History Of India

"A further terminus ante quern can be postulated by the fact that Painted Gray Ware (PGW) sites dated to around 1000 B.C.E. were found on the bed of the river, as opposed to on its banks, indicating that the river had already become dry well before this time."

"Even today one finds overall in the realm of the Indo-Aryans and their anthropological and geographical surroundings blond and blue-eyed types, so that we may assume that the dark-haired and dark-eyed ‘north Indians’ became darker partly under the influence of the climate [and] partly through admixture with the dark-skinned pre-Aryan inhabitants of ancient India."

"The object of the peoples of Europe is to exterminate all in order to live themselves. The aim of the Aryans is to raise all up to their own level, nay, even to a higher level than themselves."

"They (Aryans) don't belong to India and hence, don't love India. They are foreigners, the enemy within. As Aryans, they are also India's first foreigners. If Muslims and Christians are foreigners, and must get out of India, as India's first foreigners, the Aryans are duty bound to get out first."

"It may be in vain to try and identify the Indo-Aryans [since] language, ethnic identity and culture are individual components that can be combined in many different ways, and nothing allows us to state that, knowing language x and culture x, we are dealing with ethnic group x."

"You Aryans came from outside."

"The Indo-European conquest of India did not end with the Vedas. It continued over a period of centuries, as the Old Indic–speaking people spread their language and culture across northern India and points beyond. At the same time, the local peoples of India heavily influenced the newcomers, who mixed with them in every way conceivable, eventually producing a distinctive new hybrid culture."

"The Hindus, especially in Bengal, welcomed the New Learning of Europe and the institutions the British brought. The Muslims, wounded by their loss of power, and out of old religious scruples, stood aside. It was the beginning of the intellectual distance between the two communities. This distance has grown with independence; and it is this—more even than religion now — that at the end of the twentieth century has made India and Pakistan quite distinct countries. India, with an intelligentsia that grows by leaps and bounds, expands in all directions. Pakistan, proclaiming only the faith and then proclaiming the faith again, ever shrinks. It was Muslim insecurity that led to the call for the creation of Pakistan. It went at the same time with an idea of old glory, of the invaders sweeping down from the northwest and looting the temples of Hindustan and imposing the faith on the infidel. The fantasy still lives; and for the Muslim converts of the subcontinent it is the start of their neurosis, because in this fantasy the convert forgets who or what he is and becomes the violator."

"The first Christians to emigrate to India came in 345 CE. They landed at Cranganore in Malabar, then the ancient port of Muziris on the mouth of the Periyar River where it joined the Arabian Sea. They were four hundred refugees from Babylon and Nineveh, then part of the Parthian (Persian) Empire, belonging to seven tribes and seventy-two families. They were fleeing religious persecution under the Persian king Shapur II. He had driven them out of Syria and Mesopotamia because he considered them a state liability. Rome, Persia’s arch enemy, had begun to Christianise under Constantine, 18 and Shapur had come to suspect the allegiances of his Christian subjects."

"“When looking at the literature on the life of St. Thomas, it is not mentioned anywhere that he came to India. It is only a myth, which has now been connected with the excavations at Pattanam, near Kodungallur,”...“Myth cannot be called history. Connecting myth with history could only create confusion and distort history,” he said. “There is no substantial evidence to say that Pattanam is connected with Muziris. How was this conclusion reached? Those who claim to have found materials to connect Pattanam with Muziris have forgotten that these materials were also found in the eastern and the western coasts of the country,”"

"“The flourishing town of Muciri where the large beautiful ships of the Yavanas which bring gold and take pepper, come disturbing the white foam of the little fair Periyar of the Cheras.”"

"When the broadrayed sun ascends from the south and white clouds start to form in the early cool season, it is time to cross the dark, bellowing ocean. The rulers of Tyndis dispatch vessels loaded with eaglewood, silk, sandalwood, spices and all sorts of camphor."

"To those who are bound for India, Ocelis (on the Red Sea) is the best place for embarkation. If the wind, called Hippalus (south-west Monsoon), happens to be blowing it is possible to arrive in forty days at the nearest market in India, Muziris by name. This, however, is not a very desirable place for disembarkation, on account of the pirates which frequent its vicinity, where they occupy a place called Nitrias; nor, in fact, is it very rich in articles of merchandise. Besides, the road stead for shipping is a considerable distance from the shore, and the cargoes have to be conveyed in boats, either for loading or discharging. At the moment that I am writing these pages, the name of the King of this place is Celebothras."

