Topic suggested by Ekalavya Krishnan on Sat Jan 23 07:47:15 .
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.

I strongly feel that we should entirely reexamine whether Tamil had only 2 consonants or 4 as all other neighbourhood languages have. Or is it as suspected the beginning of European policy of "Divide and rule". Today it has been conclusively proved that Aryan Invasion theory is a myth created to show that Europeans were civilized and also to Divide India. Mahadevan has already done commendable work on this.

Tamil should therefore go back to 4 consonants and away from that "Italian's" grammar.

Responses:

• From: chandra (@ viking.delta-air.com) on: Mon Jan 25 20:42:33
  
  Could you cite references for "conclusive" proofs
  that the AIT is false, please?
  
  And this "european" thing, "that Italian",2- and 4-consonants system and Tolkappiyar and Christian Missionaries...the connection is not clear...
  And references to Mahadevan's work please?
  If you are talking about the noted Mahadevan in the field of Dravidian Linguistics, his findings,in my memory, seem to have been the opposite in spirit to what you have stated. I would like to
  stand corrected by a good citation of references.
  You must however be referring to Iravatham Mahadevan who we will get to very shortly.
  
  Asko Parpola, noted long-time Indus Linguist and editorial member of The Journal of Vedic Studies, has written a new book titled
  "Deciphering the Indus Script" (Cambridge Univ Press) in which he shows that the Indus Civilization was Dravidian and that the script was Dravidian.
  
  And now to I.Mahadevan: he, in his review of Asko Parpola's paper which unequivocally supports the Arayn Invasion/Immigration Theory (which is not the main thrust of his book) is not expressing any opposition to the AIT at all. He is not
  stongly opposed to the Dravidianness of the script either. He seems to be very politely expressing criticism of specific details and approaches.
  He very clearly accepts the Aryan-Dravidian dichotomy.
  
  
  Excerpts of I.Mahadevan's on AIT:
  "A specialist in Vedic philology, he
  turned his attention at an early stage in his career to the decipherment of the Indus script and has, along with his Finnish colleagues, made immensely valuable contributions to his chosen
  field over the last three decades."
  
  "Parpola proposes a new theory about when, from where and how the Aryans came into the Indian sub-continent and the identity of the Dasas (Dasyus) who were their traditional enemies. According to this theory, the Rigvedic
  Aryans were preceded by another wave of Indo-European speaking invaders who called themselves the Dasas and who penetrated further to the east than did the Rigvedic
  Aryans. "
  
  "Parpola's new hypothesis will have to be examined in detail by specialists in South Asian history and Indo-European linguistics. So far as the Indus Civilization is concerned the main implication of the new theory seems to be that the Aryan-Dasa conflict recorded in the earliest portions of the Rigveda is the story of the hostilities and eventual fusion of two Aryan tribes, which took place before their entry into the Indian sub-continent and has thus no relevance to the demise of the mature phase of the Indus Civilization."
  
  "
  This is good linguistic evidence that the Vedic horse and chariotry are firmly rooted in the Proto-Indo-European heritage. The evidence strongly suggests that the Indus culture was non-Aryan."
  "The cumulative weight of evidence makes Dravidian the most likely language to have been spoken bv the Harappans."
  Please note the last 2 paras; they are IM's own words. That is he himself accepts the Aryan-Dravidian dichotomy!
  
  And he praises the intellectucal honesty of Parpola thus:
  "With rare intellectual courage he has now
  abandoned the paradigm central to the earlier Finnish model of decipherment and has made a virtually fresh beginning."
  
  
  And readers, ye all, please judge it for yourselves as I am pointing to the sources.
  Asko Parpola's paper summarizing his book:
  http://www.harappa.com/script/parpola16.html
  
  And I.Mahadevan's review of Parpola's work:
  http://www.harappa.com/script/maha0.html
  
  I humbly request you all to please correct me if I have been wrong in my reading of IM's review paper.
  
  
  
  nanRi,
  chandra
  Atlanta.
  
