Indus Seals – Script? Or Something Else? (My Thoughts on Aryan Migration – III )

Recently I read several papers and articles on an interesting website, about Indus script. That website is indeed a valuable resource. I am not professional researcher like them. Just that I have some doubts and I am in process of clarifying it. At some points people indeed came from outside India to India. But who? When? From where? There is a lot more to ancient Indian history than linguistic influence.

I read a paper (http://www.safarmer.com/fsw2.pdf) about statistical studies of sign frequencies. One interesting thing pointed out in the paper is
“High sign repetition rates in the Indus corpus overall contrast sharply with low sign repetition rates in individual inscriptions.”

I was thinking about it and wondering if this low local repetition could be intentional. The one area where local sound repetition would be undesirable is names of people. I had observed that the sounds in the same vocal group (groups as described at http://www.omniglot.com/writing/devanagari.htm) are almost never repeated in names. e.g. the sound k and kh would never appear in same name. Only exception is rare repetition of k and k itself.

So I took 50 names (first names and last names) from alumni list of Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, which gave me a good set of random names. I wrote them down in Devanagari script (in which I have mother tongue proficiency) and analyzed for repetition of symbols. These are what you call “Ligatured” symbols, as described in the omniglot page above.

Conclusion:
Total 100 name words (50 first names and 50 last names)
Number of times when symbols get exactly repeated in the same name word – 3
Number of times a consonant symbol is repeated (this is close match, so can lead to being reported “repeat” if symbol has wear and tear) – 15
Total number of symbols – 322

3 symbols repeated in 322 = about 5 symbols repeated in 500 characters. Give and take a couple of consonant symbols repetitions, which are close match, and this closely matches to the statistics you present in Table 1 on Page 33. (7 symbols repeated in 500 characters.)

Also the fact that the symbols are present on pottery before the pots were broken could point to the fact that they were names of owners of that pottery.

Also the symbols consist of several clearly identifiable objects like a fish, a wheel, etc. Many times the last names represent the profession, like Smith. So could a fish symbol have something to do with last name “Fisherman” ?

My point is in case of symbol repetition in phonetic writing, names show different behavior than general words. And the behavior of Indus inscriptions matches with the behavior of names written in today’s most common phonetic Indian script. I wonder if any work has been done in this direction?

I have attached a image file here, which includes all my work described above.

Could Indus seals really be a writing script that has not been deciphered yet? If yes, then what secrets this script holds about ancient Indian history?
We need a lot more research.

How Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar converted a lemon to a jackpot

I came across this great story a few years back. This story has always lingered in my mind. Today I decided to share it with you all.

Place – Bengal, time – later part of 1800s.
Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar and his few friends were busy collecting donations to start Calcutta University.

One day Vidyasagar stopped at the door of the palace of Nawab of Ayodhya. Nawab was not exactly known to be a generous person and many people tried to dissuade Vidyasagar from taking this mission.

Vidyasagar met Nawab and presented his cause. On hearing Vidyasagar’s plea, Nawab got up, pulled one of his shoes and dropped in Vidyasagar’s bag for donation. Vidyasagar did not say a word. He simply got up, thanked Nawab and left.

Next day Vidyasagar organized auction of Nawab’s shoe in front of his palace. Lot of Nawab’s knights , Jahagirdars, court members, who wanted to impress Nawab started bidding. By the mid afternoon the shoe was sold for Rs 1000.

Nawab, happy to hear that his shoe fetched Rs 1000, matched the auction money. He added his own Rs. 1000 as donation.

When the destiny dropped a shoe in his basket, Vidyasagar could have walked out furious. He could have thrown the shoe on Nawab as revenge of insult. He could have got depressed and gone home and cried that nobody is willing to give him donation and given up his efforts to raise donation for university.

