ARYAN INVASION MYTH

                “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.”   Marcus Garvey

                The myth that Aryans were not the indigenous people and the theory of Aryan invasion theory came from British scholars, missionaries and rulers to deepen the divisions in Hindu society and exacerbate caste conflicts. The Aryan invasion theory has been used for political and religious advantage in a way that is perhaps unparalleled for any historical idea. The bogey of Aryan and Dravidian races was unknown prior to the nineteenth century either in the north or the south India. It was also raised by Britishers. Attempts were made to trace the origin of the caste system in the Aryan invasion theory and identify Dalits with non-Aryans. British rulers adopted ‘divide and rule’ policy and tried to divide the Hindu society on caste and regional basis, low caste dark-skinned Dravidians and the high caste light-skinned Aryans. Christian and Islamic missionaries have used the theory to denigrate the Hindu religion as a product of barbaric invaders and promote their efforts to convert Hindus. 

                 Indian history, particularly of ancient India, has been obscured and confused. If you want to weaken a nation, distort its history. If you want to destroy a community, confuse its ethno-cultural identity and heritage. Western colonial rulers have done this to the ancient Hindu nation in general, and to the history of India in particular. This has been more adversely affected because of the attitude of indifference towards history on the part of Hindu historians, probably because of oppression by Muslim and English rulers. Wrong and misinterpreted history has confused Hindus about their identity and about the antiquity of their heritage. They have questions about the origin of Aryans and about Aryan invasion.We have blindly endorsed most of the ethno-socio-cultural theories, particularly--‘Aryan Invasion of India’, ‘Aryans and Dravidians divide’, ‘Indo--European Family of Languages, which have been expounded by Western scholars with their missionary agenda to confuse our heritage. Our own politicians have remained apathetic, silent, indifferent, and unconcerned. It seems, they have been resisting getting history of ancient India corrected, apparently because of political reasons, fear of losing minority votes.

           The Aryan invasion theory has been used to explain both the linguistic and racial differences between the peoples of north and south India, and such differences have been put forth as ‘proof’ of the invasion. As the Aryans were made into a race, so were the Dravidians and the Aryan/Dravidian divide was turned into a racial war, the Aryan invaders versus the indigenous Dravidians of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro. By this view the Vedic people promoted the superiority of their race and language and simply drove away those of different races or languages.

 In Sanskrit, Aryan is never a racial term but a title of respect. In Valmiki’s Ramayana, Rama is described as an Arya, in following words; “Arya--who cared for equality for all and was dear to everyone.” During the Mahabharata war, when Arjuna told Krishna that he would not fight his opponents—the Kuravas, in the battle, the Lord chastised him in the following words:

                                   “Kutas tva kasmalamidam       (Whence is this perilous condition            

                                    Visama samuppasthitam         come upon thee; this dejection,

                                   Anarya-justam asvargyam       un-Aryan like, heaven-excluding,                                                

                                   Akisti-karma, Arjuna”              disgraceful, O Arjuna)   

                                                            (Bhagwad Gita 2.2)

 Lord Krishna characterizes Arjuna’s behavior as un-Aryan, because the Aryans were ‘extremely sensitive to higher calls of life, righteousness and nobility, both in thought and action.’

              Even the Dravidian kings called themselves Aryan. Nor is there anything in Vedic literature that places the Dravidians outside of the greater Vedic culture and ancestry. Hence to place Aryan against Dravidian as terms is itself a misuse of language. Vedic scholar, Sri Aurobindo has stated that the Dravidian and Sanskritic languages have much more in common and appear to have a common ancestor. Dravidian history does not contradict Vedic history either. It credits the invention of the Tamil language, the oldest Dravidian tongue, to the Rishi Agastya, one of the most prominent sages in the Rig Veda. Dravidian kings historically have called themselves Aryans and trace their descent through Manu (who in the Matsya Purana is regarded as originally a south Indian king). Apart from language, moreover, both north and south India share a common religion and culture. There is no real evidence for any Aryan invasion---whether archeological, literary or linguistic.

