Chapter One THE PROBLEM: ITS INDIAN IMPLICATIONS - THE HISTORICAL QUESTIONS INVOLVED In India the problem of Aryan origins has not only a bearing on the remote past. It has also a relevance to the immediate present. Ever since Western historians pronounced, and the historians of our country concurred, that a Dravidian India had been invaded by the Aryans of the Rigveda in the second millennium B.C., there has been a ferment of antagonism, time and again, between the North and the South. The Northerners, figuring in their own eyes as Aryan conquerors, have occasionally felt a general superiority to the Southern

Chapter Four THE MITANNI DOCUMENTS AND RIGVEDIC INDIA The indubitably cultural import of some frequent Rigvedic terms, which might superficially convey a racial shade, leads us to make light of whatever non-"Aryan" components there were in the population of the Indus Valley Civilization. A fair critical case is created for considering, on the strength of the "Aryan" component, that the Rigveda may have been anterior and not, as generally believed by West-influenced scholars, posterior to the Harappā Culture. But here the Mitanni documents with their Indo-Irānian-looking nomenclature and language come into the picture. Since there lies behind them

SUPPLEMENTS SUPPLEMENT I A CRITICISM AND A REPLY With acknowledgements to the Academy Journal "Administrator" Vol. XXVI, No 1, (January-March) Spring 1981, pp. 189-217 A SPOKE IN THE WHEEL"* A review by Anthony J.C. de Sa Prepared as a paper for a Russian Conference on 'Aryan Immigration into India', but withheld on technical grounds, K.D. Sethna's The Problem of Aryan Origins makes interesting, though not particularly scholarly, reading. What follows is a review of sorts interspersed with my personal comments which may be taken for what they are worth. I am quite conscious of the fact that this piece represents

Chapter Six DID THE HARAPPĀ CULTURE HAVE THE SPOKED CHARIOT-WHEEL OF THE ARYANS? Perhaps an attempt will be made to show the posteriority of the Rigveda to the Harappā Culture by protesting: 'The Rigveda knows the spoked chariot-wheel, which is as much a sign of the Aryan as the domesticated horse. The Harappā Culture has shown only solid wheels for its carts and chariots. How will you explain this striking difference except by crediting the Harappā Culture with greater antiquity, if not also by supposing that the Rigvedics brought the spoked chariot-wheel into India in 1500 B.C. from abroad, where it is surely atte

BIBLIOGRAPHY Agrawal, D.P., in Science (Washington) (28 February 1964). Agrawala, V.S., India as Known to Pānini (University of Lucknow, 1953; 2nd ed. Varanasi, 1963). Aiyar, R. Swaminatha, Dravidian Theories (Madras Law Journal Office, Madras, 1975). Aiyar, T. ParamaŚiva, The Riks (Govt, of Mysore Press, 1911) [reference by Sri Aurobindo]. Albright, W.F., The Archaeology of Palestine (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1961). Allchin, Bridget and Raymond, The Birth of Indian Civilization: India and Pakistan before 500 B.C. (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1969). The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

SUPPLEMENT II THE HORSE, THE Harappā CULTURE AND THE RIGVEDA Time and again the issue is raised: "If the Harappā Culture had known the horse, would not this animal have been depicted just as so many others were on the numerous seals?" Supplementary to this issue is the question whether any horse-bones have been found in the early layers of the Harappā Culture. Such a discovery would have a bearing on the problem: "Did the horse-knowing Rigveda precede that Culture in the Indus Valley?" An affirmative answer here would suggest the presence of Aryanism in the Indus Valley in the post-Rigvedic era and provide some light on the still unre

-15_Wheeler on the Harappa Culture^s Destruction by Rigvedic Aryans.htm Chapter Twelve WHEELER ON THE Harappā CULTURE'S DESTRUCTION BY RIGVEDIC ARYANS Some last words on two topics remain to be said in order to round off our treatment of the problem of Aryan origins. One of them is Wheeler's suggestion that whatever other causes there may have been for the decline of the Harappā Culture the coup de grâce was given to it by the Aryan composers of the Rigveda when they invaded India in the middle of the second millennium B.C.1 What weight does this suggestion carry? Wheeler points to the sprawling groups of earth-covered skeletons - seventeen definitely and perhaps thirty-eight in all - en

FOREWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION It is a matter of some satisfaction that a second edition can be hazarded of a book which flew in the face of historical orthodoxy on several counts. A dogma which seems to be fast fading among a number of archaeologists is that Aryan invaders had a prominent hand in destroying the Harrappā Culture of the ancient Indus Valley. But the dogma that the Aryans of the Rigveda came into this Valley from outside India around the middle of the second millennium B.C. still dies hard. And naturally then the "heresy" that the Rigvedics preceded the Harappā Culture is too difficult to entertain. As difficult also appears the conten

-17_Appendix 1. Harappa and the Rigveda^s Hariyupiya.htm APPENDICES Appendix I Harappā AND THE RIGVEDA'S Hariyūpiyā Bridget and Raymond Allchin, although aware that quite clearly in several hymns of the Rigveda "the Dasa rulers were regarded as demons", choose to think of these hymns as referring to the first early attacks of "Indra (the Aryan people personified)" on "the fortified settlements of the Dāsas", and assert, among other things: "We hear of...a battle on the banks of the Ravi at a place named Hariyūpiyā (which Indologists are ever more confidently identifying with Harappā)."1 Wheeler also has lent his name to the identification; but his is a somewhat

Appendix II THE TERM ARMAKA IN THE RIGVEDA T. Burrow made quite an impression by publishing his paper, "On the Significance of the Terms arma- armaka- in Early Sanskrit Literature".16 Passing beyond the common dictionary-definitions he fixes the original sense: "the element arma at the end means a ruined site or settlement."17 He finds several instances in Pānini and several in the old Vedic writings. The very first instance he locates in the Rigveda itself, and from it he deduces that most of the ruined sites or settlements were the cities of the Harappā Culture. His deduction is based on the theory that the Rigveda recounts the story of the