Academics From The United States

"The concept of an Indo-European or Indo-Aryan group of peoples has played a prominent role in interpretative studies of Old World history and archaeology. For almost 200 years, scholars and quasi scholars have attributed the linguistic, cultural, and racial affiliations of very disparate groups to a common Indo-Aryan heritage. In such widely separated areas as Europe and India, many significant cultural changes recorded for the first and second millennia B.C. are attributed to an influx, or invasion, of Indo-Aryan peoples who shared a common cultural base and who were responsible for important socioeconomic and linguistic changes in the areas they invaded."

"However, in South Asian studies the concept of an Indo-Aryan invasion continues to be the main explanation for the cultural history of that region. The importance of these invasions is linked to the persistent opinion that the Indo-Aryan invaders were the authors of early Vedic (Sanskrit) literature, which is viewed as the foundation for all subsequent' 'Indian civilization. ""

"The dating of glass in the Indus Valley and northern India, between 1900 and 1700 BC suggests that this industry was becoming common in all three regions at about the same time. ...No analysis of the recently discovered Late Harappan glass has been undertaken, but the styles of beads and the presence of a highly developed faience industry suggests that the Indus glass technology was an indigenous development."

"For example, Parpola’s recent article on carts and wheels assumes that there is only one point of origin for these technologies and that the earliest wheeled vehicles were invented in the Tripolye culture in the Ukraine, dated circa 4000–3400 BC (Parpola 2008). Based on David Anthony’s date for wheeled vehicles in the Pontic- Caspian region closer to around 3500 BCE, he argues that the European wheel technology was “transmitted to the Near East from the Tripolye culture via the Caucasus, where the Pontic-Caspian and Near Eastern cultural spheres encountered each other during the fourth millennium BC” (Parpola 2008). To suggest that the technology of carts and wheels was transferred from the Pontic-Caspian region to the Indus Valley via Mesopotamia or Central Asia is not supported by any concrete archaeological evidence. There is in fact no reason to assume a single point of origin for this technology and it is more likely that it originated in many different regions as the need arose. Eventual exchanges between regions may have resulted in the dominance of linguistic terms, but linguistic commonality does not provide evidence for the diffusion of technology (Kenoyer, 2009)."

"This suggests that the changes and discontinuities reflect a transformation of the local population rather than the appearance of new people and the eradication of the Harappan inhabitants."

"The significance of these similarities or dissimilarities should not be taken too seriously since the biological anthropologists themselves caution that this is only a tentative suggestion due to the small sample size of the Late Harappan burials. Generally speaking, the biological evidence does not support any hypothesis involving the movements of new populations into Harappa from outside the Indus Valley during the Harappan or Late Harappan periods."

"Despite the early misgivings of some scholars about such a correlation between language and race and the circular nature of many of the arguments, the concept of a common linguistic, cultural, biological, and historical heritage linking European and Indian peoples became internationally accepted as more fact than theory. Based on linguistic reconstructions, the prehistoric to historic chronologies of Europe and India were interpreted as reflecting various invasions of Indo-European or Indo-Aryan peoples who possessed a common cultural heritage, albeit remote. For Europe, this concept ultimately resulted in the disaster of the Third Reich, whereas in South Asia, the concept of Indo-Aryan peoples played a quite different cultural role."

"Another ancient river, the Saraswati or Ghaggar-Hakra had taken its course along the eastern edge of the plain. Numerous surveys in the deserts of Cholistan and Rajasthan made it clear that large numbers of settlements dating from the fourth to the first millennium B.C. were situated along the banks of this other major river system . . . Now that we know of the presence of the ancient Saraswati river (also known as the Ghaggar-Hakra along its central stretches), some scholars refer to this culture as the Indus-Sarasvatī civilization."

"In the east, the ancient Saraswati (or Ghaggar-Hakra) river ran parallel to the Indus . . . Towards the end of the Indus Valley civilization, the ancient Saraswati had totally dried up and its original tributaries were captured by two other mighty rivers . . . The gradual drying up of the Saraswati river is an event documented both geologically as well as in the sacred Vedic and Brahmanical literature of ancient India . . . Many episodes of the Rig-Veda take place along the sacred Saraswati."