"...then come Naura and Tyndis, the first markets of Lymrike, and then Muziris and Nelkynda, which are now of leading importance. Tyndis is of the Kingdom of Cerobothra; it is a village in plain sight by the sea. Muziris, in the same Kingdom, abounds in ships sent there with cargoes from Arabia, and by the Greeks; it is located on a river, distant from Tyndis by river and sea 500 stadia, and up the river from the shore 20 stadia..."

"It is suffering like that experienced by the warriors who were mortally wounded and slain by the war elephants. Suffering that was seen when the Pandya prince came to besiege the port of Muciri on his flag-bearing chariot with decorated horses. Riding on his great and superior war elephant the Pandya prince has conquered in battle. He has seized the sacred images after winning the battle for rich Muciri."

"With its streets, its houses, its covered fishing boats, where they sell fish, where they pile up rice-with the shifting and mingling crowd of a boisterous river-bank were the sacks of pepper are heaped up-with its gold deliveries, carried by the ocean-going ships and brought to the river bank by local boats, the city of the gold-collared Kuttuvan (Chera chief), the city that bestows wealth to its visitors indiscriminately, and the merchants of the mountains, and the merchants of the sea, the city where liquor abounds, yes, this Muciri, were the rumbling ocean roars, is give to me like a marvel, a treasure. ."

"the city where the beautiful vessels, the masterpieces of the Yavanas [Ionians], stir white foam on the Culli [Periyar], river of the Chera, arriving with gold and departing with pepper-when that Muciri, brimming with prosperity, was besieged by the din of war."

"Just as Medina had provided a base for the eventual victory of Islam in Arabia, Pakistan would pave the way for the triumphal return of Islam as the ruling power over the entire subcontinent. The whole of Hindustan would thus be turned into Pakistan just as the Prophet himself had turned all of Arabia into Pakistan."

"(The achievement of Pakistan) was the first successful step in this 20th century to realise their 1200-year old dream of complete subjugation of this country."

"The formation of Pakistan was necessary so that it may be used as a base for conquering the rest of India to Islam."

"This distance has grown with independence; and it is this—more even than religion now—that at the end of the twentieth century has made India and Pakistan quite distinct countries. India, with an intelligentsia that grows by leaps and bounds, expands in all directions. Pakistan, proclaiming only the faith and then proclaiming the faith again, ever shrinks. It was Muslim insecurity that led to the call for the creation of Pakistan. It went at the same time with an idea of old glory, of the invaders sweeping down from the northwest and looting the temples of Hindustan and imposing the faith on the infidel. The fantasy still lives; and for the Muslim converts of the subcontinent it is the start of their neurosis, because in this fantasy the convert forgets who or what he is and becomes the violator. It is as though—switching continents—the indigenous people of Mexico and Peru were to side with Cortés and Pizarro and the Spaniards as the bringers of the true faith."

"I wish President Musharraf well, we want to work with him to bring greater balance in our own relations. But I have to be realistic enough to recognize the role that terrorist elements have played in the last few years in the history of Pakistan. Taliban was the creation of Pakistan extremists, the Wahabi Islam which has flourished, thousands and thousands of schools, the madrassas, were set up to preach this jihad based on hatred of other religions . . . and Pakistan is not a democracy in the sense that we know and you know. . . . We wish Pakistan success in emerging as a moderate Muslim state. We will work with President Musharraf . . . but we have to recognize what has happened."

"I come from an Indian Muslim family, but I experience India as a very pleasant country, whereas in Pakistan I feel ill at ease. You would think it should be the reverse. But in spite of its many defects, India is a rich and open society, while Pakistan is culturally an impoverished and closed society."

"The story of Pakistan is a terror story actually. It started with a poet who thought that Muslims were so highly evolved that they should have a special place in India for themselves. This wish to sift countries of unnecessary and irrelevant populations is terrible and this is exactly what happened in Pakistan."

"Today the absurd spectacle of the high-stepping soldiers from India and Pakistan who nightly strut their robotic lowering and folding of flags, with their high kicks, stamps and twirls, at a border crossing on the Old Trunk Road between their two countries, draws increasingly large cheering crowds from each side and is a YouTube favourite. It is surely a bit of harmless fun. Or is it? Both countries have nuclear weapons and a long history of conflict and mutual suspicion. And militarism, whether that means elevating the military to a position as the noblest and best of their societies or the leaching of military values, such as discipline and obedience into the civilian world, can lead to trouble for democratic societies."

