My Thoughts on Aryan Migration to Indus Civilization

We all learned in history books that around the time 1800 BC to 1500 BC, the group of people called Aryans invaded India and defeated the aboriginal people. The invaders replaced the existing culture and language with their own. This is how the linguistic relation between European languages and Indian languages can be explained.

This theory left many many questions unanswered. This did not explain the creation of unparalleled volume of literature, philosophy and emergence of several spiritual traditions. But as all Indian young men, I left the history behind and began the quest of improving standard of my life. In this quest, the questions about my own origins had almost no room.

Now 20 years later, looking back at the same history I learned in books , I see that this theory of origin of Sanskrit and Indian culture gives rise to more questions than it answers.

If we accept the Arya Migration in India around 1500 BC, we have to cram the development of giant amount of Sanskrit literature in just a few centuries. Also the great epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata are reduced to fictions.

According to AIT, for this great literary development we end up giving credit to a group of people whose existence is not corroborated by anything other than linguistics. At the same time, we strip out the widely spread Harappan culture of any cultural and literary achievements .

In short, we end up with what we call as Fawley’s Paradox. We have a giant, well established civilisation with no literature, and we have giant literature with no trace of establishment or civilisation.

So wouldn’t it be rather easier to think that Harappan people were the ones who laid foundation of Sanskrit and Indian culture?

You can read my post on IIDB here. I have listed certain questions I can think of that are not answered by Aryan Invasion Theory.

According to Konrad Elst, the Vecid culture and Sanskrit language is indigenous to India and its beginning dates far back in history than the Western historians predicted. In his on-line book “Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate”, he makes some really good points. The entire on-line book by Konrad Elst on Aryan Migration theory is here.

One of the most interesting points is astronomical evidence. It is indeed surprising to find that so far the astronomical observations in Rigveda and other texts have been outright ignored. If ignoring becomes impossible, then very unsatisfactory explanations are given to explain the consistency and accuracy of these astronomical observations.

An example from Konrad Elst’s book in his own words is
“Hindu tradition makes mention of the conjunction of the “seven planets” (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, sun and moon) and Ketu (southern lunar node, the northern node/ Rahu being by definition in the opposite location) near the fixed star Revati (Zeta Piscium) on 18 February 3102 BC. This date, at which Krishna is supposed to have breathed his last, is conventionally the start of the so-called Kali-Yuga, the “age of strife”, the low point in a declining sequence of four ages. However, modem scholars have claimed that the Kali-Yuga system of time-reckoning was a much younger invention, not attested before the 6th century AD.

Against this modernist opinion, French mathematicians Bailly and Playfair had already shown that the position of the moon (the fastest-moving “planet”, hence the hardest to back-calculate with precision) at the beginning of Kali-Yuga, 18 February 3102, as given by Hindu tradition, was accurate to 37’.9 Either the Brahmins had made an incredibly lucky guess, or they had recorded an actual observation on Kali Yuga day itself.”

At several places in ancient Sanskrit texts, we find very accurate astronomical observations and they are consistent with each other, meaning the sequence in which these observations are mentioned is indeed the sequence in which these astronomical events happened as confirmed by the modern science. So either we can say these are valid astronomical observations, or we can argue that they are back calculated. But the back calculation of positions of astronomical objects is one the most complex tasks requiring calculators with at-least four or five decimal point precision, the more likely scenario is that these obeservations were recorded by somebody who was present when those astronomical events happened.

Second important point is genetical evidence. Recently there have been some interesting attempts to map genes and use genetic data to trace human the history of human race. The genetic study of a subset of Indian population does not suggest any genetic mixing around 1800-1500 Bc. There is a change in genetic material of Indians around 6000 BC, and there is change around 300 BC, the later being more likely due to the invasion by Alexander. So if no marked difference exists in Indians in 2000 BC and Indians in 1000 BC, then probably nobody from outside India came and settled here.

If Aryan Migration Theory is proven false, then the repercussions are huge. That means Mahabharata and even likely Ramayana indeed happen. That means Vedic hymns once reverberated in the walls of Harappa. That means clearly by a big margin, India is the oldest civilisation on earth.

But that does not mean Indians had nuclear weapons back in 3000 BC. That does not mean we had airplanes and rockets. Can you find some hints and clues that suggest we might have had airplanes back then? Yes you can. But that is like trying to say US government organized destruction of world trade center. We must know that if some possibility cannot be ruled out, that that does not mean that possibility is validated. We can always build some conspiracy, but we must focus on building a foolproof cases. We must not let our pride and nationalism run ahead of scientific enquiry of facts.