabic->greek. though in the west it often came that way cuz of spain (italians got greek through byzantium).
also, there are ancient records here and there that are preserved and not through copyists.
So, are those lack of memories from other cultures equivalent to that of hyper memorization sticklers of Vedic tones
probably not.
Clearly, other Indo Europeans are not like Vedics just for the reason none of them managed to maintain their Indo European traditions to modern times (even when Hinduism changed wholesale, keepers of sanatana dharma maintained Vedic transmission and ritual continuity).
well, depends on which tradition. but we have lots of records from pre-christian classical people, and arguably zoroastrians are continuous too.
In case any Chinese migrations weren’t recorded inspite of their diligent history recording of other events of same period, that would be of some evidence for selective forgetfulness of cultures.
all the genetic data from china suggest deep indigeneity of the han from the yangshao culture. so the lack of a migration story might be due to the fact that there is no evidence of mass exogenous migrations (some migration from other regions is found in the genetic data, but it’s a rather marginal minority).
Sorry, I didn’t mean that oral memory is perfect. I meant if comparisons of oral cultures of other indo Europeans with Vedics is valid given the variable emphasis on importance of oral transmissions by different cultures.
But thanks for extended discussion in the other post. Hopefully there is some interesting discussion there.
@Violet
To Razib’s point I would just add that there is nothing (of similar provenance) within IE cultures that matches Vedic canon in sheer size and breadth. Vedic canon is the single biggest repository of Proto-Indo-European root morphemes. No wonder, modern comparative linguistics started when the Victorians ‘discovered’ Sanskrit.
Zoroastrian scripture is anywhere between 4-5% of the size of the Vedas. And I am not even counting the commentaries and meta-commentaries on Vedas – let alone the Epics or etymologies or grammar.
The advances in Sanskrit linguistics – formalism of Sanskrit’s generative grammar – happened precisely because of the need to preserve oral memory. pANini developed an entirely new meta-language and formal algebra (the sUtra-s) to encode this grammar.
PS: My own view is that IE people lacked the culture to do this. And the schools who managed this were not of Indo-European origin to begin with, and survived this IE onslaught with a possible change of syllabus.
Hello dear Slapstik,
I hope you don’t mind me playing the devil’s advocate regarding the contents of your post-script but how do you eliminate the possibility of settling Pre-Indo-Aryans’ increasing prosperities amid the two great river systems of the Indus and the Ganges as the major cause for their increasing sophistication related to textual traditions as opposed to a non-Indo-European human cultural influence? After all, it appears that the little germ for a textual tradition is definitely noticeable in the overall IE/or large portions of it, as witnessed by the other old IE cultures like Greeks. I am genuinely curious here but that said I also can see some possibilities in your view’s favour, like internal clashes within various groups of collapsing Indus civilisation leading to some groups within it aligning themselves with the new migrants and so on.
And as far as I know and can imagine, there is no evidence of any type of textual tradition present even within the South Dravidians (including Pre-Tamils) before the advent of Brahmanic, Jain and Buddhist religions in the area or perhaps a slightly earlier but definite north Indian contact. And this South Dravidian is the strongest candidate branch within Dravidian that is kept in mind usually when any talk of direct migrations of sections of Indus civilisation populations to south India after the urban collapse is made. (So this means either all the South Dravidian migrators were of a rural, non-elite type from the Indus villages not familiar with any cultural sophistication of their city counterparts or the post-Indus-collapse migration hypothesis for Dravidian (or just South Dravidian) is false and a pre-Harappan-migration-associated, “country-cousin” model of Dr. Razib Khan is correct.)
Again one writing without any structure, without beginning and ending, without timeline, without causes and consequences.
Descriptions of micro movements which hide a big picture, myopic view going no further of Caucasus. One other approach tries to reconstruct SA history by searching astronomy signs in ancient epics, this one is describing the status of local genes without explaining how and when this happened.