"The gradual reduction in size, a phenomenon associated with domesti­cation, and the occurrence o f wild progenitors in earlier levels, indicate that the domestication o f these animals was also a local process.... Although similar species were domesticated elsewhere, the pattern in which hum an actors arranged them in South Asia was distinctive to the region."

"[Period 5 of Cemetery H] may reflect only a change in the focus of settlement organization from that which was the pattern of the earlier Harappan phase and not cultural discontinuity, urban decay, invading aliens, or site abandonment, all of which have been suggested in the past."

"The Vedic peoples discriminated against the Dasa, a group of people who spoke a different language that did not sound at all like Sanskrit. The Brahmins sometimes made fun of the Dasa and said that they spoke as if they had no noses. (Pinch your nose and see what you would sound like.) The Dasa had wide flat noses and long curly black hair, and the Brahmins claimed that they had darker skin and called them uncivilized barbarians, who didn’t know how to behave…. The Dasa had, in reality lived in the region for hundreds of years. Their ancestors in the Indus Valley were the Harappans who had named the rivers and mountains, and had built the cities that now lay abandoned."

"During the Harappan Period (Harappa Phase, 2600…1900 BC) there was a dramatic increase in terracotta cart and wheel types at Harappa and other sites throughout the Indus region. The diversity in carts and wheels, including depictions of what may be spoked wheels, during this period of urban expansion and trade may reflect different functional needs, as well as stylistic and cultural preferences. The unique forms and the early appearance of carts in the Indus valley region suggest that they are the result of indigenous technological development and not diffusion from West Asia or Central Asia as proposed by earlier scholars."

"Episodes of aggression and conflict probably occurred, but armed conflict was not a major activity, nor does the integration of the Indus Valley seem to have been achieved through military coercion."

"This brief historical discussion indicates that the Indo-European or Indo-Aryan concept was intimately connected with other social, cultural, and political movements from the 18th to the 20th centuries. In Europe, it was tied to the attempt to distinguish a Christian heritage from that of the Jews. Once formulated, it underwent social and political changes climaxing in what was Nazi Germany."

"There is evidence for the intensification of subsistence practice, multicropping and the adoption of new forms of transportation (camel and horse). These changes were made by the indigenous inhabitants, and were not the result of new people streaming into the re- gion. The horse and camel would indicate connections with Central Asia. The cultiva- tion of rice would connect with cither the Late Harappan in the Ganga-Yamuna region or Gujarat. (Kenoyer 1995, 227;)"

"In earlier models, the northwestern regions were the source of the so-called movements of Indo-Aryan speaking peoples. Yet, if there were such movements, why were the mi- grants not supplying one of the most important raw materials for bronze production, i.e. tin? This cannot be answered simply by saying that iron was replacing copper and bronze, because the prominent use of iron does not occur until much later, in the NBP [Northern Black Polished Ware] period. (230)"

"Although the overall socioeconomic organization changed, continuities in technology, subsistence practices, settlement organization, and some regional symbols show that the indigenous population was not displaced by hordes of Indo-Aryan speaking people. . . . For many years, the "invasions" or "migrations" of these Indo-Aryan-speaking Vedic/ Aryan tribes explained the decline of the Indus civilization and the second rise of urbanization. . . . This was based on simplistic models of culture change and an uncritical reading of Vedic texts. Current evidence does not support a pre- or proto-historic Indo-Aryan invasion of southern Asia. . . . Instead, there was an overlap between Lite Harappan and post-Harappan communities . . . with no biological evidence for major new populations."

"Contrary to the common notion that Indo-Aryan speaking peoples invaded the subcontinent and obliterated the culture of the Indus people; we now believe that there was no outright invasion; the decline of the Indus cities was the result of many complex factors."

"Kenoyer (1991b) sums up the situation: "Any military conquest that would have been effective over such a large area should have left some clear evidence in the archaeological record. . . . evidence for periods of sustained conflict and coercive militaristic hegemony is not found" (57)."

"Sites such as Harappa continued to be inhabited and are still important cities today. . . . Late and post-Harappan settlements are known from surveys in the region of Cholistan, . . . the upper Ganga-Yamuna Doab,. . . and Gujarat. In the Indus Valley itself, post-Harappan settlement patterns are obscure, except for the important sites of Pirak. . . . This may be because the sites were along the newly-stabilized river systems and lie beneath modern villages and towns that flourish along the same rivers."