  
  
  
  
• From: chandra (@ viking.delta-air.com) on: Mon Jan 25 20:48:14
  
  Anotehr important excerpt from I.Mahadevan's review of Parpola's work:
  
  "However Parpola leaves no one in doubt about what he
  thinks of the other approach. "Nationalistic bias makes it difficult for some North Indians to admit
  even the possibility of the Indus Civilization being pre-Aryan; they deny the very concept of Aryan
  immigration and insist that the Harappan and Vedic cultures are one and the same. So the language chosen has usually been Sanskrit" (p.58).
  I agree with Parpola about the existence of 'nationalistic bias', but would like to remind him that S.R. Rao and Krishna Rao, leading proponents of the Indo-Aryan theory, can hardly be called 'North Indian'!"
  
  Note that IM accepts that there is a bias among Indians to oppose the non-Aryan origin of IVC and he simply says in jest that these Raos are not North Indians.
  
  
  nanRi
  Chandra
  Atlanta
  
  
• From: Ekalavya (@ 203.197.129.19) on: Mon Jan 25 22:42:37
  
  Pls visit this site http://209.194.80.218/news/1998/nov/14aryan.htm and read what David Frawley has to say. I am reproducing the same:
  "Indian history revisited
  
  Most people in India today have been led to believe that the Vedic Aryans were the first invaders of the country. They have been the image of the Aryan hordes pouring down the passes of Afghanistan on horseback, destroying the indigenous urban Harappan culture that was Dravidian in nature. Even Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru
  subscribed to this view and it remains in textbooks in India today. That there was no record of such an event in ancient Indian records, north
  or south, was ignored. That this theory never managed to prove itself was
  disregarded.
  
  Recently, however, the Aryan invasion idea is becoming rejected worldwide
  in light of new archaeological evidence that contradicts it. However, Indian
  secular and Leftist thinkers like to denigrate any questioning of the invasion
  theory as Hindu fundamentalist propaganda.
  
  A recent academic paper argues that there is an indigenous development of
  civilisation in India going back to at least 6000 BCE (Mehrgarh). It
  proposes that the great Harappan or Indus Valley urban culture
  (2600-1900 BCE), centred on the Saraswati river of Vedic fame, had much
  in common with Vedic literary accounts. It states that the Harappan culture
  came to an end not because of outside invaders but owing to environmental
  changes, most important of which was the drying up of the Saraswati. It
  argues further that the movement of populations away from the Saraswati to
  the Ganges, after the Saraswati dried up (c 1900 BCE), was reflected in the
  literature with Vedic Saraswati based literature giving way to Puranic texts
  extolling the Ganga. Perhaps more shockingly, the paper states that the
  Aryan invasion theory reflects colonialism and Eurocentrism and is quite out
  of date. Note the conclusion:
  
  "That the archaeological record and ancient oral and literate traditions of
  south Asia are now converging has significant implications for regional
  cultural history. A few scholars have proposed that there is nothing in the
  'literature' firmly placing the Indo-Aryans outside of south Asia, and now the
  archaeological record is confirming this.
  
  "We reject most strongly the simplistic historical interpretations, which date
  back to the eighteenth century, that continue to be imposed on south Asian
  culture history. These still prevailing interpretations are significantly
  diminished by European ethnocentrism, colonialism, racism, and
  anti-semitism. Surely, as south Asian studies approach the twenty-first
  century, it is time to describe emerging data objectively rather than
  perpetuate interpretations without regard to the data archaeologists have
  worked so hard to reveal."
  
  Is this the statement of a Hindutva fanatic? No, it is by a noted Western
  archaeologist specialising in ancient India, James Schaffer of Case Western
  University as part of his new article, 'Migration, Philology and South Asian
  Archaeology', soon to appear in Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia:
  Evidence, Interpretation and History, edited by Bronkhorst and
  Deshpande, University of Michigan Press.
  
  The Aryan invasion theory, as Schaffer notes, arose from a Eurocentric view
  that was hostile to an Indic basis for Western civilisation or peoples. The
  discovery of close affinities between the Indo-European languages in the
  eighteenth century required an explanation. By placing the original Aryans in
  Europe, who later migrated to India where they got absorbed by the
  indigenous population, it took away any need to connect the ancient
  Europeans with India, which was not pleasing to the colonial mindset. The
  theory eventually developed an anti-semetic tone. It was used to trace
  Western culture not to the Jews and their Biblical accounts but to a
  proposed European homeland dominated by Nordic peoples. Thus the
  invasion theory became one of the pillars for Nazi historians, yet strangely
  the Communists in India have become strong supporters of the theory and
  accuse those who question it of being fascists!.
  