There is no any attempt to explain for e.g. similarities btw modern European languages with Sanskrit and how and this happened. No explanation of similar mythology btw SA and Europe where existed for several thousands years BC. Whose the mother tongue is Sanskrit? Did it originate in SA? What does it mean if there is R1a in Europe which is 12000 years old? How old is R1a in SA and what does it mean? How to explain thousands of identical toponyms (it is clear in which language they originated) in SA (India, Iran, Afghanistan, Kirgizstan, Tibet, China, Nepal, etc…) and the specific region in Europe? It is unclear – did Aryans exist or not? Who are the ‘Europeans’ and what was their role? Etc, etc…
Couple specifics:
“‘steppe’ component”
Who were the ‘steppe’ guys, what was their language, which genes they had?
“one of the principal evidences of movement of steppe people into South Asia having spread the Indo-European language and culture”.
which ‘Indo-European l&c’? In which direction? Where is this IE language now? What was their mythology? Names of tribes? Anything?
“A possible explanation is that the influx of Steppe_MLBA ancestry into South Asia in the mid-2nd millennium BCE created a meta-population of groups with different proportions of Steppe ancestry, with ones having relatively more Steppe ancestry having a central role in spreading early Vedic culture.”
What does it mean meta-population?
“the ‘steppe’ like light blue component, which is highest in some of the Northern European groups closest to the steppe, like the Latvians, Lithuanians, Russians”
What does it mean this linkage? L, L&R did not exist before 9th c.AC. Who are you talking about? Where are the Polish from the previous story? What about Czechs and Slovaks?
“the Gujjar share a higher number of IBD segments with local Indian Indo-Europeans”
Who are local Indo-Europeans? What about local Indo-Germans? This term was used for 100 years before IE.
“the Ror (and Jat) exhibited a significantly higher number of chunks received from Europeans than do other NWI populations studied”
When and how they received? Who are Europeans?
“A higher level of European ancestry in the Ror and Jat”
When and how? What does it mean ‘European ancestry’?
“the authors argue that the Rors are the best proxy for the ANI ancestry in South Asians”
What does it mean? They mixed with Aryans and their outsprings later mixed with the rest of SA? They were only the transient carriers of genes?
“The proportion of Steppe ancestry in the Ror is similar to that observed in present day Northern Europeans.”
And? What does it mean? How and when?
Some serious stuff (or shit depending on viewpoint) from Talageri.
The Recorded History of the Indo-European Migrations – Part 1 of 4. Who Were the Vedic Aryans?
http://talageri.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-recorded-history-of-indo-european.html
http://talageri.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-recorded-history-of-indo-european.html
Snake Charmer,
Let me try and answer the 3 queries for the anti-AMT camp.
1. There is significant linguistic diversity even in early Indo-Aryan languages. For example, various Middle Indo-Aryan or Prakrit languages like Pali, Paisachi, Maharashtri, Sauraseni, Magadhi etc. are not directly descended from Rigvedic Sanskrit. This is openly admitted by most linguists like Witzel, Hock, Zoller, Norman & Oberlies. Infact, many of these languages which are not descended from Rigvedic Sanskrit but from its sister branches have features common with Iranian or even other Indo-European languages but which are absent in Rigvedic Sanskrit.
The implication of this is quite obvious. Indo-Aryan languages even during the period of Rigveda (i.e. 1500 BC as per Western Indologists but much older as per Indian tradition), were divided into several branches. All of these very old branches are ofcourse present or were present historically in South Asia.
To explain this inconvenient fact, the Indologists propose multiple waves of Indo-Aryan migrations into South Asia from the steppe. But this raises several questions again which these scholars haven’t really explained.
If Indo-Aryans were already divided into several groups in the steppe itself, why are they considered so close to each other to constitute a single branch of Indo-European ?
2. Regarding the lack of diversity of R1a in South Asia, let me just say that Indian samples considering the enormous size of the country have not been adequately sampled to study the diversity of R1a. The most common R1a subclades are R1a-Z282 which is common in Europe and R1a-Z93 which is common in South Asia and Iran. These are clades which have expanded during the Chalcolithic and Bronze Ages when there significant increases in populations due to technological advancements. In a sampling from South Asia therefore, most people will come out to be R1a-Z93 because it is the most widespread.
To find R1a subclades which are older or ancestral to it, you have to take large no. of samples because, these older clades are unlikely to have experienced large population expansions like Z93 did. But sampling is quite geographically restrictive and overall very inadequate.
