Silk Route

Tahmed32

Many many theories have been put forth on the origins of Dravidians. You have missed out on one which co-locates them with the Australian aborigines and the Maoris of NZ.

Secondly far from laying too much in store on epics that claim that Dravids were banished to the South of India, my eye tells me that an element of Dravidian exists in every denizen of the Indian subcontinent and that includes modern-day Pakistanis, Bangladeshies ( Biharis, Bengakis, UPites, Punjabies everyone no one is left out) etc. The element varies only by degrees. Secondly if Dravidian were to mean an ethnic group - it certainly would not refer to all the South Indian groups. There are Southerns groups which are way fairer and taller than Biharies, Punjabies that I have seen and yet they speak Dravidian or mixture of Dravid and Sanskrit.

Thirdly the notion of curly haired Dravids is also misplaced. Anthroplological studies make them out to be straight-haired. It is the Adi-Dravids or the people who predate Dravids that are shorter in stature , darker and curly haired -these are the tribals such as Bhils, Gonds, Santals etc of today.


There is a strong theory on the origins of Dravids from so-called ELAM which by the way was an ancient Persian kingdom. The scholars who put forward this theory claim that subsequent to invasions of Persia from the north from places such as Georgia and the intermingling of these people with the Persians , the Persians started developing physical characteristics that are considered the norm for Iranians today.

Further to comparisons with African civilisations - these have been pastoral in nature with cattle rearing people living a nomadic lifestyle. The Dravidian civilisation is more urban in nature with life centered around urban setllements or so-called ``Urs``. They also had well developed literary and arts, so much so that some of the Tamil literary classics date back a few thousand years.

Regarding the Dravidian rulers - they maintained a strong maritime presence in South East Asia and were responsible for the spread of Indian culture to places such as Malaysia and Indonesia. So much so that Arab civilisation could not gain a foothold until the natural decline of the local dynasties founded by these Dravidian rulers.Trade with Phonecians, Greeks , Persians and Romans was well estabalished based upon literary writings , anthropological studies and findings of coins and other artifacts.

SameerJB #92 You write that ``Drividian are generally believed to have come throuh Bolan pass, a soutthern route, termed as mediterrenean people somtime after the last ice-age.`` I assume that would be about 10,000 years ago. After reading your note, I checked this on the internet with a google search. However, while there was lots of interesting literature on the history of the Dravidians, the discussion never went back before the Moenjodaro/Harrapa civilization, or around 4000 BC. And even about these civilizations the authors noted that not much is known other than what we can infer from their cities. This is because the script of the Harrapan people has not been deciphered as yet (there being no Rosetta stone for their language).
Thus, the best guess I could make was that the ancestors of the Dravidians came to the subcontinent as part of the first wave of human migrations out of Africa, which is placed at 2 million years ago.
Given that I have never heard of any discussion on where the dravidians came from, I was only trying to infer the best I could from the broader history of the spread of mankind on this planet.
I would therefore appreciate if you could provide the source of your information regarding general agreement that the Dravidians came a mere few thousand years ago (at the end of the last ice age) into India via the Bolan pass. And that the nagas were here before them.

This is hilarious. reminds me of the kites we used to catch coming from Pakistan during Basant.
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Pak electioneering strays into India

Gurdaspur, October 8
Electioneering for the October 10 elections in Pakistan spilled across the border when an air-borne election symbol tied with gas balloons floated across the Indo Pakistan border and landed in the border town of Narot Jaimal Singh across the Ravi river in the district last night.

According to reports lodged with the police today, a group of youths during routine morning walk came across a model of a bicycle wheel on which were tied 90 gas balloons. The wheel made of thermocol with 50 light indicators attached to a battery was found by the youth in a paddy field 1 km away from Narot Jaimal Singh.

According to the youths lights of different colours were attached to the thermocol cycle wheel.The name of Mian Mohammed Riaz, candidate of the Pakistan Muslim League contesting the national Assembly election from Sialkot constituency was written in Urdu on Cycle besides his photograph and symbol was also attached to it. The wheel later was taken to Narot Jaimal Singh police station where the people queued up to have a closer look.

