India and the Rise of Germany
As German nation took form in the crucible of European wars and feuds, for a national narrative, Germans turned to India.
Germany – nation and nationalism
For modern Germany, a key event in history was Napoleon’s victory at Austerlitz (Dec. 1805). This ended Vatican’s role in Europe’s administration. The Holy Roman Empire, abolished in August 1806, after Austerlitz, added up to thousand varied kingdoms, principalities, duchies, counties, ruled by assorted kings, princes, dukes and counts, appointed by the Vatican. These included some three hundred independent German state-lets.
To buffer France from Austria and Russia, the French Republic under Napoleon initiated, what European history calls secularization, between 1794-1804. In the secularization process, the French Republic, under Napoleon, took away Church lands in the Rhine region. The administration of these acquired lands was handed over to neighbouring larger rulers. Smaller rulers who lost were compensated by a process called mediatization – or by war.
'Luigi van Beethoven had initially planned on dedicating the Eroica Symphony to Napoleon - till he crowned himself Emperor.
In this process of secularization and mediatization (1795-1814), a Confederation of the Rhine emerged in 1803, under Napoleon’s protection. Prussia remained independent. For this consolidation and ‘secularization’ of Germany, Napoleon was respected figure in Germany.
After Napoleon’s defeat (1815), the reorganization of European States by the Congress Of Vienna, led to a larger Prussia along with 38 other states, known as the German Confederation (Deutscher Bund; 1815–1866). Instead of being a French protectorate, this larger German Confederation (Deutscher Bund) was put into the Austrian Empire’s sphere of influence.
The Prussian initiative
While European powers were deciding the future of Germany, what was the climate in German lands?
The German volk themselves saw benefit in German independence and unification of the Kleindeutschland (little or “lesser”, Germany) with Prussian king or the the Grossdeutschland (Greater Germany). Popular support for this idea came in the Wartburg rally (1817), the Hambach Festival (1832) and the German revolutions of 1848. The Frankfurt Parliament attempted to create a German Constitution (March 28, 1849), which did not work out. German unification was attempted by Prussia under the Erfurt Union (1850), but stymied by the Russia and Austria.
Over a period of 100 years (1806-1906), Prussia turned from a principality to nation and morphed into Germany, creating the ‘Borussian Myth’ – Prussia, Borussia in Latin, as the saviour of the Germanic people. The role of Prussian armies under Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, in Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo (June 18, 1815), ensured that Prussian importance would only grow.
One Prussian played a key role in this.
The Prussian initiative – Bismarck unites
In 1862, Otto Von Bismarck enunciated the ‘iron and blood’ Realpolitik doctrine. Realpolitik said that Germans and Prussia must be ready and willing to wage war and spill blood, if necessary.
From: European Politics in Transition - Mark Kesselman, Joel Krieger, Christopher S. Allen, Stephen Hellman - Google Books 2012-02-24 14-59-13
To create Germany, Prussia had challenged and defeated major imperial powers of Europe.
First was Napoleon himself. The Prussian role, in the alliance of European powers at Waterloo, was crucial to Napoleon’s defeat.
After defeating Denmark (1864), the Prussians took on the largest European Empire – the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They too, were bested by Prussia in the Austro-Prussian War (1866). The French Empire, again after Waterloo, in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). This time the French Emperor was himself captured by the Prussian armies.
A unified and independent Germany under a Kaiser was ratified by the Treaty of Versailles of 1871 (26 February).
The German narrative
What the Germans lacked was a narrative of their nation.
At the beginning of the 19th century, popular literary figures in German literature, like August von Kotzebue (1761-1819) were completely unconvinced about the German nation. With more than 200 plays to his credit, translated in at least 13 languages, popular in France, England apart from Germany, Kotzebue was a European phenomenon. For his disbelief in the idea of the German nation, at the Wartburg rally (1817), Kotzebue’s books were burnt by eager student German nationalists. Kotzebue’s cynicism provoked a German enthusiast, Karl Ludwig Sand to finally murder Kotzebue.
Even on the intellectual side, respected academics like Hegel thought that the German nation as ‘Gedankenstaat, a state which exists in thought and imagination alone, not in actuality.’ In yet another essay, Hegel sneered, “The vain idea known as the German Reich has disappeared.”
And this was not a German problem alone.
Ole Mother Hubbard
At the dawn of 19th century, European empires, found themselves with barren cultural cupboards.
World powers in their own right, with millions of slaves from Africa, after ‘successful’ genocides in Americas, swollen by hubris and military power across Asia, these European powers controlled capital flows of the world. Gold from the Americas, Australia, India and China gave economic depth to these imperial powers.
For these European empires, archaeology became a ‘playing’ ground.
The ‘Great’ Game
The new-born German nation also, needing ‘culture’, pushed other governments for excavation rights.
For the new-born Germany, the charge into archaeology, was a “national competition and a less belligerent realm for expression of resentment at Germany’s late leap into colonial activity.” Existing archaeological sites in Egypt and Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), apart from Italy, Greece, Turkey were already staked out by the Franco-British Empires. So, the German Emperor personally lobbied with other governments to obtain excavation rights in other countries.
For instance, in 1904, English archaeologist John Garstang (1876-1956) lost out to Hugo Winckler, of Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, (German Oriental Institute) supposedly at the intervention of the German Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm-II for excavation rights at modern Boghazkoy.
These rivalries had a telling effect.