           Robert Caldwell gave linguistic meaning of Dravida in his ‘Comparative Grammer of the Dravidian or South Indian Family of Languages’; “It is striking how, in the process, the word Dravida underwent the same abusive mis-interpretation as the word Arya, both of which never had any linguistic or racial sense. The meaning of Dravida had always been purely geographical: it first appears in inscriptions as early as the second century BC as dramira, later as dramila or dramida, and was simply synonymous with the word Tamil (from which, in fact, most scholars derive dravida). Later on, it came to mean loosely Southern India, and interestingly, the traditional Pancha-Dravida or five Dravidian regions included Maharashtra and Gujarat.”           

           Hancock (2002:169) explains how the culture of the ancient India has been scholarly misinterpreted:  “The Indus-Saraswati civilization was a literate culture, but the archaeological interpretation of it has been strictly limited to excavated material remains and has never been able to draw upon the civilization’s own texts. This is because all attempts to decipher the enigmatic ‘Harappan’ script have failed, and because (at least until very recently) the Sanskrit Vedas were regarded as the work of another, later culture and were assumed to have had nothing to do with the Indus-Saraswati civilization. In the twentieth century, this approach simply meant that there was no Indus-Saraswati civilization. It was not part of the archaeological picture of India’s past and was never even contemplated. It was, in other words, as ‘lost’ as Plato’s Atlantis until the material evidence that proved its existence began to surface when excavations were started at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro in 1920s.”

             In his edition of Survey of Hinduism (Sunny, State University of New York Press 1994), Professor Klaus Klostermaier has noted important objections to this theory. He suggests that the weight of evidence is against it and that it should no longer be regarded as the main model of interpreting ancient India. The Aryan Invasion Theory is something, he questions on the evidence. He states (p.34): "Both the spatial and the temporal extent of the Indus civilization has expanded dramatically on the basis of new excavations and the dating of the Vedic age as well as the theory of an Aryan invasion of India has been shaken. We are required to completely reconsider not only certain aspects of Vedic India, but the entire relationship between Indus civilization and Vedic culture." Later he adds (p.38): "The certainty seems to be growing that the Indus civilization was carried by the Vedic Indians, who were not invaders from Southern Russia but indigenous for an unknown period of time in the lower Central Himalayan regions." He questions that difference proposed between Vedic and Indus culture and shows a continuity or possibility of identity between the two. He mentions the data on the Sarasvati river, which according to scientific studies dried up around 1900 BC, the main river of the Vedas.” This means that the Rig Veda must already have been quite ancient by the time of the Harappan Civilization. Since the Harappan Civilization was known to be flourishing in the 3100 - 1900 BC period, the Rig Veda must have been in existence by 5000 BC. This now receives archaeological support following R.S. Bisht’s investigation of the great Harappan city of Dholavira. Bisht (and other archaeologists) have concluded; “that the Vedic Aryans of the Saraswati heartland were the people who created the Harappan cities and the civilization associated with it”.    .                 

             Archaeologist Paul-Henri Francfort, who studied the Saraswati region at the beginning of the nineties,found out that the Saraswati had "disappeared", because around 2200 B.C., an immense drought reduced the whole region to aridity and famine.He writes; “most inhabitants moved away from the Saraswati to settle on the banks of the Indus and Sutlej rivers”.The Rig Veda, describes India as it was before the great drought, which dried-up the Saraswati,which means the  Indus or Harappan civilisation was a continuation of the Vedic epoch, which ended approximately when the Saraswati dried-up.

 

      Ancient Mohenjo-Daro         Mohenjo-Daro Figure of a king or of a preist.

               Lieut. Col. F. Wilford, in the Asiatic Society of Bengal’s research series, led by William Jones (1746-94), section: “On the Ancient Geography of India” (Vol. XIV, pp.374-376), says; “that some Puranas have information about the names of some mansions, geographical tracts, mountains, rivers, etc., but without any explanations about them.”

            The historian Graham Hancock, in ‘Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization’ (2002, p.116), remarks: “Almost every thing that was ever written about this (Indus) civilization before five years ago is wrong.” Hancock concludes that during most of the twentieth century, the archaeological record refused to reveal evidence of the Indus civilization’s long period of development. This created a vacuum, a dark hole in history, European scholars took advantage of. Hancock further remarks: “European scholars felt free to conclude that the Indus Valley civilization might, in its origin, have been alien to India.”

