-16_Sri Aurobindo^s Symbolic Interpretation of the Rigveda.htm Chapter Thirteen SRI AUROBINDO'S SYMBOLIC INTERPRETATION OF THE RIGVEDA Authorities on the Rigveda agree that the vital difference recognized by the Aryan between himself and his enemy the non-Aryan is religio-cultural. Sri Aurobindo takes a revolutionary step beyond this consensus. With a masterly sweep of intuitive insight, linguistic expertise and exegetical logic, which can hardly be ignored, he has demonstrated all other arguable distinctions to be merely aspects of that one difference and given a wholly non-physical and supernatural explanation of the Rigveda's religio-cultural drama of collaboration and conflict. He h

Chapter Nine POINTERS TOWARDS ULTIMATE ARYAN ORIGINS What lies in remotest time behind the belt that we have sketched is difficult to surmise. Was there in farthest prehistory a point from which a diffusion took place to form this belt? We have already noticed the Irānian Aryans' tradition of an ancient home, Airiyānam vaējo. E. Herzfeld believes that the Avesta locates it distinctly in "the vast plains of the Oxus and the Jaxartes".1 But, even if he proves right, the region from which those Aryans who became the Irānians derived need not have been the ultimate home of all the Aryans. The absence of any suggestion of it in the oldest Aryan

Chapter Eight THE LONG BELT OF ANCIENT ARYANISM If, as even scholars believing in an Aryan invasion of India round about 1500 B.C. admit, the Rigveda supplies no sign of an entry into the Indian subcontinent from anywhere -and if the Rigveda is to be dated to c. 3500-3000 B.C. - and if the Rigveda itself appears to be a work of Rishis considering themselves "modern" in comparison to the first seer-singers - then surely there is, for all practical objectives, no sense in talking of any other original home of the Rigvedic Aryans than North-west India and thereabouts in the later half of the fourth millennium B.C. But would we be justi

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION This little book started to take shape in response to a suggestion by my friend Arabinda Basu who has a mind which - in Shelley's phrase - has grown "bright, gazing at many truths". The suggestion was that I contribute a paper to a Russian conference which was due to be held some time in October 1977. There was no definite information except that the original home of the group of related tribes going by the name "Aryan" was the subject, with a special focus on the "Aryan imigration into India". As I had been interested in problems of ancient history, I thought it was a good opportunity to present an Indian point of view which

K. D. Sethna's book takes up "from an Indian Point of View" a cluster of important historical questions about India's most ancient past and formulates fresh answers to them in great detail with the temper of a scrupulous scholar. At one time modern historians had no doubt that Aryans who were the authors of the Rigveda had invaded the Indian subcontinent in the middle of the second millennium B. C. and overrun a primitive Dravidian population. After the highly developed Indus Valley Civilization, also known as the Harappa Culture, was discovered, the assumed in-coming Aryans were thought to have destroyed it around 1500 B. C. and, though the script o

Chapter Five THE RIGVEDA AND THE HARAPPA CULTURE: THEIR TRUE RELATIONSHIP Once a strong argument for considering the Harappā Culture anterior to the Rigveda was the alleged lack of evidence in it for the domesticated horse which is a marked feature of the Rigvedic civilization no less than of all ancient Aryan communities. In 1963 the present writer publicly opposed it at some length on various grounds, a number of them in addition to those already set forth by several scholars.1 His data left him in no doubt at all. Now he has been completely justified by the excavations of J.P. Joshi to which we have refe

INDEX Abiratta, 32, 33 Achaemenid emperors, 90, 93 Achaemenid inscriptions, 84 Aditī, 39, 42, 86, 111 Aditya, 39 Afghānistān, 7, 8, 14, 68, 76, 86, 98, 118 Aghnyā, 42 Agni, 39, 40, 41, 42, 46, 86, 114 Agrawal, D.P., 2fn. Agrawala, V.S., 130fn. Ahi Vritra, 81 Ahura, 34 Aila outflow, 15, 16 Airiyānam vaējo, 12, 17, 77, 82, 83 Aitareya Brāhmaṇa, 86, 115 Aiyar, R. Swaminatha, 30, 43 Aiyar, T. ParamaŚiva, 81 Ajas, 117 Akkad, 88 Akkadian syllabary, 32 Albright, W.F., 23fn. Allchin, Bridget and Raymond

INDEX TO THE SUPPLEMENTS Abusir-el-Malik, 262 Abydos, 262 a-deva (adeva-ladeva-), 335, 376, 379-80 a-deva-yu, 309 Aditī, 405 Aegean islands, 201 aes, 234 Afghānistān, 211, 227, 228, 232, 264, 266, 272, 281, 283, 284, 287, 297, 300, 305, 307, 357 Agastya, 360-61 Agni, 195, 213, 259, 281, 289, 296, 301-4, 308-10, 313, 326-8, 336-8, 341-4, 348-9, 359-61, 369, 370, 372-3, 381, 383, 394-5, 404-6, 408, 411, 413, 417 as asura, 382-3, 394-5, 404, 405 hymns to, in the Rigveda, 213, 377, 394, 399 agnipura, 299-300 ahavanaya, 230 ahi, 187,

SUPPLEMENT III "THE ARYAN QUESTION" AGAIN 1 Lately there has been a marked shift of opinion on the role of the Rigvedic Aryans in the destruction of the Indus Valley Civilization, known also as the Harappā Culture. On a TV programme from London, two eminent historians, Colin Renfrew and F. R. Allchin, dissociated themselves from the view which mainly Sir Mortimer Wheeler1 had popularised, invoking the name of the Rigvedic Aryans' god-leader, often called puramdara, "fort-destroyer": "On circumstantial evidence Indra stands accused." Thus they have come over to the side of G. F. Dales2 who, as far back as 1964, examined critically whatever evidence fr

-13_The Rigveda^s Remote Antiquity and the Rigvedic Maryanni of 1360 B.C.htm Chapter Ten THE RIGVEDA'S REMOTE ANTIQUITY AND THE RIGVEDIC MARYANNI OF 1360 B.C. With the Rigveda dated by us to 3500-3000 B.C. and the Mitanni documents put by all historians at c. 1360 B.C., how shall we explain the affinity of these documents with the Rigvedic language and religion? The large time-gap between the latter and the Aryan rulership of the Mitanni people as known to history from about 1500 B.C. poses a challenge. Within that time-gap we have the post-Rigvedic Pre-Harappān Civilization and the Harappā Culture. With the Harappā Culture in the Indus Valley, the descendants of the Rigvedics in India w