But he did nothing of that sort. He remained focused on the main goal. He rose above his personal feelings, ego, and insecurities and exploited the situation creatively. He rose above his insecurities and exploited that of others around him. He took that shoe and converted it to the biggest donation to University of Culcutta. Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar converted his on-face insult and resulting disappointment into a Rs. 2000 donation plus a pleased Nawab who could be of some assistance at some point later.

Calcutta University became a reality. It became a center of education for fine arts, social studies, science and technology.

Throughout our life, we will come across situations that will bring disappointment, anger, frustration, depression. But most of the times, there will be a way we can use this situation to our advantage if we remain focused on our real objective, if we engage in introspection, and if we find a creative solution by thinking outside the box.

Next time when destiny hands over you a shoe when you were expecting treasures, take that as a challenge to your creativity, not as an insult to your ego. Next time you get a lemon, don’t make lemonade, try to convert it into a jackpot.

The Cycle of Religion

The more I think about it, the more I believe that like economy, seasons and tides, even religions and communities go through cycles.

Probably a little more than thousand years back Hindus believed their religion and gods are invincible. Hindus were prosperous, powerful, rich and well known. They believed that would last forever. They believed they are special. They believed that their gods are in charge of the reality and universe.

The wheels of time kept turning. The prosperity, power, fame, left India one by one. The culture and community had hard time adjusting to this new reality. They still believed in their gods to bring all good things back. Part of the community resorted to extreme devotion to the religion believing that not-enough-devotion was the cause of distress. Remaining part of community resorted to hypocrisy, ashamed to admit their greed or fears, yet not strong enough to overcome it.

One by one empire lost. One by one temple kept falling. Nature was not being friendly either. Famines, draughts, epidemics were frequent visitors.

Last half of the twentieth century finally brought some calm and quiet period to India. Freed from all the burden of faith, Hindus started to look at this world with new eyes and again India is starting to see some good days.

Christianity went through dark periods briefly when the Catholic church blessed crusades and jailed Galileo. But the honest dedication of missionaries in all the corners of the world pulled Christianity from the first phase of dark periods rather quickly.

The youngest religion, Islam, at the moment seems to be headed for the dark period. The earlier the moderate Muslims free Islam from the ghosts of the past glory and prepare it to embrace the future, the shorter will be the dark phase.

To me, rise and fall of any religion (or any nation or empire or society for that matter) depends more on strategic resources and alignment with economic interest at that time and less on personal choices the followers of that religion make. Islam and Christianity preached a level of equality, which provided a flat social structure. People were allowed to change their professions at will and new converts to their religions were welcome. This flexibility came in handy in the time of frequent natural calamities, epidemics, and rapid natural changes, which was rather frequent in last 2000 years.

Hinduism has rather strict ordered and hierarchical structure of society. This hierarchy is signature of a well established civilization whose economy prospered by creating specialists of the trade. These professional specializations were certainly flexible at the beginning and the ancient texts contain examples of people changing their castes. Both the celebrated sages Valmiki and Vyas come from actually lower castes, Valmiki born a tribal hunter and Vyas born a son of fisher woman. This flexibility was lost in the time and the caste began to be decided at birth.

Islam went on to be little stricter regarding things like stealing, because Islam flourished in desert and in desert everything is scarce and somebody stealing a can of water can make a difference between life and death for somebody else. Christianity turned to be a rather mellow, forgiving, missionary religion because Europe had lot more natural resources and more important was help people get through bitter harsh cold weather and epidemics.

Both Islam and Christianity demand absolute faith in their own version of God, but welcome anybody who accepts their doctrine. Hindus are much more tolerant about what you should believe, but conversion to Hinduism is more difficult than that to Islam/Christianity. In polytheist Hindu system, if you want to bring in your god, then it is just one more idol in the already crowded temple of Gods.

Islam/Christianity offer one simplified set of morals and values contained in single book. Hinduism offers a rich variety of texts and encourages debate, which is better for a securely established culture that can devote time to the pursuit of knowledge.