                There are numerous early critics, both Western and Indian, of Aryan invasion theory, from its inception. The Indian critics such as Swami Dayanand Saraswati, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Shri B. R. Ambedkar and other prominent scholars.

              Lord Colin Renfrew, the well-known British archaeologist, rejected the idea of an Aryan invasion on the evidence of the Rig-Veda (something many Indian scholars and masters, from Swami Vivekananda to Sri Aurobindo, had done earlier): “As far as I can see, there is nothing in the Hymns of the Rig Veda which demonstrates that the Vedic-speaking populations were intrusive to the area.... Nothing implies that the Aryas were strangers there.”

              Mountstuart Elphinstone, a British historian and statesman, wrote in his 1841, History of India: “Neither in the Vedas, nor in any book ... is there any allusion to a prior residence ... out of India.... There is no reason whatever for thinking that the Hindus ever inhabited any country but their present one.”

           The French archaeologist Salomon Reinach, writing in 1892 at the height of the Aryan myth, was perhaps the first to reject the very notion of an Aryan race: “To speak of an Aryan race of three thousand years ago is to put forward a gratuitous hypothesis; but to speak of it as if it still existed today is quite simply absurd”.

       In 1984 D.L. Heskel wrote: “It is also evident that previous theories of wholesale population migration and invasions... are not acceptable in the light of archaeological evidence” (p 343).

           Jim G. Shaffer, another U.S. archaeologist with first-hand experience of Harappan sites, wrote in 1984 an article entitled “Indo-Aryan Invasions: Myth or Reality?” in which he refuted the invasionist framework. His conclusion as regards the archaeological record was: “Current archaeological data do not support the existence of an Indo-Aryan or European invasion into South Asia any time in the pre- or proto-historic periods.

           Jean-François Jarrige, a French archaeologist who led excavations at three sites in Baluchistan, noticed important transformations in the course of several millennia, but saw no evidence of Aryan invasions: “Nothing, in the present state of archaeological research ... enables us to reconstruct convincingly invasions that could be clearly attributed to Aryan groups.”

                It is argued that in the excavations at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, the human skeletons found do prove that a massacre had taken place at these townships by invading armies of Aryan nomads. Prof. G.F.Dales, Former Head of Department of South Asian Anthropology, Berkelay University, USA ,in his ‘The Massacre at Mohenjo-daro Expedition’ Vol.VI,3;1964, states the following about this evidence: “What of these skeletal remains that have taken on such undeserverd importance? Nine years of extensive excavations at Mohenjo-daro (1922-31)—a city of three miles in circuit---yielded a total of some 37 skeletons, or parts thereof, that can can be attributed with some certainty to the period of the Indus civilization. Some of these were found in contorted positions and grouping, that suggest anything but orderly burials. Many are either disarticulated or incomplete. They were all found in the area of the lower town---probably the residential district. Not a single body was found within the area of the fortified citadel where one could reasonably expect the final defence of this thriving capital city to have been made.”  He further states; “Where are the burned fortresses, the arrowheads, weapons, pieces of armour, the smashed chariots and bodies of the invaders and defenders? Despite the extensive excavations at the largest Harappan sites, there is not a single bit of evidence that can be brought forth as unconditional proof of an armed conquest and the destruction on the supposed scale of the Aryan invasion.”  

           No evidence of any significant invading populations has been found in ancient India, nor have any destroyed cities or massacred peoples been unearthed. So-called Aryan cultural traits like horses, iron, cattle-rearing or fire worship have been found to be either indigenous developments (like iron) or to have existed in Harappan and pre-Harappan sites (like horses and fire worship). No special Aryan culture in ancient India can be differentiated apart from the indigenous culture. Much earlier, chariots and horses were used in Mahabharata war. The Mahabharatha, an encyclopaedia of early Indian history and culture, became a unique history of Dharma amongst all the books of history in the world .The marine archaeologists in India have found enough proof to assert that Mahabharata is not a myth, but history. The discovery of submerged buildings of the legendary city of Dwarka indicates that Indians were masters in town planning and maritime activity, 4,000 years ago. The rise in the sea level in Dwarka is a scientific truth. Studies have proved that the sea considerably and suddenly rose to submerge the city. Harivamsha describes the submerging of Dwarka saying Krishna instructed Arjuna, who was then visiting Dwarka; to evacuate the residents of the city as the sea was going to engulf the city. “On the seventh day (of Krishna saying this), as the last of the citizens were leaving the city, the sea entered the streets of Dwarka.” 