"There is no archaeological or biological evidence for invasions or mass migrations into the Indus Valley between the end of the Harappan Phase, about 1900 B.C. and the beginning of the Early Historic period around 600 B.C."

"More surveys have revealed large, post-Harappan settlements in the Indus region after the major Indus centres were abandoned. . . . Research . . . is beginning to demonstrate that there really is no Dark Age isolating the protohistoric from the historic period."

"Seidenberg (1983), "regard[s] it as certain that knowledge of Pythagoras' Theorem was known to the Satapatha Brahmana, which mentions calculations connected with the purusa bird altar, and to the Taittiriya Samhita, which showed similar geometrical awareness" (106). Since these texts are generally dated to around 1000-800 B.C.E., "Greek geometry did not somehow make its way into Vedic geometry, as Greek geometry is only supposed to have started about 600 B.C." (108). Scholars no longer consider Vedic geometry to have been borrowed from the Greeks, so Seidenberg's more controversial claim in the modern context is his rejection of the possibility that the algebra either of the Indians or the Greeks was derived from Babylonia, since the former were aware of aspects of the theorem to which the Babylonians make no reference. He also rejects the possibility that these aspects could have been discovered by the Indians after receiving the basic theorem from Babylonia and then transforming it, and concludes that either "Old Babylonia got the theorem of Pythagoras from India or that Old Babylonia and India got it from a third source" (Seidenberg 1983, 121)."

"Seidenberg's next steps involve a series of assumptions that need to be laid out. He first states that since the Babylonian sources are dated to 1700 B.C.E., the mathematical knowledge in the Sulvasutras must predate that. His next statement is significant: "Now the Sanskrit scholars do not give a date for the geometric rituals in question as early as 1700 B.C. Therefore I postulate a pre-Babylonian (i.e., pre-1700 B.C.) source for the kind of geometric rituals we see preserved in the Sulvasutras, or at least for the mathematics involved in these rituals" (1983, 121). Seidenberg assigns a date of 2200 B.C.E. for the common source, but upon being told by his Indological colleagues that the Aryans were not even in India in 1700 B.C.E. (1978, 324), let alone 2200 B.C.E., he is forced to postulate that the Aryans and Greeks inherited their mathematics from the joint Indo- European period, and the Indo-Aryans brought the knowledge into the subcontinent with them."

"“Although the overall socioeconomic organization changed, continuities in technology, subsistence practices, settlement organization, and some regional symbols show that the indigenous population was not displaced by invading hordes of Indo-Aryan speaking people. For many years, the ‘invasions’ or ‘migrations’ of these Indo-Aryan-speaking Vedic/Aryan tribes explained the decline of the Indus civilization and the sudden rise of urbanization in the Ganga-Yamuna valley. This was based on simplistic models of culture change and an uncritical reading of Vedic texts. Current evidence does not support a pre- or proto-historic Indo-Aryan invasion of southern Asia. Instead, there was an overlap between Late Harappan and post-Harappan communities, with no biological evidence for major new populations.”"

"Seidenberg (1983), a historian of science, described the reaction to Thibaut's claim: "Thibaut himself never belabored or elaborated these views, nor did he formulate the obvious conclusion, namely, that it was not the Greeks who invented plane geometry, it was the Indians. At least this was the message that the Greek scholars saw in Thibaut's paper. And they didn't like it" (103). Eventually, Thibaut was pressured into proposing a date for the sutras that would disarm the Greek scholars, but he would not forgo the possibility that the two different peoples could at least have developed the same knowledge independently. The date he offered was the fourth or third century B.C.E. Seidenberg (1978) comments: "A terrible statement! I cannot help thinking that it shows battle- weariness rather than a considered opinion. . . . Anyway, the damage had been done and the Sulvasutras have never taken the position in the history of mathematics that they deserve" (306)"

"‘It is clear that this period of more than 700 years was not a chaotic Dark Age, but rather a time of reorganization and expansion.’"

"‘a number of points in Greek geometry are illuminated by the hypothesis that it started from a tradition of peg-and-cord constructions of the kind we find with the Vedic ritualists’ [45]."