According to the police the cycle wheel floated across the border and despite the lights was not noticed by the security personnel manning the border. This indeed was a serious security breech as the intruder floated across into Indian territory unnoticed.

The wheel with the help of the gas balloons hovered around Narot Jaimal Singh and when some of the gas balloons burst it came down into a paddy field where it was noticed in the morning. UNI

I came to Chowk after many days and luckily tipped over (by this thread) into this discussion. Some wonderful talk about punjab and its people. The quote worth quoting again is by Sameer Singh Sahib ``when land speaks, everybody listens``. I think this line says a lot by itself. Being a kisaan putt I understand its significance very well. When I think about my feelings about my mother language, my family my friends, the landscape of Punjab naturally comes attached to them. It is almost like I am as much a product of my parents as of my land...I am also conected to everyone else who is a product of the same landscape like grains in a heap(bohal).

When you stire the sawaah, sawaah has to rise...when the topics of religion, history and atrocities by one another come, everyone ends up stiring the sawaah...even knowing it will land in his own hair but overall my observation is that Sikhs have a lot softer corner for Pakistanis than Pakistani can ever realize. I think it has to do with the shared past, land, language, culture, water.... these things go a long way.

You guys were talking abour Pakistan East of lahore and I was thinking about all the villages and places my elders mention from that area....Burkee, KohriaN, Jaahman, Ghaniye ke, Bhadhana, Ghurkee etc. My whole family history is confined in the land strip between Amritsar and Lahore. I always wanted to find some people from this belt of Pakistani Punjab but have so for found only one person from Baghbanpura...which is great because our family hakeem was in Baghbanpura before partition and my father has lot of memories of traveling(walking or on ghoRhi) through Ghurkee, Burkee to baghbanpura...particularly one trip..one of the last ones when my father was very sick in the summer of 47 and my dada ji took him to baghbanpura to the hakeem. They were half caught in a riot in that trip and luckily escaped.

As an advertisement, anyone from East of Lahore around here reading anonymously?

SameerJB # 95.

Man, you amaze me. Is there any field, that you don`t have a store full of knowledge on. You must be an avid reader. I would love to meet you and talk to you in person.

Romair

Regarding Ranjeet Singh`s height, he may have been short but not as short as you imply. He was a successful general and led his armies to victory against much powerful armies. You had to have a certain height to fight the physical battles. He had however lost one of his eyes to small pox as a child.

But inspite of all these handicaps he single handedly transformed a rag tag army of Sikhs to the most powerful nation of Northern India. As long as he was alive the British although coveted the richness of Punjab, dared not venture in that direction.

Like Shah Mohemmed show wrote,

``Shah Mohammeda Singha ne goriaN de wang nibuaN lahu nichar ditte...
...per ik sarkar bajoN fauja jit ke anth nuN hariyaN ne``

dost-mittar: Gurdaspur was a tehsil of district Sialkot in 1947 and before. It became district after partition. So we both are right here. Many places have new names and many past tehsils are now districts. In Pakistan, former tehsils Toba Tek Singh, Vehari, Pakpattan, Hafizabad, Mandi Bahauddin are all districts now. Karachi is actually composed of five districts now although people do not distinguish themselves from Karachi west or Karachi east.
Alexander height is well-known fact. He was short and so were Ranjit Singh and Hazrat Ali. Porous is believed to be very tall man, not sure about 7 ft. I am not sure if he was Jhelumi or just a ruler there because his brother or nephew ruled the area between Chenab and Ravi and believed to have cooperated with Alexander against Porus. After the war, Alexander favored Porus, perhaps after a peace deal, over his kins and gave everything between Jhelum and Ravi to Porus.
It is interesting the place where Porus-Alexander was took place is called Sikandarpur or someting like that but not after local hero.
tahmed: [The ancestors of the dravidians must have come to india much, much earlier, about 2 million years ago. ] That is not true. Drividian are generally believed to have come throuh Bolan pass, a soutthern route, termed as mediterrenean people somtime after the last ice-age. The people in sub-continent before Dravidians were aboriginies, called munda people, because of the nale given to the language they spoke. The nagas are other hill tribes are perhaps the earliest people in sub-continent.

dost-mittar/RLeanord: Please see post #56 regarding the origins of Sunil Dutt. I think he visited his village when Vajpayee visited Lahore.