             Dr. S.R. Rao and his team in 1984-88 (Marine Archaeology Unit), undertook an extensive search of Dwarka, along the coast of Gujarat where the Dwarika Desh temple stands now, and finally they succeeded in unearthing the ruins of this submerged city off the Gujarat coast. Ruins of Dwarka also show a very advanced civilization of at least 4000 years old, which could not be formed by semi-nomadic Aryans coming down from central Asia in1500 BC. The city originally itself could be about 6000 years old. Bankim Chandra Chatterjee in his essay ‘Is Krishna a historical figure’ (in ‘Krishna Charita’) has calculated the time of the war described in Mahavarat. According to him, the war took place in about 3700 BC.

              By popular tradition, the Kali Age started with the death of Lord Krishna, 35 years after the War. The Kali calendar has a beginning of 3102 BC, therefore, it is thought that the Mahabharata War took place in 3137 BC. The Kali age is supposed to have begun with a grand planetary conjunction. Modern studies using powerful software that can reconstruct the ancient skies indicated that there was actually an approximate conjunction of the planets on Feb 17, 3102 BC as taken by Aryabhata. The traditional time, mentioned by Aryabhata and in the Aihole inscription of 634 AD confirm the date of 3137 BC. The Kurukshetra site itself has structures that go back to about 3000 BC.

               The Aryan invasion of India is based upon the belief that Indians were composed of ; (a) “long headed, narrow nosed, slender Mediterranean type people, found all over the ancient Middle East and Egypt;”                                                                                                                   

(b) the pro-Austrolloid people with a flat nose and thick lips related to the Australian aborigines, typically represented by the bronze figurine of the Dancing Girl of Sind Valley Civilization and

(c) the later racial type represented by the “bearded steatite of the Sind Valley.” 

              The Aryan invaders are believed to have swept down through Baluchistan into Harppan settlements, devastating them completely. Describing the Aryan invasion, the British historian A.L.Basham wrote; “These tribes of marauders, no doubt, were the uncultured barbarians, when compared to the Indus society, but were speedy and sweeping horsemen with the weapons of distant targeting like the bow and the arrow, and means of stormy mobility and distant attacking rendered them victorious in disarranging the settled cultural society of Indus people.”Basham wrote further;”The Harappan people were replaced by squatters, living in small huts with fire-places, an innovation, which suggests that they came from a colder climate.” After having arrived in India the Aryan invaders settled in the Indo-Gangetic plains grew into the Vedic civilization---reducing the people of the Harappan India into the population of the Dasyus.             

             The history of Rig Veda is the history of the culture of the age. A more critical reading of Vedic texts reveals that Harappan civilization, the largest of the ancient world, finds itself reflected in Vedic literature, the largest literature of the ancient world. The Harappan Civilization covered an area of about 1.5 million square kilometers (Agrawal 2009: 1) Harappan civilization (3100-1900 BC) was the largest in the world up to its time. Harappan sites have now been found as far west as to the coast of modern Iran, as far north as Turkestan on the Amu Darya river (a region usually identified with the Aryans), as far northeast as the Ganges, and south to the Godavari river. A site has even been found on the coast of Arabia. Thousands of sites have been found with several cities, like Ganweriwala on the Saraswati River and Dholavira near the ocean in Kutch, as large as the first two major cities found, Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro. Most sites remain unexcavated and new explorations are likely to push the boundaries of this civilization yet further.