"The most important departure from determinism during the Cold War had to do, obviously, with hot wars. Prior to 1945, great powers fought great wars so frequently that they seemed to be permanent features of the international landscape: Lenin even relied on them to provide the mechanism by which capitalism would self-destruct. After 1945, however, wars were limited to those between superpowers and smaller powers, as in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan, or to wars among smaller powers like the four Israel and its Arab neighbors fought between 1948 and 1973, or the three India-Pakistan wars of 1947-48, 1965, and 1971, or the long, bloody, and indecisive struggle that consumed Iran and Iraq throughout the 1980s."

"Hitler was waging wars on other countries of Europe and the circumstances compelled the Englishmen to free India. The march of Hitler could not be checked without India’s help. Therefore, Congress and Gandhiji’s principles of non-violence and non-cooperation proved to be effective and India got freedom on the condition that Muslims would be given Pakistan. Pakistan was created but many of the Muslims were not accepted in Pakistan so they returned to India. All the four provinces of Pakistan were inhabited by fair-complexioned people, therefore, those Indian Muslims who had fair complexion were accommodated. They also spoke Urdu like Pakistanis. However, only a few Hindus chose to continue living in Pakistan. My dark complexioned brother returned to India with his wife and children. My father had died and therefore my mother too returned to India along with her children. I belonged to Aligarh, I decided to stay there. Muslims of Aligarh also did no go anywhere, so I was safe there."

"India and Pakistan, where people starve in the streets, waste billions on military spending because of the Kashmir dispute. Now some of India’s extreme Hindu nationalists warn they want to reabsorb Pakistan, Bangladesh, and even Sri Lanka into Mother India. Previous Indian leaders have been cautious. But not PM Modi. He is showing signs of power intoxication."

"In his dealings with Pakistan too, he Nehru] tried to "see their viewpoint also", and consequently made concessions of which millions of Hindus have suffered the consequences (handing over pieces of territory, stopping the reconquest of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir when it was succeeding, refraining from efforts to enforce the Pakistani part of the Nehru-Liaqat pact)... Some will not even grant him the essential Brahmin attribute: thought. All his writings are full of borrowed thought."

"If we were to attack Iraq now, alone or with few allies, it would set a precedent that could come back to haunt us. In recent days, Russia has talked of an invasion of Georgia to attack Chechen rebels. India has mentioned the possibility of a pre-emptive strike on Pakistan. And what if China were to perceive a threat from Taiwan? So Mr. President, for all its appeal, a unilateral attack, while it cannot be ruled out, on the present facts is not a good option."

"Pakistan has decided to bleed India with thousand cuts."

"In the KCHR brochure published in February 2008 on MHP and Pattanam excavations, chairman of KCHR, Professor K.N. Panikkar stated in his editorial note that archaeological and historical research are not solely meant for experts and professionals in the field. Everyone with thinking power should handle it. Later elaborating further, in an interview given to Frontline dated April 2010, Panikkar made his stand much clearer. He suggested public participation in archaeological excavations at Pattanam―which he termed “Democratic Archaeology”―in which the local people would be part of the excavation. In other words, archaeologists and ASI need not interfere in excavations since guidelines and diggings shall be by “People’s Democracy”. Keeping archaeologists at bay was a necessity for KCHR since expert observations and remarks can lead to serious implications for Pattanam... Organisations which have currently come out against the KCHR and its Muziris Project have alleged that “these same historians who had earlier rebuffed Ramayana and Sri Ram as fictitious and fabricated are now digging for the bones of Apostle Thomas”."

"Harishankar has referenced the Pattanam excavations with all researched and published material available. The KCHR, headed by Prof. K.N. Panikkar of JNU, is alleged to have manipulated archaeological evidence and manufactured new evidence to “prove” that Pattanam had historical ties with Jerusalem and other regions in West Asia from 1000 BC....When the absence of these parameters were pointed out, the KCHR historians toned down their claims and alleged that the structural remains unearthed were carried away by locals, which is simply ridiculous..... But what is more pertinent, KCHR’s modern historians with no experience in field archaeology should not have excavated Pattanam with foreign funds and a crew of Biblical scholars....KCHR appointed Dr. P.J. Cherian, with no academic background in archaeology, as director of the Pattanam excavations...To assist Cherian, some distinguished Biblical historians and Latin scholars were attached to the project....Cherian is the executive president of the Association for the Preservation of the Saint Thomas Christian Heritage. His claim that his excavation unearthed evidence of a 2,000-year-old port city at a place where Saint Thomas allegedly landed rests more on faith than on history or archaeology.... The excavations to identify Pattanam, in Ernakulum district, with ancient Muziris of the Cheras, began soon after the Syro-Malabar Church scrambled to rescue the legend that claimed India as the first mission of the church, long before it went to Europe. As a result, in November 2006, the Vatican Secretariat accepted the story as history, to project Christianity as an indigenous faith of great longevity. Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) embraced the project with alacrity; the brochure, Muziris Heritage Project: Pattanam Excavations 2008, lists Prof. Romila Thapar as one of the patrons."