  Archaeologist Mark Kenoyer of the University of Wisconsin, who is in
  charge of the Indus Valley display that is touring American museums, has
  similar views as related in an article on the 'Indus Valley: Secrets of a
  Civilisation in Wisconsin Fall 1998':
  
  "If previous scholars were wrong about the origin of the Indus people, they
  also missed the boat when it came to explaining their downfall, which they
  attributed to an invasion by Indo-Aryan speaking Vedic tribes from the
  northwest." This theory has now been ruled out by the lack of
  archaeological evidence. Instead, says Kenoyer, "it's likely that the rivers
  dried up and shifted their courses, altering trade routes and undermining the
  economy."
  
  Kenoyer is also now arguing that the Indus script can be traced to 3300
  BCE, making it as old as an Sumerian records of writing.
  
  The skeletal record confirms that same data as archaeology as Kenneth
  Kennedy notes in 'Have Aryans Been Identified in the Prehistoric Skeletal
  Record from South Asia' appearing in The Indo-Aryans of South Asia
  (Walter de Gruyter 1995). No such Aryan skeletons have ever been found
  as different from indigenous ethnic groups.
  
  "All prehistoric human remains recovered from the Indian subcontinent are
  phenotypically identifiable as south Asians. Furthermore their biological
  continuity with living peoples of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the border
  regions is well established across time and space. Assumptions that
  blondism, blue-grey eyes and light skin pigmentation are physical hallmarks
  of either ancient Aryans or of members of brahmin and other social groups
  in modern south Asia, find their origins in the improper marriage of excerpts
  from Vedic texts with nineteenth century Germanic nationalistic writings."
  
  Most archaeologists in India like B B Lal, S P Gupta or S R Rao have
  argued similar points for several years. At a recent conference in Los
  Angeles in August, sponsored by the World Association for Vedic Studies
  (WAVES), Lal argued convincingly the same points in an excellent paper
  called the 'Myth of the Aryan Invasion: Some Reflections on the Authorship
  of the Harappan Culture'. Unfortunately, Indian Leftists called B B Lal's
  recent book The Oldest Civilisation in South Asia as "academically weak
  and unscholarly," though he is only relating the implications of the latest
  archaeology. How many of these people ever read Lal's book or the related
  archaeological studies is debatable.
  
  Yet even a Communist historian in India like Romila Thapar, who previously
  endorsed the invasion theory has been forced to backtrack and no longer
  emphasises it. She recently notes in a Frontline interview:
  
  "Introducing archaeological data into historical studies also forces historians
  to think along interdisciplinary lines. The decline of the Indus cities is
  attributed to a range of causes, of which ecological change is among the
  major ones."
  
  The Aryan invasion theory has been used to promote various political
  agendas. British, Communist, Dravidian and dalit groups have all used it to
  their advantage, as have Muslim and Christian missionaries portraying the
  invading Aryans as the bad guys and the invasion as the source of all social,
  political and religious problems in the country. No other theory of ancient
  history has been used for so much modern political and religious mileage.
  That such groups are blaming Hindus for politicising the issue now that it is
  turning against them is only hypocrisy.
  
  Regardless of one's political views, the Aryan invasion theory is falling into
  the dustbin of history. India as a civilisation has as much continuity both in
  terms of its ethnic groups and its literary record. In fact a new claim for India
  as the cradle of civilisation may be possible with further archaeological finds.
  Rather than a history of invasions, there is an indigenous development of a
  civilisation with distinctive features that can be traced back to the beginnings
  of agriculture and cattle rearing in the region. A great history is there that
  needs to be reclaimed and reinterpreted as an integral whole. A new history
  of India needs to be written that recognises this monumental heritage. A
  good place to start improving and Indianising the educational system in the
  country would be to correct this misconception which puts the entire history
  of the region on a wrong foundation.
  
  The Rediff Specials
  
  
• From: chandra (@ viking.delta-air.com) on: Tue Jan 26 11:08:16
  
  Ekalavya Krishnan,
  
  Can we get back to the "conclusive" proofs
  by "Mahadevan" if the Mahadevan I cited is different
  from the Mahadevan you mentioned?
  
  
  chandra