    

Great  Bath of Mohenjodaro                          The dockyard of Lotha                  

 The Harappan civilization was the first urban civilization of the Indian subcontinent. Archaeological discoveries show that this culture evolved from the earlier rural communities. Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro, Chanhu-Daro, Kalibangan, Lothal, Banawali, Rakhigarhi and Dholavira were some of the important sites of the Harappan civilization, well-planned towns can be observed at some Harappan centres. These towns were characterized by two broad divisions–a citadel on a higher mound and the lower town. Burnt bricks were used for building houses. The towns had good drainage system. Some major buildings at the Harappan towns were the Great Bath at Mohenjo-Daro, a granary at Harappa, and a dockyard at Lothal. The Harappans basically practiced agriculture. Farming and related activities arise in the subcontinent by 7000 BC in Mehrgarh (Wright 2010: 48).This was to prove crucial and Mehrgarh played an important role in developing early farming technology and keeping contacts with settlements farther west (Bellwood 2008: 91). It also had a large number of small and medium size sites all over the Indus plane by 4000 BC (Possehl 1999).However, the first large city-state arises, not in the region of Indus valley close to Mehrgarh but in a far away region of Hakra Basin in Harappa around 3200 BC and seems to be an indigenous development. 

              There were four stages of growth of the culture with the first revolution in farming around 7000 BC, the second one of introduction of metals around 5000 BC, Urbanization around 3000 BC. The induction of Iron is shown in 1000 BC. Change is the most constant part of human evolution. It can be for better or worse depending on the situation. If continuously new technologies or organizational restructuring come then the society will progress to next level of organization.

        There were skilled craftsmen who worked in copper and other metals, the stone tools were still in common use. They produced beads, terracotta figurines, potteries and seals of various kinds. The Harappans carried out trade, both internal and external. They had commercial links with Mesopotamian cities through Oman and Bahrain in the Persian Gulf. The merchants traded in various commodities of import and export. The people followed different professions such as those of priests, physicians, warriors, peasants, traders and artisans. Though the Harappans wore simple clothes made of cotton and wool, they were fond of decorating themselves with various kinds of ornaments. The Harappans worshipped the Mother Goddess, Pashupati (Proto-Shiva), trees and animals. They also followed different kinds of burial practices and rituals associated with them. There is enough positive evidence in support of the religious rites of the Harappans being similar to those of the Vedic Aryans. Their religious motifs, deities and sacrificial alters bespeak of Aryan faith, indicating continuity and identity of Vedic culture with the Harappan civilization.         

      

               Seal of a Bull,                   Bronze statue of a dancing girl excavated Mohenjo-daro,  

                The Harappans were literate and their script is in the form of ideograms. However, the script has not been fully deciphered so far. Once it is fully deciphered, we will be able to know more about the Harappan culture. The culture makes a dramatic increase in sophistication around 2500 BC and dies out equally dramatically around 1900 BC. (Wright 2010: 308). Scholars have suggested various factors such as natural calamities, increased aridity, drought, floods and earthquakes for the decline of the culture. The archaeological evidence suggests that this civilization did not face a sudden collapse but had a gradual decline.  Recent archaeological discoveries indicate that the Saraswati river dried up around 1900 BC, leading to the collapse of the Harappan civilization that was principally located in the Saraswati region (accounting for about 70 percent of all the Harappan sites). The Rig Veda celebrates the Saraswati as the greatest river of its day, going from the mountains to the sea (Giribhya Asamudrat in Rig Veda 7.95.2)

              There are two schools of thought related to the drying up of the Saraswati river. According to the first one, the Saraswati ceased to be a sea-going river about 3000 BC, explaining why the 3rd millennium settlements on the banks of the Saraswati river end in the Bahawalpur region of the Punjab and do not reach the sea; there was a further shrinking of the river in about 1900 BC due to an earthquake that made its two principal tributaries to be captured by the Sindhu and the Ganga river systems. According to the second view, the Saraswati flowed to the sea until 1900 BC when it dried up. The first view explains the geographical situation related to the Harappan sites more convincingly. The drying up of Saraswati, with its pre-eminent status during the Rig Vedic times, it follows that the Rig Vedic hymns are generally anterior to 1900 BC. If one accepts the theory that the Saraswati stopped reaching the sea in 3000 BC, then the Rig Vedic hymns are prior to 3000 BC and the Mahabharata War could indeed have occurred in 3137 BC.