"With Calicut at his mercy, da Gama might have sent his soldiers ashore to put to the sword as many of its citizens as they could seize. Instead, he told his men to parade the prisoners, then to hack off their hands, ears and noses. As the work progressed, all the amputated pieces were piled up in a small boat. The Brahmin who had been sent out by the Zamorin as an emissary was put into the boat amid its new, gruesome cargo. He had also been mutilated in the ordained manner. The historian Gaspar Correa describes what da Gama did next: When all the Indians had been thus executed [sic], he ordered their feet to be tied together, as they had no hands with which to untie them: and in order that they should not untie them with their teeth, he ordered them to strike upon their teeth with staves, and they knocked them down their throats; and they were put on board, heaped on top of each other, mixed up with the blood which streamed from them; and he ordered mats and dry leaves to be spread over them, and the sails to be set for the shore, and the vessel set on fire … and the small vessel with the friar [Brahmin], with all the hands and ears, was also sent ashore, without being fired."

"The transfixing of men hung in mid-air was one of the admiral’s favourite forms of execution, since it gave his soldiers good practice. However, there was a strange incident when three among a group of captured sailors from the Coromandel coast threw their hands up to heaven and told him that they wanted to become Christians. Da Gama, unmoved, ordered the interpreter to tell them ‘that even though they became Christians, yet still he would kill them’. The ship’s priest was allowed to baptize them none the less, and as he declaimed the Pater Noster and the Ave Maria they recited his words. ‘When this was done, then they hanged them up strangled, that they might not feel the arrows.’ The crossbowmen transfixed the rest of da Gama’s victims strung from the yardarm; but the arrows which struck the newly-baptized trio ‘did not go in, nor make any mark’. At this, the admiral seemed troubled. The three bodies were shrouded and thrown into the sea, which the chronicler of this event called the Lord’s ‘great mercy’ to gentiles. The priest said prayers and read psalms. However, da Gama was troubled only briefly. When yet another Brahmin was sent from Calicut to plead for peace, he had his lips cut off, and his ears cut off; the ears of a dog were sewn on instead, and the Brahmin was sent back to the Zamorin in that state. He had brought with him three young boys, two of them his sons and a nephew. They were hanged from the yardarm and their bodies sent ashore."

"Vasco da Gama had bombarded Calicut when the Zamorin ruler of that place refused to be dictated by him. He had plundered the ships bringing rice to the city and cut off the ears, noses and hands of the crews. The Zamorin had sent to him a Brahmin envoy after securing Portuguese safe-conduct. Vasco da Gama had cut off the nose, ears and hands of the Brahmin and strung them around his neck together with a palm-leaf on which a message was conveyed to the Indian king that he could cook and eat a curry made from his envoy’s limbs."

"The pattern of killing, destroying and burning was soon to be given the imprimatur of Vasco da Gama himself, when in the middle of 1502 he sailed once more into the Indian Ocean. The king’s ‘almirante amigo’ now commanded twenty-five ships, the ten largest containing ‘much beautiful artillery, with plenty of munitions and weapons, all in great abundance’. Thirteen of the ships under da Gama’s command belonged to wealthy Portuguese merchants. Since his first appearance less than five years before, in command of three small vessels groping their way towards an uncertain goal, everything had changed. Da Gama was now clear about where he was going and what he meant to do. The Zamorin had ‘treated him with contumely’, so he ‘felt in his heart a great desire to go and make havoc of him’."