But a new study on Indian R1a is coming up. Let us wait for it.
As far as aDNA is concerned, you probably already know that there is very limited aDNA from India so far. Hence no judgement on ancient presence of R1a can be made from it.
But you may also note that the most common R1a in India R1a-Z93 is commonly divided into 3 branches R1a-Z2125, R1a-L657 & R1a-Y40 and the it is R1a-L657 which is most common in India followed by R1a-Z2125. So far all aDNA from steppe which has yielded R1a-Z93 is only Z2125 and not a single instance of L657 has come up. This, even though L657 is considered to be more than 5000 years old.
3. Even before the news of the horse aDNA, the presence of horse bones and figurines from several IVC sites was established from several sites. Have a look –
https://www.academia.edu/23185706/The_Horse_and_the_Aryan_Debate
Both steppe and slavic component are highest among jats in India, Q haplotype which represent scythian huns is found around 17% among haryanvi jat and around 16% in rajasthani jat and 12% in punjabi jat, 10% in punjabi khatri, Q haplotype is originated from North East Europe, so partially jat are scythian too, punjabi khatri has highest Caucasian blood in India around 15% followed by punjabi jat around 11% than rajasthani jat with 10% than Haryanvi jat with 9%.
“punjabi khatri has highest Caucasian blood in India”
Love it!
“Q haplotype which represent scythian huns”
Even more! Scythian Huns!
Kind of comments that I come to this blog for.
This obsession with where bloodlines come from is honestly a little weird. But to each his own.
Yup but that’s what happens when High Culture evaporates. The Israeli and Turks are as “ancestrally” focussed (the Turks the lease because their bond to Anatolia is more natural).
It’s interesting how race and nation become so important. In some ways Pakistan is more an imperial state than a nation state.
For Pakistanis, it is Islam that is important. The exact percentage of some particular bloodline, not so much.
Perhaps this thing about the “purity” of bloodlines has to do with the centrality of caste?
Fully agree . Even I can’t help but wonder why this is such a burning issue for Indians. This shouldn’t even have been a debate. But I guess we are like this only. 🙂
My guess is that left-leaning academia, political interested groups (read Dravidian parties), and other assorted armchair intellectuals over hyped the foreigner-aryan theories, and it forced Hindu Right to get entrenched in the opposing position simply reflexively. Once both sides dug themselves into a hole, it became impossible for anyone to cross over and analyze the evidence with an open mind.
Perfect example of a big-endian vs little-endian war.
Even I can’t help but wonder why this is such a burning issue for Indians.
It isn’t. It’s an esoteric subject that’s a pet obsession of people who comment on this blog, but hardly figures in regular discourse among Indians. Even for the OIT-proponents, it isn’t bloodline that they are worried about but rather “cultural appropriation.” They are very attached to ancient Indian/Hindu culture and don’t like the idea of it having been spread into India by “foreign invaders”, however far back that may have been.
This debate also reminds me of numerous Shia-Sunni munazras, where they debate with deathly seriousness if it is Islamic or unislamic to say “Radhiallahu ‘anhu” ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radhiallahu_%27anhu) after Yazid’s name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazid_I . Of course it is a matter of life and death, for them 🙂
Youtube is full of such Munazras. I love them 🙂 Go search them up.
Yazid should rot in hell-
The term ‘slavic’ dates from 7th cAC. In ancient times there were only Serbs and Serbian language. No other languages existed. All so-called Slavics are Serbian offshoots (e.g. Russians from 9th AC), Polish, Czechs, Slovaks, etc, much later. What (who) are ‘steppe’? Who are Scythian huns? Which genes they had? What’s happened with them?
“Yazid should rot in hell-”
Kafir, Kafir, Shia Kafir! 🙂
Just kidding. I know you are not Muslim. And since neither am I, let me give you the views of someone who doesn’t have a dog in this fight. Yazid was a winner. A strong willed character who grabbed power against all odds. Compared to him Hussain was a loser. Hussain had everything going for him (Muhammd’s bloodline, plenty of men and money), but due to his feeble mindedness and vacillations, he ended up dead on the battlefield.