          Dr S. H.Levitt finds that “the Ṛig Veda would date back to the beginning of the 3rd millennium B.C. with some of the earliest hymns perhaps even dating to the end of the 4^th millennium B.C.”  The co-relation of the Indus and Brāhmana periods is consistent with the views of archaeologists and geologists. .E.F.Bryant, ‘The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture’(p. 160) states; “A growing number of Indian archaeologists believe that the Indus Valley civilization could have been an Indo-Aryan civilization, or at least, the two cultures could have co-existed.”

             M.S.Elphinstone (1841), First Governor of Bombay (1819-27), writes in ‘History of India’; Hindu scripture…“It is opposed to their (Hindus) foreign origin, that neither in the code (of Manu) nor, I believe, in the Vedas, nor in any book, that is certainly older than code, is there any allusion to a prior residence or to a knowledge of more than the name of any country out of India. Even mythology goes no further than the Himalayan chain, in which is fixed the habitation of gods…There is no reason what-ever for thinking that the Hindus ever inhabited any country but their present one, and as little for denying that they may have done so before the earliest trace of their records or tradition.”   ,         

         Ramesh Chadra Mazumdar notes; that India was the origin of the ancient Aryans, who had migrated to Russia via Armenia. The discovery made by the Russian archeologists of the temple of Mithra under the basement of the world’s oldest official Christian church in Yerevan, Armenia shows that link.            

             The ancient people of Japan were not Mongolian, but Indo-Aryans; Mongolians began to migrate to Japan about 2000 years ago. The descendants of the ancient Indo-Aryans of Japan, Aino people, are still there in the northern island of Hokkaido; they have distinct Indo-Aryan physical features. It is probable the ancient Aryans have migrated eastwards to Japan, as there is evidence that the Aino people, descendants of the ancient Indo-Aryans in Japan, came originally from eastern Siberia. The ruins of submarine city near Okinawa were probably developed by the same Indo-Aryans nearly 8,000 years ago.

          

  

Aerial View of a massive city with            Ancient Aryan Houses in Arkaim, Chelyabinsk

astronomical Observatory, Arkaim, Chelyabinsk.        Source: Pravda, 16 July, 2005.

           Archaeological discoveries made in the Indian sub-continent in the past century have slowly accumulated evidence which has led to a discrediting of the Aryan invasion model. These discoveries have been reinforced by new insights from history of science, astronomy, and literary analysis.

              According to Dr. Subash Kak, the main points of the evidence are highlighted below: 1.It has been found that the Sapta Sindhu region -- precisely the same region which is the heartland of the Vedic texts-- is associated with a cultural tradition that has been traced back to at least 8000 BC without any break. It appears that the Saraswati region was the centre of this cultural tradition and this is what the Vedic texts also indicate. The term 'Aryan' in Indian literature has no racial or linguistic connotations.

2. According to the work of Kenneth Kennedy of Cornell University, there is no evidence of demographic discontinuity in archaeological remains during the period 4500 to 800 BC. In other words, there was no significant influx of people into India during this period.

3. B.B. Lal of the Archaeological Survey of India discovered fire altars in his excavations at the third-millennium site of Kalibangan. It appears now that fire altars were in use at other Harappan sites as well. Fire altars are an essential part of the Vedic ritual.

4. Geologists have determined that the Saraswati river dried up around 1900 BC. Since Saraswati is the greatest river of the Rig Vedic hymns, one conclusion that can be drawn is that the Rig Veda was composed prior to 1900 BC.

5. Study of pottery styles and cultural artifacts has led archaeologists such as Jim Shaffer of Case Western Reserve University, to conclude that the Indus-Saraswati culture exhibits a continuity that can be traced back to at least 8000 BC. Shaffer summarizes:
“The shift by Harappans (after the drying up of the Saraswati river around 1900 BC) is the only archaeologically documented west-to-east movement of human populations in South Asia before the first half of the first millennium BC.'' In other words there has been no Aryan-invasion.

6. A. Seidenberg of University of California at Berkeley reviewed the geometry of the fire altars of India as summarized in early Vedic texts such as the Shatapatha Brahmana and compared it to the early geometry of Greece and Mesopotamia. In a series of papers, he was able to establish that this Vedic geometry should be dated prior to 1700 BC.

 7. It has now been discovered that altar constructions were used to represent astronomical knowledge. Further more, an astronomical code has been found in the organization of the Vedic books. This code establishes that the Vedic people had a tradition of observational astronomy which means that the many astronomical references in the Vedic texts that point to events as early as 3000 or 4000 BC can no longer be ignored.