Britons and Frenchmen almost monopolized Egyptian excavation in the 1880s and the 1890′s, but then Germans, Americans, and Italians came in. The turning point came in 1905-1907 with a rush of American expeditions and the founding of the German Archaeological Institute … In Istanbul and its Fertile Crescent provinces, German activity in the army and railroad building spilled over into archaeology. The director of Istanbul’s antiquities service and museum in the 1870s had been a German. German excavations at Pergammon in 1878 and later at Babylon and later at the Hittite capital of Boghazkoi fanned Frenchmen’s uneasiness …
World War I aborted this promising beginning. German property in Egypt was sequestered. After the war, the dispute over Borchardt’s quiet export of the bust of Nefertiti to Berlin flared up. The Eyptians refused to allow German excavation or reopening of the German Archaeological Institute till 1929, when Herman Junker replaced the embittered Borchardt … he clung to his post until 1939 despite British accusations that he worked for the Nazis. (From Whose pharaohs?: archaeology, museums, and Egyptian national identity from … By Donald Malcolm Reid, pages 196-198; ellipsis, underlined text in parenthesis supplied. The rarely told complete story of Nefertiti’s bust.).
Germany alone, it is estimated, spent some four million marks, between 1899-1913 on excavations in the Middle East /West Asia.
After the founding of the Reich in 1871, archaeology became a national enterprise. The IfAK was taken over by the state, and eventually formed the basis of today’s Deutsches-Archaeologisches Institut. Rivalry with France and Britain extended to the scholarly realm, and resulted in governmental support for large-scale excavations by Ernst Robert Curtius at Olympia (1875-81), Carl Humann at Pergamon (1878-86), and eventually Robert Koldewy at Babylon (1898-1914) and Walter Andrae at Assur (1903-1914) in Ottoman Mesopotamia.[5] Wilhelm II was a particularly enthusiastic promoter of archaeology (pp. 192-199) …
Archaeology abroad grew ever more dependent on the diplomatic and financial support of the Reich for massive long-term projects … German prehistorians of the early-twentieth century also maintained that their countrymen represented the purest modern descendants of the ancient Aryans. Thus they contributed to the witches’ brew that would make up Nazi racist ideology.
Truth is stranger than fiction
Competition from Germany was especially very galling for the Anglo-French archaeologists and historians. Hollywood’s portrayals of the ‘German archaeologist’, even today are proof of this. Hollywood could not keep its hand off such a juicy set of characters and incidents.
To this odd and motley crowd of British, French, German and Italian archaeologists, add a character like Sheikh Hamoudi, and you have all the characters needed for a Hollywood potboiler – the Indiana Jones series.
Vendyl Jones, James Henry Breasted, Robert Braidwood, Hiram Bingham III and Roy Chapman Andrews became a mashed up Indiana Jones. For villainy, Hollywood drew upon German archaeologists like Hermann Junker (German archaeologist will do anything for artifacts), Otto Rahn (SS officer after Holy Grail), Ludwig Borchardt (German archaeologist ships home ‘stolen’ artifacts).
From: Christian examiner, Volume 78; Source and courtesy - books.google.co.in
German archaeologists became cannon fodder to build a Hollywood caricature as a villain – as Indiana Jones’ protagonist.
What gave this competition a cutting edge, was the Aryan ‘legacy’ that the Germans ‘discovered’.
For this idea of an Aryan nation, Germany turned to India.
Mise-en-scène
Many Germans played a crucial role in this development.
A pioneer in this was Friedrich Schlegel in 1808, whose book Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (On the Speech and Wisdom of the Indians, Heidelberg, 1808) created the Aryan ‘industry’.
August Schlegel, a professor of literature at the University of Bonn from 1818, pursued oriental studies, and set up a Sanskrit printing centre. Between 1823-1830 he translated the Bhagavad Gita in Latin (1823), the Ramayana (1829), the Indische Bibliothek journal – with Reflections on the Study of the Asiatic Languages in 1932. The Swedish crown prince used August Schlegel’s services as a secretary from 1813-1817.
With August Schlegel, was Christian Lassen, who co-wrote a critical, annotated edition of Hitopdesa in 1829-1831. His biggest work was possibly the Indische Altertumskunde (Indian Archaeology), originally in four parts, during 1847-1861.
Baron Alfred von Gutschmid was another Orientalist who contributed to India and Sanskrit studies. Albrecht Weber’s was active in both Sanskrit and German politics .
The other leading light in Germany was Franz Bopp – author of Über das Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache in Vergleichung mit jenem der griechischen, lateinischen, persischen und germanischen Sprache (On the Conjugation System of Sanskrit in comparison with that of Greek, Latin, Persian and Germanic) in 1816, which was followed with many works on comparative grammer – between Sanskrit and other languages. Earlier, in 1812, the Bavarian government, financed Bopp for a study trip to Paris, in Sanskrit. There, in Paris, he joined eminent men such as Antoine-Léonard de Chézy (one of his instructors), Louis Mathieu Langlès, Silvestre de Sacy.
Georg Friedrich Creuzer, a professor of philology and ancient history at Heidelberg, did not endear himself to many, when in 1810-1812, he published Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker, besonders der Griechen. Going into 3 editions, Creuzer suggested that behind Homer’s and Hesiod’s mythology were Eastern sources. These ‘sources’ were the pre-Hellenic natives in Greece, the Pelasgians.
The Grassmann brothers, Hermann and Robert were active in German politics – especially during the 1848-1850 period. Hermann Grossmann’s translation of the Rig Veda is still in print. He was also a significant mathematician – which was usually dismissed as incomplete and inadequate presentation. It might be interesting to investigate, how much Hermann derived from Vedic mathematics – which would account for incomplete and inadequate presentation.
The three volume catalogue of Sanskrit manuscripts, Catalogus Catalogorum, published between 1891-1903, documented the huge mass of writings in Sanskrit – by Theodor Aufrecht who was not active in German politics.
In Paris, there was Alexander Hamilton, the linguist (1762–1824), a British cousin of Alexander Hamilton, the U.S. Secretary of State for Treasury, under George Washington. In Paris, studying and writing on Sanskrit, Hamilton was for sometime tutor to brothers Schlegel – and assisted Charles Wilkins in translating the Hitopdesa.