Rohtas is a gigantic fort, outside Jehlum, towards the side while travelling towards Pindi. People actually live inside it, even now, I believe.

Since we are on Punjab`s trivia: Is is true that the original Jehlumi, Mr. Raja Porus was actually seven feet tall, and Sikander-e-Azam was five and a half feet tall. And is it true that the famous Sikh ruler Ranjit Singh was actually vertically challenged, around four or so feet tall?

ajeet #88 Actually the chinese and the american indians are from the same basic stock that first migrated to central asia as part of the original human emigration out of africa around 2 million years ago. The american Indians migrated from north eastern asia quite recently, around 10,000 years ago, to the americas (at around the end of the last ice age, before which the way to the americas was effectively blocked by the ice age). The ancestors of the dravidians must have come to india much, much earlier, about 2 million years ago.
Thus, coming to our hypothetical case of a north-south himalayas: in this case humans would have continued their migration from africa to china and down to india. The big question is, when would they have first entered india. It would presumably be quite early. And the earlier they migrated, the closer they would be to the descendants of dravidians (i.e. darker skins and slighter physical frames) in the subcontinent today. Since looks would be dictated by climate. The big difference would be that instead of the aryans, turks etc. pouring in from the west over the past few thousand years, this ``aboriginal`` stock would now have to contend with chinese who would presumably have proved as vigorous as the aryans in battle with the locals. And so you are right: India would probably be seen as a rich chinese province over the past few thousand years, with the polyglot population being various shades of chinese-``dravidian`` rather than aryan-dravidian as it is today.

dost-mittar: Sunil Dutt is from Jhelum or Pind Dadan Khan, not from Rawalpindi but Rawalpindi is the unofficial capital of Potwar region and Sunil Dutt might have spent some time there. [Two lyricists, Anand Bakhshi and Shalendra were from Rawalpindi, Dilip Kumar, Kapurs from Peshawar, Manoj Kumar from Abbotabad, Dev Anand/ Rajendra Kumar from Sialkot]
RLeonard: The Brohi area is just across Indus river to the west from Sindh. Many of the Sindhi tribes are Balochi tribes settled in Sindh and therefore, must have some influence form Brohi language. However, Sindhi is considered a Sanskrit derived, belonging to Prakrits family of languages, just as Saraiki and Punjabi. Good points about Sikkim and Bhutan. They are indeed very scenic places. I guess still the distance to noetheast from Bombay will be more than coming to Pakistani northern areas besides no language barrier. Bhutan is a good place to spend a whole summer. Once I met a Bhutaneese visitng to Bhutan from NY. I asked him if he can bring Bhutaneese stamps for me. He brought back a beautiful collection of stamps, perhaps the most beautiful stamps in the world after Australian coral reef collection of life under sea.

Sameerjb,

`Believe me, Pakistan has so much to offer to Bollywood movie makers, that they might desert the usual settings in Shimla and Ooti altogether. `

I don`t know about that, with all the world available for shooting, Indian producers still make use of the local scenry. However I do agree, that considerable number would have used the stark beauty of the northwestern mountains. As it is they have used what ever is available whether it is Afganistan or Europe, USA or Japan, Australia or Singapore. What is needed is a co-operative government and friendly people.

Tahmed, #82

Interesting line of thought about the population of sub continent if the
himalayas were oriented differently. How ever there is one flaw with that argument.

The difference between the americas and India would still be that whereas americas were seperated from the old world by thousands of miles of open ocean, India would still be contiguas to rest of Asia. Plenty of people from southern china would have crossed over along the coast or sailed along the coastline.

Sameer #84

Great to hear about places such as Hunza. Regd. Shimla and Ooty , there are other places in India and Sikkim that have not been exploited yet by the plagiarist brigades from Bollywood and I am referring to Garhwal, Kumaon, Sikkim, Panchgani, Mabaleshwar, Kodai etc.