Another remarkably strong character was Obeidullh bin-Ziyad. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubayd_Allah_ibn_Ziyad. The way he entered a city under rebellion with just a handful of men, and brought it under control through sheer bluff and daring is astounding. A Stalin of his times.
I guess Shias are gonna hunt me down now! 🙂 But it is important for any community to understand how their history appears to outsiders.
Yes , I do not understand Shia love from Baha’i, as Shia hate Baha’i. I am thinking that is just parroting some Shia propaganda, as shi’ism came to exist I centuries later.
From muaeiyah to Abdal Malik, the two groups of ummayads formed Islam as known today, and possibly more important than the four caliphs, and the prophet in creating the Islam of today. In addition, they were secular and tolerant towards Christians if not Jews. To a limited extent, this group will be a better model for Islamic governance than umar or uthman.
They hate us because they will become us
The mystery deepens.
So far Hindu nationalists and lefties were generally in agreement on at least one point in the debate. They both identified is Ghaggar-Hakra dry riverbed as the fabled Saraswati.
Now IIT Kanpur is claiming that disappearance of Ghaggar-Hakra river predates not only Vedic civilization, it even predates IVC itelf!
https://www.iitk.ac.in/new/indus-valley-urban-centres-developed-3-000-years-after-river-departed
The study claims that the river disappeared 8000 years BP. There is no way we can put Aryans at the banks of this river so early in history.
So the search for Saraswati continues..
This development happened over 2012-2017 and is composed of three groups: IITK, Imperial college and RISO lab in Denmark. The citation is:
“Counter-intuitive influence of Himalayan river morphodynamics on Indus Civilisation urban settlements” Nature Communications,volume 8, Article number: 1617 (2017).
Key findings:
Same as sutlej river (“We show that the palaeochannel is a former course of the Sutlej River, the third largest of the present-day Himalayan rivers.”)
Stability of present sutlej channel Facilitated settlements (” Confinement of the Sutlej to its present incised course after ~8 ka likely reduced its propensity to re-route frequently thus enabling long-term stability for Indus settlements sited along the relict palaeochannel”)
There has been a lot of development on Thar and Sutlej geography in 8000 years -4000 years BP, focusing on climate change. I had posted on this earlier, but, as always, the BP posters focus on longevity of Vedas and linguistics and caucasian blood, to the exclusion of science. There was traumatic changes in Thar and Sutlej in 10,000-4000 years BP.
Snake Charmer, if Saraswati disappeared 6,000 BC, this matches the scriptural historical timelines. The Saraswati dried up long before the Kurukshetra battle.
Could R1 DNA haploid admixture be the Chandra Vamsha of Tara&Chandra, Budha&Illa, Urvashi&Pururavas?
For home gamers out there Illa (daughter/son/other gender progeny of Vaivasvata Manu) was a practitioner of daily gender fluidity, including to non binary genders. Some think Illa is a way for the texts to introduce the concept of gene editing by Illa . . . since she/he/they/it/other gender pronouns had so many different types of offspring. Not just Pururavas.
If so, is AASI the Surya Vamsha?
BTW, these are all hypotheses. I know jack!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Snake Charmer, for me one of the most interesting aspects of this paper is what it suggests about IVC’s technology. For them to sustain these large cities and industries far from rivers . . . they must have had advanced technology. Where are the aqueducts? Have they been found?
I thought Harvati (sp?) in Afghanistan was also considered a strong contender to be mythical Saraswati ?
Rigveda talks about sapta-sindhu region as the home of vedic aryans. Traditionally it is assumed to be Punjab. Five major rivers of Punjab (Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutluj), plus Indus takes the number to six. Seventh river could be Ghaggar-Hakra/Saraswati, or it could be a minor stream which has since disappeared. The point is that nowhere else in the world seven mighty rivers are found in such a compact geographic area. So it is reasonable to fix Punjab as the sapta-sindhu region.
Now AMT contention is that as Indo-aryans moved west to east, they named many of the newly discovered rivers of India after the rivers of Afghanistan. Hence we have cognate river names like Harut (Saraswati), and a Haryu/Hari (Saryu) in Afghanstan.
Counter argument given by OIT team is that the process was reverse. Aryans moved east to west, and it is the rivers of Afghanistan which were named after the rivers of India. So I guess we are none the wiser.