There were other Sanskrit scholars and Indologists – whose contribution to German statehood was however minimal. For instance, sponsored by the Russian government, Otto von Böhtlingk (May 30, 1815 – April 1, 1904) a Russian-born, German Indologist and Sanskrit scholar, translated Pannini’s grammer, worked on a Sanskrit dictionary for some 23 years, in collaboration with Rudolf von Roth.
All these scholars were supported by their respective governments – August Schlegel by Prussia, Bopp by Bavaria, for instance. In 1885, Richard Garbe, a German professor at the University of Tübingen, was funded by the Prussian Government, for a trip to India.
Curiously, in India
The best known German Indologist of all time, Friedrich Max Mueller (1823–1900), is famous for never having set foot in the country that he studied and romanticized all his life.
Max Muller’s big role in all this was being the source of manuscripts. Many like William Dwight Whitney supported Max Muller, ‘because Muller’s access to manuscripts in England could prove useful to scholars such as himself’ – and he favoured those German Indologists who toed his line.
Duncker’s Aryan invention
Tying this output together, as a unified story, was an early attempt at creating a German history by Maximilian Wolfgang Duncker (1811-1886). From the publishing family that owned publishing house Duncker & Humblot,
Duncker’s history books started appearing in 1834 – with his Latin publication – De historia eiusque tractandae varia ratione (Translation – Treatment of Rationale for History). Duncker was a member of the Frankfurt National Assembly (1848-49) for the Halle electoral district. Duncker was active in the Gotha Nachparlament (1849) and also at the Erfurt Union Parliament (1850).
In 1852, his Geschichte des Alterthums (Translation – History of antiquity) went into reprints and a recent edition has been re-published. His Vier Monate auswärtiger Politik: Mit Urkunden (Translation – Four months of foreign policy: with documents) sparked a criminal case against him. His 1850 work Die Männer der Gegenwart: neue Folge. Heinrich von Gagern : eine biographische Skizze ; neue Folge (The men of the present: new sequence. Heinrich von Gagern: a biographical sketch; new episode in English).
Duncker compiled the considerable German academic activity in history and philology, to build an extensive narrative, drawing linkages from Greece to India. Using work of eminent Orientalists of their time, like Christian Lassen, Alfred Gutschmid, Duncker’s work preceded Hume’s work.
Duncker as a part of a publisher family, well-connected to the administration, meant he could draw upon the finest German minds of his time. For instance, Duncker shared his bachelor quarters with philologist August Friedrich Pott (1802-1887), an expert on Gypsy Romany language. Potts took care of Duncker, during this period, while he recovered from a bout of typhus.
Another of Duncker’s associate was Droysen (Johann Gustav), whose authoritative book on Alexander The Great, Geschichte Alexanders des Grossen (History of Alexander the Great), (Berlin, 1833 and other editions) pioneered the trend of equating power with greatness. Thomas Carlyle was to subsequently define “history of the world is but the biography of great men”. In Duncker’s inner circle was Hermann Baumgarten, an uncle of Max Weber.
Close to the administration, Duncker occupied various positions of great intellectual influence. Notably, he was the advisor to the Crown Prince, Friedrich Wilhelm (1831–1888) – later to Emperor Friedrich-III – for 99 days.
Maximilian Wolfgang Duncker - His work, position and activity brought him into contact with the movers and shakers of Germany. | Mind map by InfoRapid Knowledge Portal on 2012-02-25 at 10-17-08 | Click for a larger image. For interactive image source, shortlink is http://goo.gl/ZImBg
But Duncker’s biggest contribution to German ‘story’ was his Aryan narrative.
Max Duncker’s conversion of Yavana king Bhagadatta, to Greek king Apollodotus is at best fanciful. Duncker writes,
from the mention of the Yavanas as the allies of the Kurus, and Dattamira, i. e. Demetrius, the king of the Yavanas. This king reigned in Bactria in the first half of the second century b. c. (Lassen, loc. cit. 1, 557). Another king of the Yavanas who is mentioned is Bhagadatta, i. e. apparently, Apollodotus, the founder of the Grseco-Indian kingdom in the second half of the first century B.C. (Von Gutschmid, ” Beitrage,” s. 75).
Apollodotus, Apaladata on tho Arian legends of his coins, is no doubt the Bhagadatta of the Mahabharata, just as the Dattamitra there mentioned is Demetrius ; Vol. IV. p. 80, n. Among the Indians Menander appears in the form Milinda.
This invention by Duncker has continued from nearly 1860-2010 – for 150 years.
In Mahabharata, the Yavana king Bhagadatta’s elephant, Supratika, plays an important role in the battle of Mahabharata. Bhagadatta’s elephant, Supratika, named after a diggaj, the eight elephants that bear the burden of the world, a result of the Kshirsagar manthan. In which history did ancient Greeks use elephants and know anything about elephants. Capture, breeding, training, and use of war elephants was an Indian monopoly for many a millennium.
Also, Bhagadatta is clearly an important and historical character. Ruling families in Assam, North East trace their lineage to Bhagadatta.
‘Aryan’ history becomes fashionable
At the start of twentieth century, there were swarms of people wanting to study ‘Aryan’ history. Along with cultural dacoits like Augustine Waddell, Auriel Stein, there were the more academic types who wrote a book on India and ‘Near East’ – Nejstarší dějinyPřední Asie a Indie by Bedřich Hrozný.
By the 1920′s under a deluge of archaeological evidence, it appeared that Indian history would run away from its rulers – the British Colonial Raj.
Usurping Aryan Achievements
Aryan history of languages, culture, spread of civilisation, its science and technology appealed to many in the West – and especially White Supremacists.
One hilarious example of this kind Charles Morris, writer of The Aryan Race: Its Origins And Its Achievements. If this book was not a best seller, as ‘history’, it would surely have been best seller as a comedy. Another book – based on the Aryan Invasion Theory, was Lectures of the Arya by Albert Pike.