"As N.S. Rajaram has rightly observed, Seidenberg traces Babylonian mathematics and astronomy to Indian models. He suggests the Kassite dynasty (18th-16th century) as the channel of transmission, as the Kassite language has an Indo-Aryan substrate. This is eminently reasonable. Thus, Babylonian astronomy divided the ecliptic in 18, yet by the first millennium it had adopted a division in 12, the same as existed in Vedic culture, where a nightly division into 28 lunar houses was complemented by a daily division of the ecliptic in 12 half-seasons (Madhu, Madhava etc.), and where the rishi Dirghatamas introduced the first-ever division of the circle into 12 and 360. Till today, the division into 360 is explained in textbooks as a Babylonian invention, but the earliest mention is Indian."

"There appear to be many continuities [between the Indus and later historical cultures]. Agricultural and pastoral subsistence strategies continue, pottery manufacture does not change radically, many ornaments and luxury items continue to be produced using the same technology and styles . . . There is really no Dark Age isolating the protohistoric period from the historic period."

"I think its mathematics [of the common source] was very much like what we see in the Sulbasutras. (Seidenberg 1978)"

"I cannot help thinking that it shows battle weariness rather than a considered opinion."

"‘Greece and India have a common heritage that cannot have derived from Old-Babylonia, i.e., the Old-Babylonia of about 1700 B.C.’ (Seidenberg 1978)"

"‘A comparison of Pythagorean and Vedic mathematics together with some chronological consideration showed that the current view [of Greek influence on Vedic thought] is not tenable. A common source for the Pythagorean and Vedic mathematics is to be sought either in the Vedic mathematics [i.e. the Sulbasutras] or in an older mathematics very much like it.’ (Seidenberg 1978)"

"Yet long before 1937 people had suggested a non-Greek origin to Greek mathematics; and long before 1943 people had pointed out that sacred books of the East contain the ‘Pythagorean numbers’ [and indeed the ‘theorem’]. Such numbers are mentioned in the Sulvasutras; ancient Indian works on altar constructions. […] Neugebauer does not mention the Sulvasutras in his book Vorlesungen über Geschichte der Antiken Mathematischen Wissenschaften, nor does B. L. van der Waerden them in his book Science Awakening. Why this omission?"

"However, Seidenberg was told by the Indologists that these Sutras, or any Vedic text for that matter, were definitely written later than 1700 BC. But mathematical data cannot be manipulated just like that, and Seidenberg remained convinced of his case: “Whatever the difficulty there may be [concerning chronology], it is small in comparison with the difficulty of deriving the Vedic ritual application of the theorem from Babylonia. (The reverse derivation is easy)… the application involves geometric algebra, and there is no evidence of geometric algebra from Babylonia. And the geometry of Babylonia is already secondary whereas in India it is primary.” [To satisfy the indologists, he said that the Shulba Sutra had conserved an older tradition, and that it is from this one that the Babylonians had learned their mathematics:] “Hence we do not hesitate to place the Vedic (…) rituals, or more exactly, rituals exactly like them, far back of 1700 BC. (…) elements of geometry found in Egypt and Babylonia stem from a ritual system of the kind described in the Sulvasutras.”"

"By examining the evidence in the Shatapatha Brahmana, we now know that Indian geometry predates Greek geometry by centuries. For example, the earth was represented by a circular altar and the heavens were represented by a square altar and the ritual consisted of converting the circle into a square of an identical area. There we see the beginnings of geometry! Two aspects of the 'Pythagoras' theorem are described in the Vedic literature. One aspect is purely algebraic that presents numbers a, b, c for which the sum of the squares of the first two equals the square of the third. The second is the geometric, according to which the sum of the areas of two square areas of different size is equal to another square. The Babylonians knew the algebraic aspect of this theorem as early as 1700 BCE, but they did not seem to know the geometric aspect. The Shatapatha Brahmana, which precedes the age of Pythagoras, knows both aspects. Therefore, the Indians could not have learnt it from the Old-Babylonians or the Greeks, who claim to have rediscovered the result only with Pythagoras. India is thus the cradle of the knowledge of geometry and mathematics."