If they were part of a common civilization it does not matter.
“The point is that nowhere else in the world seven mighty rivers are found in such a compact geographic area”
Really?
Most of the rivers of Punjab are mighty small compared to the large rivers of the world. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Amazonrivermap.svg. Within a 1000 km Ecuador?peru border, there are close to 50-60 rivers.
We do not need to exaggerate everything to build up our history. It may well be the Rig Vedic region may be a small region of Haryana around a channel of Sutlej now called Ghaggara. Does this make the Rig Veda lest important to you?
Romila Thapar spread this idea of Afghanisthan based saraswathi and Rig Veda. Current genetics, palegeography does not indicate this, but in the region anywhere between Gandhara and Haryana, or all of it.
I still am at marvel on an old work of fire/water/air/soma worship being considered the greatest thing here since toast in these pages and comments.
Loved your entire comment except for the last sentence:
“”I still am at marvel on an old work of fire/water/air/soma worship being considered the greatest thing here since toast in these pages and comments.”
That is because the Rig Veda Samhitas really are great beyond description! They have many layers of meaning. Almost all who study find less than o.o1% of the meaning. Samhitas are a codex of art to transcend thought and facilitate mystical experience beyond thought. The seven subtleties of thought (seven heavens) . . . and infinite other things beyond my understanding. Not just intelligence beyond understanding, technology beyond understanding . . . but infinitely more.
The US and Chinese and Russian governments have black op projects to hack the Vedas, and many other Taoist/Dharmic scriptures. Silicon valley is spending enormous amounts of money to hack it. The total addressable market is in the tens of trillions of dollars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBl0cwyn5GY
This person led a US black ops program to hack the Yogacharas and had a great deal of success. Would there be an interest in people like this on Brown Cast?
How does harvati merge with prayag?
There is no mention of Yamuna and Ganges in the Rig Veda; it is conjectured that the sapta sindhu is the Sarasvati and the five major rivers of Indus (Shutudri/Sutlej, Parushni/Ravi, Ashikni/Chenab, Vitasta/Jhelum, Vipasha/Beas, the latter all tributaries of Sindhu/Indus), one river is missing.
The other interpretaton is that the vedic dudes liked the word seven, as in saptarishi, seven seas and so on and just called seven rivers; The Avesta’s hapta həndu is also simply transformed into vedas sapta sindhu. Prayag, Ganges, etc triveni etc came some 500 years later.
I do not even want to bring the rivers and cows equivalence here. I honestly believe there was too much Soma in the Rig Veda time, and if you imagine the words as the utterances of a high person, they make sense.
“The other interpretaton is that the vedic dudes liked the word seven, as in saptarishi, seven seas and so on and just called seven rivers; The Avesta’s hapta həndu is also simply transformed into vedas sapta sindhu. Prayag, Ganges, etc triveni etc came some 500 years later.”
This has been my hypothesis although I really don’t know. Seven is also related to the brain and nervous system. Seven days of the week. Seven important celestial objects associated with the seven days of the week. Sumeria and Egypt are also “seven” oriented.
In Sandhya Vandana (that twice born Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas do thrice a day), the names of seven rivers are recited. But these are different:
—Ganga
—Yamuna
—Godavari
—Saraswati
—Narmada
—Sindu
—Kaveri
I should research where in the scriptures the mantras of Sandhya Vandana come from.
None the less, the historic Saraswati is believed to have merged at Prayag. Saraswati in Yoga and Tantra is identified with the Shashumna Nadi.
“I do not even want to bring the rivers and cows equivalence here. I honestly believe there was too much Soma in the Rig Veda time, and if you imagine the words as the utterances of a high person, they make sense.”
Can you elaborate. Do you think Soma was a type of Aushadhi (chemical substance that can facilitate Samadhi)?
“There is no mention of Yamuna and Ganges in the Rig Veda; it is conjectured that the sapta sindhu is the Sarasvati and the five major rivers of Indus (Shutudri/Sutlej, Parushni/Ravi, Ashikni/Chenab, Vitasta/Jhelum, Vipasha/Beas, the latter all tributaries of Sindhu/Indus), one river is missing.”