A set of books written by L. Austine Waddell – again had a single point agenda of usurping Aryan achievements and culture. Wadell declared, “the Aryan Race — now chiefly represented in purest form in North-western Europe.”
One of the first big hits from Hollywood was the 1915 film, DW Griffith’s ‘Birth Of A Nation’. This film on the ‘Knights of the Ku Klux Klan’ enjoys cult status. D.W. Griffith’s film The Birth of a Nation was based on a book by Thomas Dixon, Jr. titled The Clansman – An Historic Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, written in 1905. Dixon thought (from the book preface) that the rise of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was the “most dramatic chapters in the history of the Aryan race.” Later, this piece of racism was replaced by another phrase – “Carpetbaggers’ political folly” in the film. In the climactic scene, these KKK knights ride to the rescue of the Whites from North and South, to the blaring sounds of Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries.’
Yes, the same music – Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries.’
The common enemy of the united ‘Aryan Whites’ is the liberated black soldier. The original screen title gives the viewer the message: “The former enemies of North and South are united again in common defense of their Aryan birthright.” Remember, this was during WW1.
Thomas Huxley, the British biologist, known also as ‘Darwin’s Bull-dog’ in “The Aryan Question,” published in the Nineteenth Century Magazine, 1890, page 766:—
“There was, and is, an Aryan Race, that is to say, the characteristic modes of speech, termed Aryan, were developed among the Blond Longheads alone, however much some of them may have been modified by the importation of non‑Aryan elements.”
After, WWII, it became politically incorrect for any White to call themselves as Aryan. That has not stopped White Supremacists, mainly gangs in USA, from calling themselves Aryans.
Today, the Jewish genocide is being blamed on ‘Aryan’ superiority – although, Europe has healthy and living tradition of anti-Semitism of more than 500 years. Evidently, in the land of the Aryans (India), the lack of religious persecution is not relevant. The precedent of Australian Aboriginal and the Native American genocides, Europe’s parallel, are ignored.
Greek Miracle vs Aryan achievements
While Britain and the France, for colonial reasons, were ‘discovering’ the Greek miracle, Germany and the USA started ‘discovering’ the ‘Aryan’ roots’ to Western civilization.
Martin Bernal, author of ‘Black Athena’ trilogy, analyzes Western “amnesia” towards African contribution to Western culture. His thesis traces this ‘amnesia’ to the replacement of Europe’s “Ancient Model” (Egypt-Greece-Rome model) of historiography with the “Aryan” (India-Mesopotamia-Babylon-Assyria) model.
Simply speaking, the West replaced Egypt as the source of culture with the Aryans. Fact is, neither the cultural achievements of Egypt (from Africa) nor of the Aryan (from India) are for the West to arrogate to themselves.
A writer on this phase of history, Susan Marchand says,
“The Aryan industry, of course, burgeoned. Even the former Kaiser Wilhelm II, in exile, took up the study of the Orient … In a 1928 letter to his friend, the former emperor reported a recent conversation with Oswald Spengler in which Wilhelm had tried his best to convince the herald of Western doom that “we are orientals [Morgenländer], and not westerners [Abendländer].”
With Germany and America on the Aryan train, Britain was hard pressed to control Indian historiography. ‘Fresh’ evidence was needed to show ‘Aryan’ invasion. Indus Valley civilization provided that opportunity.
The task became easier, as Germany lost WWI, and the Ottoman Empire was carved out of existence. The rump state of Turkey went down the ‘Westernization’ path. Neither Germany or Turkey were in any position to oppose Anglo-French historiography. The Egypt-Greece-Rome-Europe axis dismissed the ‘Aryan model’ archaeologists as pan Babylonists. Colonialists have resisted change from the Egypt-Greece-Rome-Europe world view – which was called in question by the excavations and study by Friedrich Delitzsch, Alfred Jeremias, Peter Jensen, Eduard Stucken and Hugo Winckler, whose work has been obscured.
After WWII, the USA no longer supported the ‘Aryan’ model.
German industry gained rapidly after unification. German economy soon challenged Britain and France in industry and technology – without the benefits of the colonies. The Franco-British relationship was settled into an easy duopoly, by the time the German nation emerged. Spain was already an empire in decline and irrelevant to Europe’s power equations. The Dutch, Italians, Danes had accepted their role as junior partners.
That left Germany to confront Britain.
And also, note, Hitler’s name has not been used even once.
Related articles
- Opinion: The Empire Returns at Napoleonland (nytimes.com)
2ndlook 
people are the victims of their own propoganda.
Bravo! Brilliant!!
This borrowing of legacy to showcase development has gone on for too long. When will the world realize that most of development that we see around us happened in India a couple of thousand years ago? Knowledge, as we know it, developed in our great dharmabhoomi a long time ago!
Unfortunately, we are failing to leverage it for our own benefit. Others are stealing it from us in spades, and we are looking to those thieves for all solutions. Look deep inside to find solutions to our woes. Oh, when will we??
AFOYB – I wonder why you say this.
Why not see the trajectory of the four diners who sat down at the ‘banquet’ and decided Indian sub-continent’s future in 1947.
Britain – From the WWII victor to a Perennial Loser ; on the verge of becoming a Third World country – in a short 70 years.
USA – From Super-Power to Super-Debtor. (Of course, only the Ghost of USA was at this banquet).
Pakistan – Ruled by the erstwhile Muslim rulers of India.
India – From Ship to Mouth … and now.
Shabash! Aap ne mere man ki baat cheen lee. ….
I am very happy that this perspective is shared by another…. I knew that the great German achievements in philosophy, poetry, and therefore their extraordinary scientific achievements were at least in part influenced by their exposure to indic philosophy contained in buddhism, jainism and the Upanishads. In fact, kant’s philosophy shares some fundamental insights and regarding time and space with that of Adi Shankara, though as usual the origins of ideas are never credited to their actual sources. And we can say that a lot of German intellectual life was directly influenced by Kant, even in the sciences and math.