"The first thing that one noticed in the jail was the distinction made between the Hindu and non-Hindu prisoners with regard to their religious traditions. On entry into the cell, the first act that was committed for a Hindu prisoner was that his sacred thread was cut off. However, Muslim prisoners were allowed to sport their beards, as were Sikhs with regard to their hair. It was Barrie’s idea of creating discord between the Hindus and Muslims and hence he placed the Hindu prisoners under the most bigoted of Muslim warders and jamadars. Most of them were fanatical Pathans, Sindhis and Baluchis from Sindh and the North-West Frontier Province. It gave these men a special thrill to brutalize a Hindu kafir."

"In the dark confines of Port Blair’s Cellular Jail, we see a gradual metamorphosis of Vinayak from a young, brash radical revolutionary to a more sober and strategic planner, whose focus was shifting towards an organization of Hindu society. One of the important causes for this was his experience at jail. Right from his early days here, and much before the creation of the library, Vinayak noticed that the Muslim warders and jamadars forbade Hindu prisoners from reading their scriptures. They would look at the pictures in some of the books, including the Ramayana of Tulsidas, and comment that it was utterly indecent and deemed it their religious duty to disperse the gathering that read such books. After petitioning higher officials, the Hindu prisoners managed to get permission to keep their religious books. Hindus received few or no religious holidays, but the same provision was readily made for Muslim prisoners. But the matter, Vinayak realized, went beyond just this partial treatment. Several Hindu prisoners who were deported to the Andamans were being converted to Islam and began assuming Muslim names. As the ‘chalans’ began to reach the jail, simple and young Hindu prisoners would be segregated and subjected to extreme physical torture and labour by Muslim jamadars. With inducements of sweets and tobacco and less labour, the young lads would not mind switching faiths if that meant a more comfortable prison life. Immediately, they would be taken over to the other side, and made to dine with Muslim prisoners. The jail had distinct kitchens for Hindus and Muslims, and separate cooks as well. They were made to eat separately too. All it took to ‘convert’ someone was to make the prisoner eat with fellow Muslims, where they ‘were served Mahomedan food’ (possibly meaning beef). That would ensure their complete ban from their Hindu brethren who would thereafter refuse to accept them. They would be quickly given Muslim names and that would complete the so-called conversion process. ...But here the thralldom of the Pathan jamadars and the incentive of less torture, if they complied, forced many Hindus towards conversion. ‘Every week or fortnight,’ notes Vinayak, ‘I had seen one Hindu prisoner at dinner sitting in the rank of his Mahomedan fellows. It was impossible for me to witness the scene. But I was only a prisoner here; what could I do to save them? I tried hard to infuriate the Hindu prisoners against this act of sacrilege. But one and all of them I found so callous. Each one of them used to say, “What is it to me?” and “What do I care?”’"

"In jail there are various kinds of work to do, the most difficult being the oil-mill, whether by hand or by foot. The latter means that four men are tied to the mill and have to go round and round a centre post just as bullocks do. They have to press out 30 lb. of oil during the day . . . in the oil-mill work by hand you have to turn a handle round and round during the whole day, and thus press out about 30 lb. of oil . . . chopping cocoanut bark is another species of work . . . Ropemaking is the lightest work one gets in jail . . . the regulation about punishment for short work is handcuffs for seven days for the first offence; for the second offence a week’s handcuffs and four days’ ganji . For the next offence the punishment was fetters for a month or two, then cross-bar for ten days and for further repetition of the offence—fetters for six months or so and solitary confinement . . . the work outside jail is still more dreadful."

"As soon as I was locked up inside the room and the door was shut, I would begin to write on the wall with that pencil [made of the thorns] in columns, which I drew upon it. All the walls of the 7th chawl were thus scrawled over and each constituted for me a book by itself. For example, the cell in which I was confined to weave the stranded cord was written with a full outline of Spencer’s ‘First Principles’. My poem ‘Kamala’ was composed and copied in full on the walls of this seventh division. In another cell I wrote all the definitions of political economy as I had learnt from Mill’s Work on the subject. My object was that when I was changed from that room to another, a political prisoner, brought in there, may learn those definitions as he was learning that subject from me. With a little management such a student could succeed being put up in this lock-up. He could then learn them off in a month before his turn came for transference elsewhere. As I was being changed from division to division I saw to it that every division and every cell in that division had its writings on the walls from my improvised pen. And the political prisoners who had turned students took the fullest advantage of these written tablets—their books of study. 47"

"Who can describe the suffering—these agonies of mind and body? I may give you an instance, however to point the moral. Of all the hardships of personal life in the Cellular Jail of the Andamans—gruelling work, scanty food and clothing, occasional thrashing and others—none was so annoying and disgusting as its provision for urinals and lavatories."

