My boss leant me is copy of Rajesh Kochhar’s The Vedic People: Their History and Geography. It’s a short and dense book that covers many fields. I highly recommend it. As usual, don’t take it as gospel, but as a starting point. The author’s command of the scholarship so is impressive.
Trust a physicist to write a good book on the topic 🙂
I’ll surely read it (I have not).
Here is a scroll article allegedly summarizing some of his work; sharing without comment:
https://scroll.in/article/723351/was-the-ramayana-actually-set-in-and-around-todays-afghanistan
(reply to Slapstik’s first comment) Here is a scroll article allegedly summarizing some of his work; sharing without comment:
https://scroll.in/article/723351/was-the-ramayana-actually-set-in-and-around-todays-afghanistan
No comment about the article, but it refers to Herodotus as hailing from Greek-occupied Turkey, which is as anachronistic and inaccurate as you can get. If the Greeks occupied that land from anyone, it was the mythical Trojans.
Mythical Troyans are real Serbs. Serbs occupied today’s Greece thousands of years before Greeks came initially to some islands and after to mainland. Crete’s civilisation was Serbian, much before Greek appear in history. The same case is with Asia Minor. Phrygia, Lydia, Likya were Serbian principalities. From there, Raseni (Etruscans) after the Troyan war went to Italy and later founded the city of Rome giving it the Serbian name Ruma (there are several Rumas places in Serbia today). Etruscan texts were written using Vinca’s alphabet which is about 6-7000 years old and an be understood by today’s readers. Herodotus wrote that Serbs were the biggest ‘nation’ in the world after Indians. Other Greek historian Halkokondilo, wrote that Serbs were the oldest ‘nation’ in the (known) world.
lol.
What’s happened with my reply?
[rant about babri mosque deleted; please post rants on other threads
Ramayana in Afghanistan ? ???. I can totally see Ahmed shah massoud as ram and Najibullah as vivishan
You have forgotten the elephant in the room, Taliban.
Massoud was the only guy who was an independent fighter. All other Mujahideen and the government were propped up by foreigners.
“My boss leant me is copy ”
My Boss loaned me his copy
Past tense of “lend” is “lent”. I guess “loan/loaned” is preferable in American English to “lend/lent”?
I read only publicly available Preface from the book. I will try to get (loan or borrow) a copy. It could be good material but I already see major limitations. It seems that many leading ‘Vedic’ scholars are ‘technical’ people (Talageri, Rajaram, Malhotra, Nilesh, etc…) what I think is good because their writings should be based at least on strong logic.
However, this book cannot have a long range because it uses as a starting point falsified European history. What is the point of comparing Sanskrit with Greek and Latin? What is a point of comparing Sanskrit and the most European languages (except Hungarian, Finnish)? The analysis is disconnected in time and space. What is the link between Sanskrit and German if the time distance is more than 3400 years? Or, English, there are 3200 years?
Any book which ignores that one (and only one) European language which had alphabet 5000 years before the Latin language was created (look – this is more than the distance between us and first Aryans 2000BC!!!) and that all recent European languages got their similarities through this language, is invalid.
Any book which discusses ‘Vedic’ issues and which does not refer to Vincha and the language spoken in Europe at that time is invalid.
The first question which any scholars who plan to write about ancient SA history, epics, Aryans (or not Aryans), mythology, etc, is:
– Which language is spoken in Europe at Vincha’s time?
The Rg-Veda in Afghanistan? A review of Rajesh Kochhar: The Vedic People
http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/reviews/kochhar.html
Mayuresh, I thought traditional scholars believed that several Vedic passages were composed in Afghanistan. At that time Afghanistan was a core part of Bharat. Why would this be controversial?
I suspect that many Vedic passages were also likely composed along other sacred rivers (Ganga, Yamuna, Godavari, Saraswati, Narmadi, Kaveri).
An excerpt from “The Vedic People”:
>>”The charismatic Brahmo Samaj leader Keshub Chunder Sen (1838-84), who had met Max Muller in England in 1870, declared at a public lecture in Calcutta in 1877: “Gentlemen, in advent of the English nation in India we see reunion of parted cousins, the descendants of two different families of the ancient Aryan race”.
It seems that many scholars (and pundits) still think the same and cannot comprehend nor accept that Aryans were some other people.
This paper from 2010 just came to my attention. So passing it along.
The Aryan Myth
According to John Keay
Domenic Marbaniang
file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/The_Aryan_Myth_according_John_Keay%20(1).pdf
Don’t know if Marbaniang is supporting AIT or not. He seems to agree with Keay that the horses chariot theory of AIT is bunk but then again he says.