The influence in literature is even greater. Goethe, Schopenhauer knew of Sanskrit and Pali works, which is why German literature is not a mere caricaturing sexuality, moralizing.. with some pseudo analysis etc but has some positive visions to offer.
@Anon – I would hesitate to come to this conclusion.
The colonial experience of Africans in German occupied Namibia (German South-West Africa) was no better the African experience with others.
It was just as bad as the British, French, or Belgian colonialism.
One cannot but help and remember that Count Otto Von Bismarck was the one who hosted the Berlin Conference, that started the ‘Scramble for Africa’.
Also, it must be understood, the Germans never credited India with Sanskrit and Dharma. For the Germans, India was like the discovery of a rare animal, thought to be extinct, but found to be alive and in good health, in some remote jungle.
According to the German Indologist thinking, they were the ‘True Inheritors’ of the Aryan legacy – and not the Indians.
The German motive was also Cultural Dacoity!
Nothing less!
Just finished reading your latest post. the amount of distortion that western scholars and their assorted Indian disciples have inflicted on Indian history is simply mind-boggling and this continues till date. From your research its appears as if the whole of the desert bloc “culture” seems to be based on fanciful imagination (& genocide), the “empty cupboard” as it were. Anyway thanks for your brilliant analysis. i hope one day this finds its place in our textbooks, which continue to labour under the “Aryan” delusion. And, of course, now its the “out of Africa” delusion!!!
Loved the closing line… hahaha!
[…] India and the Rise of Germany (2ndlook.wordpress.com) […]
[…] India and the Rise of Germany (2ndlook.wordpress.com) […]
sorry for such a late comment I was just wondering about what I found out on Wikipedia –
“Dravidian and other South Asian languages share with Indo-Aryan a number of syntactical and morphological features that are alien to other Indo-European languages, including even its closest relative, Old Iranian. Phonologically, there is the introduction of retroflexes, which alternate with dentals in Indo-Aryan; morphologically there are the gerunds; and syntactically there is the use of a quotative marker (“iti”).These are taken as evidence of substratum influence.”
A pre-Indo-European linguistic substratum in South Asia would be a good reason to exclude India as a potential Indo-European homeland.
Whats your thought about this?
P.S: I posted this on another post but considering it to be long dead I think it’s better to post this here
If exclude India then Include what? Where do they think it originated if not historical entity that was India. Central Asia was part of India (my opinion) the sthan meaning place in sanskrit in Kazaksthan , Turkmenisthan ,Tajkasthan is the clue. stan is not a muslim word as otherwise thought to be… Muslim homeland does not have stans … Its only areas that had indian influence and got converted to islam have stans.. The central asians might have been the fair skinned vedic tribes of uttara kuru (northern kurru)
Also Sanskrit by its name means artificially created. When the colonial overloads proposed this theory they did not base it on linguistic substratum. To unravel the effort that is being put in to maintain this theory (remember it morphed from invasion to migration ) all you have to ask why is it so important to move origins of Sanskrit out of India
Remember no Indian text north or south either speaks of any
Invasion or migration .
The Aryan-Dravidian conflict.
My question here is why are these texts on the basis of which just elaborate theories are being conceived. silent on these defining issues
what’s your view about this blog – http://pastmists.wordpress.com/
Ramesh I am not a scholar as the writer of this blog and the writer of the blog you suggested. Like you I am also searching for the truth. I suggest you make your own perspective reading both sides of the debate. I am doing the same. My initial take was as yours what does science archaeology etc say. But as I researched more into this more than science a political agenda began to emerge (as pointed in the above post).
Remember the whole concept of aryan race etc came into being after the europeans came to india. Before that there was no discussion or discourse anywhere in the western world about this. Nor did India know of any aryan race. There is no debate on the origins of the word arya right…It originated from the sanskrit texts that existed in india not in anatolia not in iran not in central asia etc. So if no indic texts no arya. This language sanskrit was then found to be the mother of all european languages (a fact they could not refute deny or hide)
From there it gets political…Lets say the language sanskrit had no links to any European language do you think we would be having this debate? Any debates on the origins of mayan or aztec languages ?
We all now agree that there was no invasion Both out of india and into india groups. Few decade ago this debate was Invasion or no invasion. I am sure in our life time this debate will take new dimension as India begins to reemerge and has more control and say over their own history.
One of the biggest problems in this debate is defining the boundaries of India through out its 7000-8000 year old history.
Discovery of the dry bed of saraswati was a major win in my opinion for the out of india junta. As it placed the so called mythical river in present day India.
A mistake these guys (like the writer of the blog you suggested) make is to think texts like vedas were written by one set of people in one frame of time. Texts like puranas have been updated periodically with events and lineage of kings of India. Unlike the west the indic texts were living documents.
So I suggest take a 2ndlook at the present discourse and you like it or not this debate is all political.
Thank’s a lot Ramesh for replying to me, I hope you will like to continue the discussion –
what I think that Afghanistan was included in ancient India right? And Many Indus sites were also found there, the only land that is common to both Rigveda (whose geography is that of Punjab and the whole Indus valley Interestingly) and Avesta is Afghanistan! So Proto-Iranian branch went out from India to Iran from Afghanistan area and Inhabited Iran and established the Zoroastrian Persia. Similarly as IVC had trade EXTENSIVE trade relations with Mesopotamia and the hitties they must have influenced their language and that’s how proto-Anatolian branch and Greek branch come out. Similarly it traveled form there to Rome (this I am not sure how)
and populated Europe in later years due to powerful influence of Greeks and Latin Rome. Also Druhyus and many rig vedic tribes who Inhabited Afghan Pakistan region are said to be moving out of Indian lands after Battle of ten kings. That was the view I hold. But for that IVC language has to be said Proto-Sanskrit but historians disagree and some like Romilla Thapar and Micheal Witzel say it isn’t a script at all!