"There was an apprehension that Hindu guards might sympathize and fraternize with us. Therefore all the masters of our fate, the Petty Officers and warders, were chosen from among the Mahomedans, either Hindusthani, Punjabi or Pathan. A Pathan is what we know ordinarily as a Kabuli fruit-seller. But in Port Blair they form the Myrmidons of king Yama [the God of Death]. Ask them to capture a man, they will bring his head. Lazy and slothful and corrupt themselves, they are violently overzealous in extracting work from other people. 15 . . . ‘Ramlal sits a little crosswise in the file, give him two blows on the neck’, ‘Mustapha did not get up immediately he was told to, so pull off his moustache’, ‘Bakaulla is late in coming from the latrine, apply the baton and unloose the skin of his posterior’—such were the beautiful proceedings by which they maintained discipline in the prison. 16"

"Hundreds of prisoners in the jail showered their gratitude upon me. All of them knew one thing very well, and it was that during ten years of my association with them, I had carried on incessant agitation in the Cellular Jail and outside for giving them an organized existence. I had carried on agitation in the press, through petitions, through civil resistance, through questions asked in the Imperial Legislature at Delhi, through protests, correspondence and personal letters, to draw the pointed attention of India and its Central Government to their condition in the Andamans. And it was my persistence at it that had made the matter a live issue before the Jail Commission. To those who would felicitate me I said, ‘At last the Andamans as a prison-colony is no more, the Cellular Jail is dismantled. This change is not the result of any single-handed endeavour. It is the reward of ten years of continuous and all-sided agitation, to the success of which all of you, and especially the political convicts, have made a tremendous contribution by your trials and tribulations throughout this period. And if it has succeeded even partially, the credit is yours.’ I told them so and offered my sincerest felicitations to them in return. I added how fine it would have been for Mr Barrie to be alive that day. Mr Barrie used to taunt me that all my efforts were to go for naught and add that I was dashing my head against a stone-wall, that [sic] was not the wall that would break, but that my head would break. I could have told him that day as follows: ‘Mr Barrie, my head had received many bruises by my dashing it continuously against your prison-walls. No doubt about it. But behold! The wall of your prison has now been cracked and will soon crumble down. And I am here alive with all the bruises I have received in the fight.’"

"A system of administration so cruel as that of the English cannot, even if search be made, be found, in any region of this globe. Far better were the tyrannical Yavana kings who with sword in hands actually cut the throats of men as if there were so many goats. But the English are perfidious and I positively declare that no other people can be found on this earth who are as villainous as they and who like them ruin others by a show of kindness . . . Hitherto there have been many cruel Yavana kings in India but they made no rules from excluding Hindus from particular appointments or for limiting the number of those open to them."

"The solitary cells were so arranged as to prevent any communication among prisoners. It was named ‘Cellular Jail’ because there were only cells and no barracks.... As he entered this hell, Vinayak’s eyes caught sight of a festoon of manacles and handcuffs of every shape and size adorning the walls. Heavy shackles for the feet, iron bands for the legs, and other instruments of torture were displayed like proud war trophies."

"We have formed an association called Dandapani. Our fixed determination is to die and kill others for the sake of our religion. Its first achievement was the blackening of the face of the statue of the Queen of England who made a distinction between Natives and Europeans . . . This Dandapani Association will not be overawed by any one. Anyone who encourages immorality, whether the Queen or someone superior to her is the enemy of this association. 27"

""The words Panik or Vanik, Panya and Vipani, found in Sanskrit, suggest that the Panis were merchants par excellence of the Rigvedic age", even though "greedy like the wolf, niggardly, of cruel speech"."

"When I wrote this report, I least expected that it might spark off a controversy and land me in the witness box before the Indian historians' jury. . . . I was apprised of the gravity of the situation when I began to get letters asking me for clarification of the situation against the prevalent belief that the horse is a non-indigenous species and was introduced into India only by the (invading) Aryans. . . . To make my position clear, I wrote in my article . . . that whatever may be the opinion expressed by archaeologists, it cannot either deny or alter the find of a scientific fact that the horse was present at Hallur before the (presumed) period of Aryan invasion. . . . I have only declared the findings that horse bones were traced in the faunal collection from Hallur and am responsible to that extent only."

"The first deliberate and conscious attempt of shaping a horse in durable material like stone was witnessed in the art of the Mauryas in India."