“The Aryan“myth” may, therefore, be the myth of Aryan invasion: Aryan migration, however, is readily assumed, though it is unclear where they migrated from. “
Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar, could the Arya migrations be AASI (from 50 to 70 K years ago) and R1 (from 9 K or so years ago)?
In the Mahabharata, the Y chromosomes change via Indra/Kunti, Arjuna/Subhadra (Balarama/Krishna/Subhadra themselves had unusual DNA), Abhimanyu, Parakshit, Janamajeya.
I have heard that many Persians believe that they descend from this line.
Could this be a narrative reference to the most recent “Aryan Migration” DNA haploid admixture?
What is the oldest record we have of horses in SAARC?
Maybe SA scholars should read Chinese papers re ‘northern people’ arrival to China and everything what they brought there. It can’t be much different in SA. In India some count horses ribs to prove that horses were not brought to SA by Aryans, i.e. that Aryans did not exist.
I think that is pointless to search for new (old) articles disconnected from time and space which allegedly should prove something. I believe we narrowed all, re Aryan or not, discussions to only one qualifying question:
Which language was spoken in EUrope at Vinca (cca 5000BC) time?
It is not difficult considering that they have Vinca’s alphabet and especially because they are able to find out how certain groups of people pronounced certain voices in certain, now dead, languages many thousands years ago. Hopefully, it would prevent idiotic constructions such as Balto-Slavic, Indo-Germanic/European, etc. Having answered this question which enters the logic in this discussion anyone can continue to discuss his/her topic freely without ideological biases.
“Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar, could the Arya migrations be AASI (from 50 to 70 K years ago) and R1 (from 9 K or so years ago)?”
I am THE wrong person to answer the above question.
“Balarama/Krishna/Subhadra themselves had unusual DNA), ”
Not sure what unusual DNA means.
“What is the oldest record we have of horses in SAARC?”
The well known Surkotda horse evidence (2000 BCE) has now been accepted by almost everyone and is a major embarrassment for the AIT camp. Note the location in Gujarat. David Frawley has said that the Rig Vedic horse has 34 ribs (like the Arabian horses) and not 36 as the Central Asia ones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surkotada
Sindhu Sarasvati people almost certainly traded horses via the water route with the Middle east.
“be AASI (from 50 to 70 K ”
That is too early even for Nilesh Nilkanth Oak who dates the oldest books of Rig Veda at 22000 BCE.
thanks for being concise!
🙂
Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar,
“That is too early even for Nilesh Nilkanth Oak who dates the oldest books of Rig Veda at 22000 BCE.”
:LOL:
Not saying that the scriptures are 50 K years old! Most of them are clearly younger, even according to traditional Hindu/Jain scholars. What I am asking is if it is possible that the AASI over tens of thousands of years evolved into what we now call Sanathana Dharma or eastern philosophy or Hinduism?
What data contradicts or is consistent with this hypothesis?
Traditional scholarship suggests that the Vedas evolved over many thousands of years (the narrative stories claim tens of thousands of years although I know that modern historians dispute this). The evolution didn’t stop according to traditional scholarship until after the passing of Krishna; at which point the Vedas got locked.
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Do we have any credible (or even circumstantial) evidence of horses in SAARC before 2000 BC?
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The narrative stories describe multiple mega Jati waves that changed the DNA of SAARC. One of these is Surya Vamsha. One is Chandra Vamsha.
Indra/Arjuna/ and Balarama/Krishna/Subadra might be a narrative reference to another such mega Jati wave. Many Persians and SAARC people claimed ancestry from this Jati family during the time of Cyrus the Great based on what I have read and been told. Of course they may not have this precise ancestral lineage. This might be a narrative device to introduce new people whose genes spread across SAARC, Turin and Iran.
The scriptures bring multiple “NEW” people and new Jatis into the narrative stories. These could be described as immigrant tribes (such as the Saxons or the Angles in an English context).
Many great Saints are regarded as the progenitors of large numbers of people. These could be tribes that moved to SAARC or Turin or Iran.
Eastern texts do not directly state facts most of the time. Rather they try to hide facts in open sight. Those that see can unlock many layers of meaning and code. One reason why might be because the ancient world did not have a good system for intellectual property. This was theft protection insurance. So I have been told.
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Razib, I always find Mayuresh’s comments to be extraordinarily perceptive. Your comments are too. And the Frogs. And many other people’s comments. The worst are boring comments that we already agree with. We don’t learn as much from them.
Somebody pressed ribs panic button in AIT camp!