Regd. Brohi, it is now more akin to Baluchi than any Dravidian langauge based on reports, some Baluch even claim that Brohis are originally Baluch . The last vestiges of Dravidian language seem to be the counting numbers and that too upto four - this I am not sure if it relates to Sindhi or Brohi because some scholars claim that Sindhi language also shares some similarity with Dravidian languages. Another point to note is that Tamil is probably the only Dravidian langauge that tries to retain its basic elemenst all the other languages in the SOtuh have been influenced heavily by Sanskrit while retaining their scripts.

There is one big reason why Pakistan may be a hit with Hindu pligrims from India - it paradoxically houses some of the most sacred sites, however this requires some great packaging from the Pak govt.


Dost-Mittarji

Are you a Mohyal? I believe that Sunil Dutt`s ( Bollywood) family hails from Pind Dadan Khan.

Pardesi: I am upset for not being considered the honorary title of virtual Sikh on your list, although Radiopanjab in e-mails refers to me as Sameer Singh........:-) Good to have your input here. Actually, this is one of the best discussion I have noticed in a while beause it is about land and when land speaks, everybody listens. Land does not have any religion or playing politics, it is more like science; wht you see is what there is to see.
The photogenic beauty of mountain is well known due to contrasts in the picture and this fact is well exploited in our formula desi movies. Almost always, hero/ heroine goes to Ooti or Shimla to sing a song. Believe me, Pakistan has so much to offer to Bollywood movie makers, that they might desert the usual settings in Shimla and Ooti altogether. I do not understand why we do not jump on this golden opportunity to attarct people from India as tourists and offering business opportunities. A ten minute scenic background of couple of songs is a free tourism advertisement when a movie goes all over the world chasing desi population.
Pakistan should also quickly develop Brohi speaking areas in Balochistan targeting at the fast growing per capita income of dravidian south India. Where else can dravidian speaking people find a historical stronghold of dravidian culture with very different geographical setting than south India?
And Sikhs of course have many great reasons to visit Pakistan. What do you think Pardesi? Next chiefminister of Punjab is most likely to be from your father`s neighborhood. Pervez Elahi is a Jat from Gujrat and his family enjoys excellent relationship with Sikhs. Ooooops I must stay away from politics here. I was goingt o write something but will pass for some other time.

sameerJB #78 I dont think it is certain that the subcontinent`s population would have been chinese (rather than the polyglot that exists today) if the subcontinent had rammed the asian mainland at an angle whereby the himalayas were north south (giving passage from the north) and the northwestern approaches were blocked. The way human migrations seemed to have taken place (per current generally accepted anthropology as I understand it) is as follows:
9 million years ago: the ancestors of mankind descended from the trees in east africa. In the millenia following that, started walking on two legs, and started travelling greater distances - thus requiring better cooling system for body, and so lost body hair. To compensate for consequent exposure to ultraviolet rays in these regions, developed dark skin. Note: apes have a white skin under their fur, and so (per latest issue of Scientific American) probably our ape-like ancestors did too: I will come to what all this has to do with the Indian population in a minute.
2 million years ago (?): humans migrated out of Africa - to Europe, to Central Asia to the Middle East, to the subcontinent, and on to southeast asia. (this is generally accepted today, the alternative theory of humans evolving separately in different parts of the world being now largely rejected). Those migrating to colder regions re-developed light skins. Those migrating to warmer regions (like ancestors of Dravidians to India) maintained their dark skins.
Past few thousand years: people former colder regions of central asia migrate to the subcontinent, giving rise to today`s polyglot population.
IF the western passages had been blocked to the ancestors of the Dravidians, presumably they would have stayed put in the middle east or else gone to central asia. India would have been unpopulated (like the americas) UNTIL further migrations took place much later (around the same time as asians migrated across alaska to the americas.
Thus: Indians in India would have been from the same stock of people as the American Indians! So: geography determines not only history, but also anthropology and culture and race.

sameerJB #78 I should add to the final line of my post below that geography has TILL NOW determined history, culture, race etc. Now, with distance being dead, and geographical barriers rendered irrelevant by modern transport and communication, and people increasingly living in climate controlled environments, we may be seeing the end of geography as a determinant of the destiny of humans. We are on our own. And given how incapable we are of thinking of our long run interest, our future is as uncertain as it was when the subcontinent rammed asia 50 million years ago.