Both Islam/Christianity regard human beings as far superior species on the planet and believe that God made the rest of the world for human consumption. Hinduism and other Eastern religions believe humans are part of environment and put stress on respecting all creatures. So if the humanity today is headed to man-made crisis caused by plundering the environment, the Eastern belief systems are better positioned to serve humanity and might see glorious days again.

No religion or holy book transcends reality. No prophet owns reality. Reality plays with people and their beliefs, caresses them for a while and tosses them in a bin to send them in oblivion for centuries. The earlier people realize this, the better it is for their religion.

My Thoughts On Aryan Migration To Indus Civilization – III

The disagreement between those who propose the Aryan migration and those who oppose it is not in level of details, not in theory but in much deeper. It is difference in paradigms. The proponents of Aryan Migration state that Vedic civilization was still in “primitive” band and the writings and language must be analyzed as such. The opponents of Aryan Migration think that the Vedic civilization was advanced and the writings must be analyzed.

Let me explain with an example. There is a famous statement which summarizes the gist of what they call a ‘Butterfly Effect’ in chaos theory, “A butterfly fluttering its wings in one continent can cause a tornado in another continent.” If we purely focus on vocabulary of this sentence, (which is what studies in linguistics do more often than not), then probably we will conclude that the person who said this must be from a place where tornados and butterflies are seen, so probably Midwest plains in USA. But if we see that this statement is made by an expert in complex systems analysis, then we will conclude that it must come from some well reputed scientist, and that he must have come from a university which pioneered research in complex systems, so more likely Stanford / Harvard on coasts. In this particular scenario, the second guess is right. Lorenzo was actually born in Connecticut and studied and worked in Harvard. He never resided in Midwest.

Why do I think Vedic civilization could be a little more advanced than we think? There is a clear trail in evolution of Vedic philosophy leading to very abstract worldview.

Vedas are purely for rituals and offering sacrifices to gods. The Sankhya philosophy is philosophy of pure classification by observation. Five physical senses, five organs that do work and mind, and so on. This is more like Aristotle who observed that an object will come to rest unless continuously set in motion. The Charvak philosophy which says “Eat the best food out there, even if it means you have to take loans” is similar to Jeremy Bentham of utilitarian school saying “If a peeping Tom is able to peep into intimate lives of people without ever getting caught, then he must do that. Because that increases total pleasure in the universe.”

From there the Vedic trail goes to Upanishads. The idea of single formless reality is very high level of abstraction. This is a highly evolved idea of all encompassing humanity which represents a complex paradigm of thinking. The Vedic civilization reached zenith of abstraction in advaita (which was consolidated by Shankarachayra, but definitely touched upon in Upanishads many times). Advaita rejects “one + one = two” and states that “one + sense of being two = two”, thus reducing entire world into a quality of perception.

The sort of complex, holistic paradigm proposed in Upanishads, comprising of “single dynamic supercomplex whole” is now just beginning to appear in Western world with works like “Web of life” by Fritzof Kapra in philosophy and works like “Natural Capitalism” by Amory Lovins in green economy.

Slowly but definitely the Western civilization moving to spirituality in it’s own way. From the product economy of industrial revolution era, it moved to service economy and now knowledge economy. Now Western world has realized that it cannot forever continue to take natural resources for granted and is keen on going green. So we might soon see a transition from knowledge economy to philosophical economy and then perhaps to spiritual economy, which will be enlightenment through capitalism.

At this point the humanity of western world will expand from a society of individuals to encompass all animals and trees and planets and everything. They will look at this as “single, super complex, dynamic whole” and might continue to refer it as cosmos. But they will be referring to the same thing what Vedic people called Bramha and Chinese called Tao.

If Aryans came to India in 1500 BC and Upanishads were present at Buddha’s time in 600 CE. Then in less than 900 years, Vedic civilizations reached where western civilization took more than 2000 years to reach? (Including last several centuries of super fast communication?)