8. Recent computer analysis of the texts  have shown that the Brahmi script of the times of the Mauryan king Ashoka, is derived from the earlier third millennium script of the Indus-Saraswati age. This again is strong evidence of cultural continuity.

 9. The archaeological record shows that the Indus-Saraswati area was different from other ancient civilizations in many cultural features. For example, in contrast to ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia, it shows very little monumental architecture; it appears that the political organization and its relationship to other elites in the society were unique. This is paralleled by the unique character of the Vedic literary tradition with its emphasis on knowledge and the nature of the Self. 

10. Remains of the horse have been discovered in the Harappan ruins. A clay model of a horse was found in Mohenjo-Daro. New findings from Ukraine show evidence of horse riding as early as 4000 BC. The notion that the Aryans burst into history as horse-riding nomads sometime after 2000 BC stands totally rejected.

              Indian savants have warned against the non-factual distorted nature of the Aryan Invasion/Migration theory. Swami Vivekananda said; “There is not one word in our scriptures, not one, to prove that the Aryans ever came from anywhere outside India.... The whole of India is Aryan, nothing else.” He further stated very clearly: “Such words as Aryans and Dravidians are only of philological import, the so-called craniological differentiation finding no solid ground to work upon.” Any theory worth its salt should provide clarity of vision. But not so the Aryan race concepts. Swami Vivekananda correctly pointed out that they instead provide only “a lot of haze, created by a too adventurous Western philology”.

     S. R. Rao, a well-known Indian archaeologist who excavated at Lothal and Dwaraka in Gujarat, wrote: “There is no indication of any invasion of Indus towns nor is any artifact attributable to the so-called ‘invaders’.”

           B. B. Lal, another well-known archaeologist who once headed the Archaeological Survey of India, noted:  “The supporters of the Aryan invasion theory have not been able to cite even a single example where there is evidence of ‘invaders,’ represented either by weapons of warfare or even of cultural remains left by them.” 

        M. K. Dhavalikar, an Indian archaeologist known for his excavations at several sites of the Deccan, wrote: “The theory of large-scale invasion by Aryans is now discounted as there is no evidence to support it.”

          U.S. anthropologist Peter G. Johansen recently summarized the whole problem posed by AIT: “This [Aryan invasion] theory of Indian civilization is perhaps one of the most per during and insidious themes in the historiography and archaeology of South Asia, despite accumulating evidence to the contrary.”

           U.S. anthropologist K. A. R. Kennedy notes; “Biological anthropologists remain unable to lend support to any of the theories concerning an Aryan biological or demographic entity.... What the biological data demonstrate is that no exotic races are apparent from laboratory studies of human remains excavated from any archaeological sites.... All prehistoric human remains recovered thus far from the Indian subcontinent are phenotypic ally identifiable as ancient South Asians.... In short, there is no evidence of demographic disruptions in the north-western sector of the subcontinent during and immediately after the decline of the Harappan culture.”

           Recent linguistic work by Ideologists and linguists Edwin Bryant (from the U.S.) and Koenraad Elst (from Belgium) has rejected the notion that the existence of one Indo-European family of languages demands an Aryan invasion or migration into India. Migratory models are decidedly outdated, especially when there is no hard evidence for migrations. Elst summarizes the verdict of linguistic evidence in these words: “The oft-invoked linguistic evidence for a European Urheimat (original homeland) and for an Aryan invasion of India is completely wanting. One after another, the classical proofs of the European Urheimat theory have been discredited.

           The linguistic evidence, available since the earliest forms of Sanskrit (Rig Vedic), is crucial, as the materials transmitted by language obviously point to the culture of its speakers and also to their original and subsequent physical surroundings. Language has, just as history, its own 'archaeology'; the various subsequent historical 'layers' of a particular language can be uncovered, using well-developed linguistic procedures.