Also Kurgan culture is said to be proto indo european and also samarra culture is said to be same see(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samara_culture)
Also Lithuanian is very archaic and still a living IE language.
Please let me know your views.
I agree about Ashav-ghan-sthan … Gandhar aka Kandhar is one more pointer. I would prefer calling it saraswati-sindhu civilisation instead of indus valley as 70% of the sites were found near the now dry bed of the river near haryana/rajasthan.
Coming to avesta, iran, zoraster. From avesta its very clear who were asuras and who were devas. And both indian and persian texts are vocal about the conflict between the two clans.
My theory is that this split was actually the split between angiras and bhrigu clan of rishis. Zarasthura-charya sounds suspiciously close to shukracharya (highly speculative thought :)). Also who says rig veda is the oldest veda? Do the text make any such claim? Anyways the gora sahab may have had valid reasons to call it the oldest veda but none of the indian texts legends say that. I will even speculate that rig veda was the youngest veda based on the lineage of the rishis who wrote them. 2nd the language of rig veda and avesta are very similar maybe the split between the two clans had happened by the time these were being completed. It will be incorrect to term these texts as being written in one generation and this is what confuses the westerns as they tend to date them based on when and by whom it was last updated.
Btw druhyus were common enemy to both avestans and rig vedics (correct me if iam wrong)
You may be correct in scenario/s that you have given but lets take the history of past 1000 year. How much cross culture influences have come and gone in these 1000 years. From arabs, turks to mongols to europeans. In the last 70-80 years india went from being on the eastern border of indus to present day boundaries similarly on the eastern front. Indus valley people now think they are arabs etc. So given such volatile flow of time all we can do is speculate 🙂
Finishing note if down the historic line someone based on islamic influence in india were to create a theory that it was india from where islam traveled to arabia n rest of the world wouldn’t that be absurd …Something similar is being attempted with this ARYAN race theory
One more thought. The speculation is on the movement of people or is it on the movement of culture? Taking the arab culture as example the actual movement of arabs was minimal (yes there were wars invasion etc but less movement of arabs into invaded land) but the culture spread across the world. It would be foolish to say muslims in india are arabs similarly don’t you think it would be foolish to say anatolian’s/greeks were indians etc. See the only migration/invasion that has happened in modern times was by the europeans in usa /canada /australia/south america hence they seem to be obsessed with the migration of people.
Thanks a ton for replying,
In Hindu mythology, texts such as the Satapatha Brahmana mention the Purana story of a great flood, wherein the Matsya Avatar of Vishnu warns the first man, Manu, of the impending flood, and also advises him to build a giant boat. – wikipedia
Here Take a look at this, the legend of Gilgamesh- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgamesh
An excerpt from what I have cited – ” In Mesopotamian mythology, Gilgamesh is a demigod of superhuman strength who built the city walls of Uruk to defend his people from external threats, and travelled to meet the sage Utnapishtim, who had survived the Great Deluge.”
Also – “In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh is credited with the building of the legendary walls of Uruk. An alternative version has Gilgamesh telling Urshanabi, the ferryman, that the city’s walls were built by the Seven Sages. In historical times, Sargon of Akkad claimed to have destroyed these walls to prove his military power.”
Notice the “seven sages” thing, it is my feeble attempt to link ancient Indian mythology with that of mesopotamia one. Also Gilgamesh is dated 2500 B.C so if Indic Mythology survived In mesopotamia in 2500 B.C then It was from Indus civilization (or saraswati-sindhu civ) and that will make IVC Vedic and also will push back the dates of the vedas as well as the puranas.
What do you think about this Hypothesis?
But the thing I can’t get is that if IVC was Vedic WHY HIDE IT? also why date the rig vedas incorrectly? That is the thing I cannot get. Also Proto-Indo-european is said to be the true language which is reconstructed with the help of linguistics, that is where it troubles me because I don’t have much faith in history but linguistics is a science, and therefore I can’t deny it, and thereby hangs the reason for my first post which is the presence of non-indo-european substratum in India. If Linguistics can prove proto-sanskrit to be proto-Indo-european then Out of India Theory becomes a full blown fact.
Interesting thing that IVC was known for Forts and walls so the IVC (which was vedic and had the “7 sages” story passed onto their fort making knowledge to mesopotamia and so the legend of gilgamesh was born.
But as I said for that IVC has to be vedic but it has no horse burials, (which is frequently mentioned by witzel).
As I said If IVC turns out to be vedic then Out of India theory becomes a fact.
Also I would Like to know what do you think of gandhara-grave culture which is believed to be first settlement of the so called “Aryans” in India- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhara_grave_culture
I think we should thank Anuraag for letting us have this discussion on his blog.
Who is hiding it or denying it? who dated the vedas ?
Not a linguist but this substratum sounds like the god particle of Linguistic science 🙂 The one theory that will tell you all about a language.
Anyways I have seen some video on HINDU NATIONALIST KINDA website of certain Mr Nicholas Kazanas who seem to assert that based on linguistics out of india theory is correct and not the invasion one.
Gandhara grave culture from I understand was after indus valley. Now as in the case of Egypt , Greece, Rome etc… Indian civilization never vanished completely. It continued and this flies in the face of most of these theories. There is enough proof about people migrating eastwards towards gangetic planes after the drying of river saraswati (There are posts on this blog about that). Basically story never ends hence it is difficult to find start and end points of something that till date continues. Had the Harappa culture collapsed and vanished like the Egyptian yes it would have been easier to pin point what happened but it continued accommodating new influences that come in with the passage of time (like the present day india).
Btw this from the wiki post agrees on the continuity.
In the centuries preceding the Gandhara culture, during the Early Harappan period (roughly 3200–2600 BCE), similarities in pottery, seals, figurines, ornaments etc. document intensive caravan trade between the Indian Subcontinent and Central Asia and the Iranian plateau.
