Max Muller’s Ghost

I understand the intellectual curiosity about such things...the more we know about our past the better.

On a personal level though, I couldn`t care less whether I am an Aryan or a Dravidian. As an Indian, I find both of my roots to be equally precious, equally enriching. Whatever racial bigotry and foolishness filled my mind melted away like so much junk when I had an opportunity to live in in the southern parts of India. I fell in love with the place and its people. I then realized what it really means to be an Indian. After that, being an Aryan or a non-Aryan stopped being any big deal to me.

Cheers.

If South Asians are not caucasians, what race are they?

Re Ashim Banerjee

Yes, the indus script is far from being cracked. there`s very little of it (compared to the egyptians, for eg.) and no intermediary script that can help decipher it.

RE: Ashim and Sohail,

Gentlemen, I think both of you have made good contributions. When I embraced Ashim`s rhetoric (or how I read it, or what I wanted to read) whole-heartedly, I was giving in to my own bias. Sohail`s response made me think out things a bit and that is all what I was conceding. I felt it enriched Ashim`s article and my comment was in no way meant to, lets say, de-legitimize the artilce, just to reiterate a point SR had raised. All a part of rapidly reading articles at work and dashing off comments via interact :)

Thank you Mr. Rabbani for clearing up some points. If in fact the points you listed are close to what Mr Bannerjee agrees with, then I have no argument. I just felt that the article was getting overly provocative.

I guess I do not like to get riled up about nationalist-foriegn-race type issues. There is an unnecessary value judgment that gets placed i.e. who effected who, who conquered who - who can we attribute the current world to. I have heard europeans crying in the same vain, arguming that their ancestors couldn`t have come from Africa. Foriegn is a concept no defined by history, but by perception.

Re: Ashim Banerjee

Thank you for the book references. Next time I stop by Borders I`ll try to look`em up. I conclude from your message that we are in agreement over, at least the following:

(1) Sanskrit and Latin have a at least some common ancestral threads between them.

(2) The so-called Aryan people did gradually migrate into the subcontinent from the West and spread out eastward.

(3) That this migration was not a grand military invasion (as some misguided scholars may have suggested in the past) but was a slow and continuous process over centuries.

(4) The ancient Indus Valley Civilization (which you rightly call ``Saraswati Civilization``), for some unknown reason, declined and ceased to exist over a relatively short span (couple of centuries?) at approximately the time when the poor hungry barbarian immigrants were arriving from the west.

(5) There was no major population migration from India that ultimately wound up in Europe, nor did the ancient `Europeans` ever migrate to India.

(6) The populations that migrated to India from the Caspian Sea area share some common links with other populations that migrated further west.

(7) There was a communication, commerce and trade between ancient India and the west, at least to the Tigris and Euphratese area if not beyond.

(8) Muller was handicapped in his thinking by the narrow minded chauvinism of his day and age. However, he did make a contribution to the study of ancient languages in India.


Re: BG

That Latin and Sanskrit are cousins is a point we all here concede. Ashim did not really challenge that notion directly. He was simply arguing against the Eurocentric view that was prevalent among the nineteenth and early twentieth century ``sahibs`` who spun off theories of racial superiority motivated by their jaundiced world view (we siperior white folks can kick Indian asses, as our remote `cousins` did). Unfortunately, even though recent scholarship has rejected those views, the old concepts keep re-emerging in popular literature.

It appears that Ashim has encountered those defuncts views once too often and while rejecting them in his article he got a bit carried away in his rhetoric (Europe owes its identity to India). Re-reading his article and responses I realize that he probably didn`t mean to spin off a new Indo-centric theory, but that he was only letting off some steam and taking `literary license`. I would probably have done the same, but Indian history is no longer one of my passions as it once was.

...SR

SR,

thank you. good intervention. inspired by your response, i spoke to a philologist friend who tells me there is a great deal of evidence that latin and sanskrit are cousin languages descending from (grandma) proto-Indo European and physical/textual evidence suggests that the proto-indo european speakers were in either anatolia or the caucasus and the migration was to india, not out of it. will look up references.

Ashim Banerjee’s maverick views and his dismissal of Muller’s Eurocentric view of modern India’s origins are laudable. (AB: “... translation of the Rig Veda... notice Sanskrit.. similarities to Latin....the temptation to apply linguistic theories ..too strong to resist. Thus.. the Aryan Invasion of India and...that South Asians are really Caucasians...”)

However, he may be taking his iconoclasm a bit too far, or at least so it appeared to this reader. (AB: “...If the linguistic evidence is paramount then what prevents the ancient Aryans from having migrated from the Indian Sub-Continent in sundry directions...But then it would be Europe that owes its culture and identity to India...”)