"Its mathematics was very much like what we see in the Sulvasutras [szulbasu utras]. In the first place, it was associated with ritual. Second, there was no dichotomy between number and magnitude … In geometry it knew the Theorem of Pythagoras and how to convert a rectangle into a square. It knew the isosceles trapezoid and how to compute its area … [and] some number theory centered on the existence of Pythagorean triplets … [and how] to compute a square root. …The arithmetical tendencies here encountered [ie in the SZulbasuutras] were expanded and in connection with observations on the rectangle led to Babylonian mathematics. A contrary tendency, namely, a concern for exactness of thought … together with a recognition that arithmetic methods are not exact, led to Pythagorean mathematics."

"[…] nor did he [Thibaut] formulate the obvious conclusion, namely, that the Greeks were not the inventors of plane geometry, rather it was the Indians. At least this was the message that the Greek scholars saw in Thibaut’s paper. And they didn’t like it."

"To be precise, ‘current studies of the transition between the two early urban civilizations claim that there was no significant break or hiatus.’"

"Moreover, available chronologies indicate that Mehrgarh was contemporary with comparable Southwest Asian phenomena which, combined with the abs­ence o f contemporary food producing groups on the Iranian Plateau, argues against a diffusionist explanation. The Mehrgarh data raise serious questions about diffusion as an all-encompassing explanation for major South Asian cultu­ral developments. The sophistication of this aceramic neolithic food-producing complex, and its early date, suggest the possibility that subsequent bronze and early iron age cultural developments were likewise indigenous."

"If the Indians invented plane geometry, what was to become of Greek ‘genius’ or of the Greek ‘miracle’?"

"Given these characteristics, a preference for cattle, after 5000 B.C., undoubtedly influenced other social, economic and political rela­tionships, and suggests that cultural developments in South Asia did not simply parallel those in Southwest Asia, where groups did not have a comparable bias."

"The numerous and substantial mud brick “granaries” built by the close of Period HA at Mehrgarh, in the first half of the 5th millennium B.C., suggest a concern, unparalleled in contemporary cultures, for surplus production irrespec­tive of what was stored in them."

"Or it mainly was American professor James Shaffer, not exactly a “Hindu nationalist”, whose 1984 paper on the archaeological assessment of the hypothesised Aryan invasion threw the gauntlet against AIT complacency. He noted that already for more than half a century, well-financed excavations in the Harappan area had been looking for traces of the Aryan immigration (whether violent, as the archaeologists had expected, or under the radar, as they were later forced to postulate), but no trace had appeared. Indian archaeologists were becoming skeptical but the signal for them to gradually go public with this, at least in India to start with, was Shaffer’s statement."

"Did Aryans exist? This is a question posed by James Shaffer (1984b). He begins his analysis with a review of the idea of Aryans in both western and Indian sour­ces, but concentrates upon evaluation of the claims that the Aryan presence is to be found in the Harappan and/or PGW cultures. He finds several problems in the argument that the ancient Harappans were Aryans. Shaffer notes that the discovery of extensive nonceramic occupations associated with early domestica­tion of animals at Mehrgarh, Baluchistan, date to before 6000 B.C., thereby establishing the antiquity of human occupation of the Indus Valley region and giving strong support to the idea that civilisation arose indigenously in this part of the world. In short, no invasion of more highly endowed populations is called for."

"Our dating of the Indo-Aryan element in the Mitanni texts is based purely and simply on written documents offering datable contexts. While we cannot with certainty push these dates prior to the fifteenth century BC. It should not be forgotten that the Indic elements seem to be little more than the residue of a dead language in Hurrian, and that the symbiosis that produced the Mitanni may have taken place centuries earlier."

"In his earlier works, Mallory himself, acknowledged that theories pertaining to an Asian homeland had long fallen out of repute, "but one wonders if this is not just partly due to the ridicule heaped upon them by their opponents rather than reasoned dismissal" ... "all too often has one discredited line of argument been used to ridicule another theory which came to the same conclusion" (Mallory 1975, 56)."

"Mallory ended his overview of the “IE problem” (1973: 60) with this perceptive statement: “a solution to the problem will more than likely be as dependent on a re-examination of the methodology and terminology involved as much as on the actual data themselves.”"