Interesting. Ganga is regarded as a recent river that only started flowing during the time of Bhagirathi. Is there any scientific evidence that Ganga only started flowing along its current course recently? I don’t know. This is one of the puzzles in the scriptures.
Yamuna is not mentioned in the Vedas? Do you believe that Yami is unrelated to Yamuna? [I don’t know either way.]
And after reading all the arguments from both sides, I must say I am more confused than ever 🙂 . I stand right in the middle of pro and anti AMT camps. The jury is out.
Snake Charmer, you are like me. I doesn’t make any difference where our jatis or genealogies came from and what specific areas they lived. Didn’t all homo sapiens come from Africa 400 K years ago? So by definition we are all migrants!
What do you think about the hypothesis that we had a vast open source open architecture big tent civilization (call it Arya or whatever you want) that extended from South East Asia through SAARC through Turan through Iran through Tibet and Xinjiang? Maybe further west (including Serbia). And that this civilization had substantial trade and collaboration in knowledge creation? That the entire civilization (perhaps in collaboration with Sumeria and Egypt and Kurdistan and China other civilizations perhaps) jointly co-developed ancient globalized modernity?
We have substantial evidence of a type of globalization that existed more than 5,000 years ago. Maybe this is our history?
“Amandeep Singh says:
January 13, 2019 at 6:56 pm
Hi AnAn, why are you praising that dirty Muslim terrorist? He’s neither handsome or have superior genes to me because my caste have better connections to various Steppe tribes in history compared to other South Asians. Plus, why would I want you to send me texts from the Mahabharata? I can look it up myself and bother because what it says about the Scythians, Kamboja, Greeks, Kushans etc… is proof enough they were never fully incorporated into Indian society.”
People are people. And some people talk nasty. I wouldn’t do that. But everyone has to learn on their own and everyone has freedom of art and thought.
The Sakas and Kambojas were mixed peoples. Some Arya, some not Arya. Do not mistake Mleccha as criticism. It merely means they choose to follow a different path. Not that they are inferior. All are Brahman. Or Akaal Murat Ajjuni Saibang. Freedom transcends the three Gunas and their corollaries, the four varnas. Freedom transcends Dharma and Karma. There is much beautiful poetry in Guru Granth Sahib about freedom transcending all. Just listening to these poems causes hours of tears.
When you say they were not incorporated, well I see it differently. Duryodhana accepted them enough to ask them to send many hundreds of thousands of soldiers, logistics [maybe you don’t believe the numbers in the Mahabharata . . . substitute tens of thousands in that case] to help him. The Kurus accepted and trusted them enough to fight, die, bleed, sleep next to them in the crucible of combat. And Turan (perhaps Sistan province Iran, other parts of Iran, Xinjian province), and Tibet answered the call. Read how greatly Sudakshina (king of Turan) is praised by Bhishma and the other great heroes of Bharata.
“”Hi AnAn, why are you praising that dirty Muslim terrorist? He’s neither handsome or have superior genes to me because my caste have better connections to various Steppe tribes in history compared to other South Asians.”
Ustad Jagguji is having fun with you. Just take it in stride. You have good genes and Jati. So does he. Ustad Jagguji reminds me of the many Auliyas, Pirs and Faqirs so loved by the ten Sikh Gurus. Much of the poetry in the Guru Granth Sahib is muslim. Ustad Jagguji is a good enlightened Arya culturally Bharatiya Mushalman. Ustad Jagguji ki Jai!
If you want you can continue the performance with Ustad Jagguji. Or not. Ustad Jagguji is one of the cleverest, wisest, funniest and most irreverent fountains of wisdom I have seen.
“Now IIT Kanpur is claiming that disappearance of Ghaggar-Hakra river predates not only Vedic civilization, it even predates IVC itelf!”
I propose that the Indus Valley folks invaded/migrated the Saraswati river Civilization and destroyed it 😛
A Nation Without a History
Niraj Mohanka
https://www.boloji.com/articles/687/a-nation-without-a-history
Check out the spreadsheet.
http://www.newdharma.org/royal_chron.htm
Massive amount of labor that started off with a school project for his son
[…] had made a partial review of the recent paper on Indus Valley populations last time around where I tried to argue that the […]