He asserts that Muller’s hypothesis is so spurious that it could easily be the exact reverse, i.e., Europe’s ancestors came from India.

Though I fully endorse his criticism of Friedrich Muller, there are some points that the author overlooks in his rejection of the so-called “Indians are Europeans theory”. (That ‘theory’ does not exist in the sense that it is being implied. That WOULD be a ridiculous theory, if it did exist.)

It is an understatement to say that there exist great gaps of ignorance in our knowledge of the ancient past. In fact what we have are only gaps of knowledge in our ignorance.

There is a strong argument favoring the arrival of migratory populations from the region between the Caspian and Areal Seas (not from “Central Europe”) to India but not the other way around. The Caspian Sea region was populated by a heterogeneous mix of people. These “Indo-European” peoples who fanned out were a mixed stock comprising of several ethnicites (Mitannians, Hittites, Kassites, Sogdians, Bactrians, Medes etc.) India was fertile and prosperous and the West Asian landscape was harsh and inhospitable. It makes little sense for the population to have moved north rather than south.

In recent years much archeological work has been done in the subcontinent. Lahore museum, for instance, has been participating with several multinational groups (American, French, Japanese) to unearth and interpret the past along the Indus Valley. Similar work has been done in Rajistan, Sindh, Mysore, and along the Ganges Valley to name just a few.

Whereas, I am only very summarily aware of some of what has been found out, it is quite clear that a sharper picture has emerged than what Friedrich Max could have even dreamt. Dismissing the crux of his (Muller’s) finding (the shared origin of Sanskrit and Latin) because of his flawed ideology and unsophisticated reasoning would be like rejecting the biological evolution of species idea because Darwin was wrong about many of his theoretical models. (Today a lot more is know about biological evolution than Darwin could have imagined. Similarly a lot more is know about Indian archeological past though not as much as biological evolution -- but that is another story.)

The earliest human activity in India goes back to the Second Inter-galactic age (before circa 200,000 BC). The culmination of a slow cultural evolution was the highly advanced Harappa Culture (c. 2500 BC), with still older ones in Baluchistan (Nal Culture) and Makran coast (Kulli Culture) and some others along the rivers of Punjab, Rajistan and the Kathiawar region. The Harappa Culture was the most advanced ancient culture which seems to have a city-state setup. Spread over a thousand miles there were cities in areas as far as Rajistan (Kalibangan), Punjab (Rupar), Sindh (Kot Diji) and Gugrat (port-town of Lothal). There was commerce and trade between The Indus Valley people and those of the Persian Gulf and Mesopotamia. This civilization declined and went belly-up by 1500 BC, which is when the Aryans come into the picture.

Ethnological researchers believe that there were at least six racial groups in the ancient subcontinent: the Nigrito, Proto-Australoid, Alpine, Mongoloid, Mediterranean and much later on those assigned the term ‘Aryan’. Skeletal remains at Harappan sites do not include the ‘Aryan’. (So they could not have originated there and later gone to Europe.)

‘Aryan’ is in fact a term applied to a speech-group not a race. To refer to the migration of the Aryans is technically inaccurate. However, it has become so customary that it will sound rather pedantic to refer to the ‘Aryans’ as “the groups of people who spoke Indo-European languages”.

(AB: “...There is no evidence of the Indus cities being destroyed by invasion. ...pale skinned Indo-Aryans sweeping down... driving the dark skinned Dravidians into the bowels of southern India....”)

There is indeed no evidence of “cities destroyed by invasion”. To say that a great Aryan army “invaded” the Indus Valley is a very simplistic model. The immigrants were nomadic barbarians who came over to a settled agrarian civilization. Like the Germanic people who “invaded” Italy centuries later, these Aryan people were immigrants, or economic refugees, rather than marauding invaders. They may have brought diseases with them that the natives did not have immunity against. Who knows?

The recent example of North America can serve as a model here. (Native American populations were decimated as a result of new diseases, and NOT due to military disasters at the hands of the Old World immigrants.) A hundred years from now the ‘brown invasion’ of the US will have changed the racial make up here. (In 2030 more than 50% newborns will be non-white.) In five hundred years the only ‘pure whites’ may be left in the hills of Montana, Wyoming and the Badlands of the Dakotas. Will we then be justified in saying that there is no evidence of a ‘brown invasion’ destroying the cities of North America? :)

(AB: “...The authors of the Rig Veda, describe themselves as Arya, the noble...”)

The Sanskrit term ‘arya’ did come to mean ‘noble’ but that was a later Brahaminical innovation. The original word comes from the Sanskrit root ‘ri-ar’ which means “to plough”; cf: the Latin “aratrum”, a plough, and “area”, an open space. On this theory, Wil Durant suggests that the word ‘Aryan’ originally meant not nobleman but peasant.