Also dint the haraapans bury their dead too..? We burn them now so they did that then and we don’t…. so we are not same civilization?
Any elephant .. cow ..dog donkey burials? No lions in England yet all their seals motif have lions in them. No horses in india (remember central asia, afghanistan were india)does that mean rig veda cant talk about the utility of these animals and if they do does it mean they were written somewhere else?
You never replied to me what you think about think about the similarity between Vedic and Mesopotamian Mythology I pointed.
“Who is hiding it or denying it? who dated the vedas ?”
I Don’t get it, what do you mean? I just wanted out that if there is an puranic story present in ancient mesopotamia then IVC (which was living and thriving then) must be vedic since it’s a fact that puranas were written in India. Gilgamesh’s legend is dated 2500 B.C so it will automatically push back the puranas and so the
date of vedas will also be pushed back by almost 2000 years placing it in 4500 B.C, and it would mean that puranas were composed pretty early but were constantly updated. That’s all I wanted to point.
“Anyways I have seen some video on HINDU NATIONALIST KINDA website ”
Listen ,Bhai, I am a Proud Indian Brahmin so Please don’t think I will call anything that doesn’t support mainstream kurgan Hypothesis of Indo-european Origin as “hindutva vadi”.
“Any elephant .. cow ..dog donkey burials? No lions in England yet all their seals motif have lions in them. No horses in india (remember central asia, afghanistan were india)does that mean rig veda can’t talk about the utility of these animals and if they do does it mean they were written somewhere else?”
My bad. Yes It’s a valid point.
Anyways I am thoroughly enjoying this discussion and yes I am thankful that Anurag is letting us having this discussion.
Anyways what do you think about the date at which battle of ten kings occurred?
The British! They are masters at propaganda. Nazis, communists are just amateurs compared to the Brits. They had us convinced that had they not taken over India, we would not even have had a railway system. I don’t know whether to marvel at their brilliance in propaganda or get angry at how they got everyone to swallow it.
I think propaganda is always only as good as we allow it to be.
It is not the British that were good at it … but our mental position of allowing them to walk all over.
Reject their position – and their propaganda becomes a comedy.
You can see it in these columns – how their latest lackeys, the Brown Americans are trying the tactics.
If we just change the position to Brown Foreigners, their entire base is eroded.
If we dont trust White Foreigners, why are we trusting Brown Foreigners? Same difference.
What do you guys think about this book written by one of the great Indian scholars –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_Se_Ganga
http://www.flipkart.com/volga-se-ganga/p/itmdythgdf44tjfg
It is not just us they fooled. They fooled the whole world. Recently an American author came up with a book outlining the British genocide in Kenya. Witness how the whole of britain pounced on her as one. This author says it much better than I ever could.
http://exiledonline.com/book-review-another-british-genocide/
They fooled the whole world into believing that their brand of colonialism was much gentler than the french, portuguese, dutch or the spaniards. So no shame for us Indians to be fooled by them.
I’ll give you a simple example. Look at goa which was under the portguese. Notice how the Goan christians have actual portuguese surnames like Figuera, pinto, fernandez, de Abreu etc. While Indian christians converted during British times were never granted British surnames like smith, walters, woodbridge, etc. What Indian christians under British rule got were names such as
John Jack, Jack John, David John, John david, Peter John, Daniel David, etc. Lots of Johns, that’s for sure.
Notice how the surname is also actually a first name. I know this is a petty example, but I’m just trying to make a point.
Regarding the Brown Americans, I do not see your antipathy for them. I did not see among them a special contempt for India and Indians that you seem to indicate in your blog. In fact it is the Indians within India who actually have the most caustic remarks about the nation. Remember, the writer of the counter propaganda book, “Operation Red Lotus” is a Brown American, isn’t he?
http://www.amazon.com/Oxford-Introduction-Proto-Indo-European-World-Linguistics/dp/0199296685
See, all the established historians in the world accept the PIE hypothesis and place proto-indo-european homeland in the pontic steppes or the baltic region or south russia. Is this all propaganda?
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/abs/nature08365.htm
Please clarify on that.
Also the speech given by asko parpola –
“Your Excellency the President of India, Shrimati Pratibha Devisingh Patil, Honourable Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Thiru Kalaignar M. Karunanidhi, distinguished dignitaries, dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, Vanakkam!
It is indeed a very great honour to receive the first Kalaignar M. Karunanidhi Classical Tamil Award from the President of India. Yet I feel embarrassed, because my work is only partly related to Classical Tamil, while there are Classical Tamil specialists who really would have deserved this award. But as this is not the only time when the award is given, I humbly accept that this is my turn. I am most grateful for the very considerable support for my continued work in this field.
The Government of India has rightly recognized Tamil as a classical language, a status that it fully deserves in view of its antiquity and its rich literature that in quality and extent matches many other classical traditions of the world. Yet, Tamil is not alone in possessing such a rich heritage in India, which is really a very exceptional country with so many languages having old and remarkable literatures, both written and oral. Sanskrit with its three thousand years old tradition has produced an unrivalled number of literary works.
Sanskrit goes back to Proto-Indo-Aryan attested in a few names and words related to the Mitanni kingdom of Syria between 1500 and 1300 BCE, and to earlier forms of Indo-Iranian known only from a few loanwords in Finno-Ugric languages as spoken in central Russia around 2000 BCE. But none of these very earliest few traces is older than the roots of Tamil. Tamil goes back to Proto-Dravidian, which in my opinion can be identified as the language of the thousands of short texts in the Indus script, written in 2600-1700 BCE. There are, of course, different opinions, but many critical scholars agree that even the Rigveda, collected in the Indus Valley about 1000 BCE, has at least half a dozen Dravidian loanwords.