           Taken together, the cumulative evidence completely belies the Aryan invasion theory. If an influx of people into India took place it should be earlier than 4500 BC if one considers the demographic evidence, and perhaps before 8000 BC if one considers other related evidence. On the other hand, it is equally plausible that the Sapta Sindhu region was the original homeland of the Aryans from where they migrated to Iran and Europe, as remembered in Puranic legend. It was originally proposed that the Harappan culture was ended abruptly by the Aryan invaders. Evidence however revealed that the sites were abandoned rather than destroyed, along with major ecological changes in the region, with shifting rivers, floods, and desertification of parts of the region, along with the drying up of the Saraswati river. The upper course of the Ghaggar, however, is not dry even today, as some scholars state; it is still known as the small river Sarsuti. Also, it has been long known, and is easily visible on many maps, that the lower, dry bed of the Sarsuti (Ghaggar) continues well beyond the Pakistani border as Hakra (Wilhelmy 1969, Witzel 1984,1987), and it seems to continue further south as the Nara channel in Sindh, finally emptying into the Rann of Cutch (Oldham 1886, Raverty 1892, Witzel 1994). 

         The Aryans were initially localized to the west of Indus River, but gradually their influence,

observed by the presence of Painted Grey Ware pottery extended further east into the western

Ganges valley. Aryan influence also appears to have moved south to the Deccan plateau,

indicated by the introduction of iron and later of the Northern Black Polished pottery type, also associated with Aryan cultural levels in the Ganges valley. These Aryan penetrations into

the Deccan put into contact, by the end of the first millennium B.C., with other types as revealed

by the presence of megalithic burial sites, which were widespread in southern Indian by about

300 B.C. Aryan influence also appears to have moved south to the Deccan plateau, indicated by the introduction of iron and later of the Northern Black Polished pottery type, also associated with Aryan cultural levels in the Ganges valley. These Aryan penetrations into the Deccan put into contact, by the end of the first millennium B.C., with other types as revealed by the presence of megalithic burial sites, which were widespread in southern Indian by about 300 B.C.

        Sir Monier William writes in ‘Religious Life in Ancient India’; “They were people gifted with high mental capacities and strong mental feelings. They possessed great powers of appreciating and admiring the magnificent phenomena of nature with which they found themselves surrounded. They were endowed with a deep religious sense—a profound consciousness of their dependence on the invisible forces which regulated the order of the world in which they found themselves placed. They were fitly called ‘noble’ (Arya), and they spoke a language fitly called ‘polished’ or ‘carefully constructed’ (Sanskrita).” 

       “The Vedic literature is massive and no other culture has produced anything like it in regard to ancient history. Not the Egyptians, Sumerians, Babylonians, or Chinese. So if it was produced outside of India, how could there not be some reference to its land of origination. For that matter, how could these so-called primitive nomads who came invading the Indus region invent such a sophisticated language and produce such a distinguished record of their customs in-spite of their migrations and numerous battles? This is hardly likely. Only a people who are well established and advanced in their knowledge and culture can do such a thing” Source: Proof of Vedic Culture's Global Existence - By Stephen Knapp.

.      Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, a well known messiah of the Dalits had studied Vedas and other connected literature, wrote; “The theory of invasion is an invention. This invention is necessary because of a gratuitous assumption that the Indo-German people are the purest of the modern representatives of the original Aryan race. The theory is based upon nothing but pleasing assumptions and inferences based on such assumptions. The theory is a perversion of scientific investigation. It is not allowed to evolve out facts. On the contrary, the theory is pre-conceived and facts are selected to prove it. My conclusions are;

 (1) the Vedas do not know any such race as Aryan race.   

(2) There is no evidence in the Vedas of any invasion of India by the Aryan race and its having conquered the Dasas and Dasyus supposed to be the natives of India.

(3) There is no evidence to show that the distinction between Aryan, Dasas and Dasyus was a racial distinction. 

(4) The Vedas do not support the contention that the Aryans were different in colour from the Dasas and Dasyus. If anthropometry is a science which can be depended upon to determine the race of a people then its measurements establish that the Brahmins and the untouchables belong to same race. From this it follows that if Brahmins are Aryans, the untouchables are also Aryans…”    

Swami Vivekananda said; “ The Aryans were kind and generous, and in their hearts which were large and unbounded as the ocean and in their brains gifted with superhuman genius, all these ephemeral and apparently pleasant but virtually beastly processes, never found a place.”