(AB: “...Max Muller dated the Rig Veda... around 1200 BC...After accounting for the great flood and other Biblical events...”)

Its interesting that the great Biblical flood should be mentioned here. There is a similar flood legend in ancient India also. There is the story of the tenth Manu a descendent of king Prithu who cleared the forests for agriculture and cattle breeding. During the rule of this Manu there was a great flood that drowned everyone and only Manu survived. The god Vishnu had warned him so he built a boat and saved his family and seven sages. A big fish pulled the boat to a mountain top where they remained until the waters receded. The human race supposedly sprang anew from Manu’s family and the sages he took with him on the boat.

This story immediately brings to mind the similar Babylonian legend which was later borrowed by the Hebrews in the story of Noah’s Ark. Later still that story was also adopted by Prophet Mohammed who incorporated it into the Quran.

It is impossible to say whether this story originated among the Indus valley people who were subjected to frequent flooding or if its source was from the memory of the Aryan people while they were still living on the Iranian plateau and were in contact with the people further west and heard of the Mesopotamian flood. The clear implication here is that there was far more contact and interaction among the ancient peoples than we in our morden day arrogance are inclined to concede.

(“...similarity of languages...imply ...speakers migrated....it is astounding to discover that there was no physical evidence worth the name to support these theories....”)

This may have been true in Muller’s day but there is reasonable archeological evidence now.

The ‘Painted-Grey Ware’ culture which is associated with the Neolithic speakers of Indo-European languages shows a gradual spread eastward in the subcontinent along the Ganges plain. Carbon 14 tests demonstrate this with reasonable certainty today and the dates of the gradual progression range from 1500 to 500 BC. Material from Atranji Khera (near Alighar) considered to be the mid-point of the migration is dated at 1025 BC (margin of error = 110 years). I believe there is tons of more physical evidence, as my friends in the Lahore Museum assure me, but unfortunately I am unable to recount it here.

In summary then, Muller maybe ethnocentric and misguided but he was onto something there. Let’s not reject the idea because the person who helped shape it held other ideas that were flawed.

...SR

First I`d like to mention that calling people from the subcontinent caucasian is about as substantive a statement as calling all caucasians africans. I.e. it may have some truth in it but is a largely irrelevant fact.

Second, from history books that I have read, PBS shows I have watched and people I have talked to in this area, the current belief is that the aryans who came to the subcontinent assimilated with the dravidians and that our phenotype reflects that. There is no current theory about where the dravidians came from. hence from a historical point of view it is incorrect to call Indians or Pakistanis (etc) the same ``race`` as caucasians. And in fact this is the first time I have heard that.


Also, as the author mentions there is no evidence that the indus vallety civilization was destroyed by the aryans - in fact i have never heard that claimed.

However the fact that the aryans did come to India is a well believed theory with a large body of evidence behind it. That they influenced our culture is also not something in doubt. The article gets somewhat provocative about things that are not so shakey - like the the dating of the Rig veda. You mean to tell me that the entire scientific community is just sitting there with a false date because of max muller? That is hard to believe, and I doubt it is something you can substantiate. Using events like floods, etc to put potential dates on books is not uncommon - for example the Mahabharata is dated that way. And considering the importance of the aryans moving into europe it is unlikely that this date was not reverified (or re-theoricized) by other athropologists.

Also there is substantial evidence about the existance of a proto-indo-european language and this is a well studied subject that you cast as just being a figment of Mr Max`s vivid imagination. Agreed it is a theory, but there is substantial data and deductive reasoning that this theory is based on.

And that I think is the biggest problem with this article. You slam the bad popular touted facts and value jugdements with the same gusto as theories based on scientific facts. And in doing so you provoke and politicize the issue even more.


As far as europe owing its culture to the subcontinent, or its language why even go so far? The existence of curried goat, ``gurus, pundits, jungles, avatars``, yoga, meditation shows that none of our cultures are as isolated as we`d like to believe.

Lastly your paragraph
``Much better to draw up images of pale
skinned Indo-Aryans sweeping down from the
central Asian plains
driving the dark skinned Dravidians into the
bowels of southern India.``

This image comes not from an over-zealous european historian but from accounts in the rig veda, our ancestors. Just a simple reading of the ramayan will tell you that (the dark monkeys and the rakhsas (demons) of Lanka). Maybe the ``caucasian`` superiority complex has much longer roots than you think - how`s that for a theory!

Great work, Ashim, and so fast. Compliments, also to the staff for turning things around so fast. A solid, grounded comeback to the argument that South Asians are caucasian.
thanks.