Old Tamil texts constitute the only source of ancient Dravidian linguistic and cultural heritage not yet much contaminated by the Indo-Aryan tradition. Without it, it would be much more difficult if not impossible to penetrate into the secrets of the Indus script and to unravel the beginnings of India’s great civilization. In my opinion the Tamils are entitled to some pride for having preserved so well the linguistic heritage of the Indus Civilization. At the same time, it must not be forgotten that, though their language has shifted in the course of millennia, people of North India too are to a large extent descended from the Harappan people, and have also preserved cultural heritage of the same civilization.”
Also what do you want to say about the Ancestral North Indians and Ancestral South Indians?
I am going to quote witzel –
History and Hindutva Propaganda
In the past few decades, a new kind of history has been propagated by a vocal group of Indian writers, few of them trained historians, who lavishly praise and support each other’s works. Their aim is to rewrite Indian history from a nationalistic and religious point of view. Their writings have special appeal to a new middle class confused by modern threats to traditional values. With alarming frequency their movement is backed by powerful political forces, lending it a mask of respectability that it does not deserve.
source- http://www.frontline.in/navigation/?type=static&page=flonnet&rdurl=fl1720/17200040.htm
Please I will be waiting your reply.
2ndlook Mr kevin 2ndlook… All you are doing is vomiting out the current narrative… The invaded dark (BLACK is much better word goes well with the racist undertones of the whole theory )dravidians pushed down south by Much whiter and civilised ARYANS 🙂 LOL….
One question Kevin bhai ….any reference of this pushing of dravidians or destroying of their culture by invading hordes of whites in Tamil literature? I am sure they must have given some references to the white man…
You have quoted so many please please quote me something from the ancient tamils texts about this invasion…
Next time please when you post something on this topic it should not have these two wrong assumptions
1. Aryan is a race :- It means civilised for want of better word in english otherwise the word arya is self explanatory when spoken to an indian
2.Dravidians is a race : Dravida as mentioned in vedas means south,Pearls,Elephant Tusks.Not as race
The rig veda does not (errata note below) mention dravidians at all it does mention dasyus (and that in no way sounds like dravidians)
Most of the south indian kings as far as I know were ardent followers of the vedic way ..
admin note: Errata: Commenter has made following change, Read this
as
The rig veda does NOT mention dravidians at all
Why do you reject Ivy league professor’s like witzel ? Just why?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substratum_in_Vedic_Sanskrit
I am not at all against my Indian brothers but please make a plausible reply to the wiki page I linked. Please don’t tell me that it’s wrong, if it’s wrong then why?
@kevin
Genetics can be used to make a case for Out of india theory too. R1a1 which marks indo-european speakers originated in India.
Ramesh I can’t accept or reject something that I know nothing about. Why do you think you will be against your Indians brothers ? Searching for truth (no matter how bitter it is) is the Indian way. If you think this theory will explain all then so be it 🙂
http://www.angelfire.com/va/virdainas/pie.html
Race and language are same? Quoting from Wikipedia
“The division of the Caucasian race into Aryans, Semites and Hamites is in origin linguistic, not based on physical anthropology, the division in physical anthropology being that into Nordic, Alpine and Mediterranean. However, the linguistic classification of “Aryan” later became closely associated, and conflated, with the classification of “Nordic” among some archaeologists and anthropologists”
The whole thing goes wrong from this point onwards. Most of your links are trying to paint a picture of racial classification based on language.
Second thing I need you to clarify is
What is the debate about? Is it about the transfer of ideas like wheel /riding horses / fire altars etc or migration of people?
As I have pointed out earlier Buddhism spread across the word without Indians migrating out of India in mass. Invasions/migrations don’t change the core civilisation of a region unless the invasion is like the one in USA/Australia. Where the native culture/people/race were wiped out. Aryan theory in its original form seems to suggest something similar.
Do you think this is what happened between native indians and invading caucasians?
Have you heard about the kampilya project that clearly proves the continuity of Indian civilization.
A bit on the credibility of Western theories One recent theory that was propagated by none other than vice president of USA THE most POWERFUL COUNTRY EVER. Global warming as promoted by Al Gore quickly became climate change as Aryan invasion became Aryan migration. It’s the intentions of these theory givers that I question.
Manu, True I am really sorry I made the mistake of classifying Indo-european as Caucasoid. After a bit of internet surfing I came upon the heavily distorted translation Of baudhayana srauta sutra by our (in)famous michael Witzel which was criticized even by padma bhushan archaeologist and sanskritist B.B Lal. It was mistranslated by witzel to support AMT. His translation said –
“Aya went eastwards. His (people) are the Kuru-Pancalas and Kasi Videha. This is the Ayava(migration).(His other people)stayed at home in the west. His people are the Gandhari, Parasu and Aratta. This is the Amavasava (group).
Whereas the real translation would be – Ayu migrated eastwards. His (people) are the Kuru-Pancalas and the Kasi-Videhas. This is the Ayava (migration). Amavasu migrated westwards. His (people) are the Ghandhari, Parsu and Aratta. This is the Amavasu (migration).
See the difference. When questioned his reply was –
“Whatever interpretation one chooses, this evidence for movements inside the subcontinent (or from its northeastern borders, in Afghanistan) changes little about the bulk of evidence assembled from linguistics and from the RV itself that points to an outside origin of Vedic Sanskrit and its initial speakers.”
If Witzel can spread propaganda i this century I can hardly guess what Indologists in the 19th century would have done!
I very well appreciate your response.
Why was ancient afghanistan is called ‘ariana”? It’s probably the place where Indo-Iranians split after coming from the pontic steppes.
M. Witzel, “The Vīdẽvdaδ list obviously was composed or redacted by someone who regarded Afghanistan and the lands surrounding it as the home of all Indo-Iranians (airiia), that is of all (eastern) Iranians, with Airiianem Vaẽjah as their center.”
Witzel is probably one of the best historians of this age.
Click to access AryanHome.pdf