I am not at all saying that Vedic people were advanced than Western civilization in material science or even match to them. I am not saying that they had nuclear weapons, or automobiles or even electricity for that matter. Yet the fact is they had highly evolved version of humanity. This evolution must be accounted for.

The only way they must have gotten there is just by building knowledge and insights into nature for millenniums. “Aryan migration at 1500 BC” does not explain this whole evolution very well.

My Thoughts on Aryan Migration to Indus Civilization – II

Let’s make one thing clear. My doubts are about the timing Sanskrit (or seeds of Sanskrit) coming into India. I am pretty sure at some point the “seeds” of Sanskrit came to India from Central Asia. But I think the 1500 BC timeline raises more questions than it answers.

My doubts about 1500 BC timeline primarily come from my study of comparative religions and evolution of philosophy. If you see the Vedas and Puranas and Upnishads and Buddhist texts like Mahayana canon, they follow a certain curve. They move from a rituals to social ethics to metaphysics to nihilism and then to negativist philosophy of Zen. Upnishads clearly talk about this negativist philosophy of emptying your mind. Most of the Upnishads, including Isha-vasya Upnishad were already present at the time of Buddha (approx 600 BC). The number of texts is so big and the discussions so thourough, that this represents more the state of maturity of society than intellect of an individual.

If Rig-veda was compiled at 1500 BC, then all this transition was done in less than thousand years. Which I find IMPOSSIBLE. To achieve this state of philosophical development, a society must go through several golden periods and dark periods. Also the society must be very well established to share and pass down the knowledge. A nomadic tribe cannot offer such environment.

If you have read the book “Geography of Thoughts”, you will know what I mean. The Western culture still believes in two things. One is “linear trend”, where things just keep getting better and in long term things always improve, may it be Stock Market Index or average life expectancy. Second is “individual choice”. This is why Western philosophy always revolves around utilitarian aspect of ethics, the way of making the best choices and getting gratification to all your desires. Whereas Eastern world talks about endless cycles and transcendence beyond identity. This has come from a long history crossing several millennia that has witnessed several ups and downs of entire civilization.

Most of the Western scholars (and their European influenced Indian counterparts) look at the cyclical paradigm as a primitive form of linear western paradigm. Thus they interpret the texts as more primitive works. Whereas Eastern philosophers (and their Western advocates like Alan Watts), view the linear paradigm as a primitive version of cyclical Eastern paradigm, and place the Eastern works philosophy at higher in evolution chain then their European Utilitarian equivalents.

I, for my part, am reasonably sure that line is the circle you haven’t seen enough. I think even the Western civilization will eventually starve itself of strategic resources, will undergo decay, destruction and will reach the phase of cyclic thinking paradigm. I think the all-encompassing humanity of Vedic civilization represents a more advanced stage than the individual based humanity of Western world. They achieved higher level of humanitarian development with lesser level of scientific or technological development.

The room must be made for Vedic civilization to evolve to this stage, in proper contexts of geography and time. If that’s the case, then the Indus civilization, with a vast geographical footprint of more than 2.5 million sq km with well planned towns and long timeline spanning several millennia is better candidate to be the ancestor of vedic civilization than the Kurgan or any other culture with a tiny presence in time and place.

If you choose to deny that the cyclic paradigm is not advanced stage of linear paradigm, you have one less reason to doubt 1500 BC Aryan Migration. But still that is not the end of story. If Aryan Migration at 1500 BC has to be accepted 100%, then it must explain everything, not only linguistics and some archeological findings.

The points about horse and spoke wheels of chariots are old and lot of explanations have been provided by either sides. Aryan migration is perhaps one way of explaining those archeological findings, rather than the only way.

What is not yet explained by Aryan Migration is the interesting finding of genetics that today’s Southeast Asians do not differ significantly from their ancestors 6000 years ago. Please take a look at this Wikipedia articles about Aryan Migration.
and follow description to “Genetics and Archaeogenetics of South Asia” for further explanation. As I understand it, so far archeogenetics has raised very serious doubts about Aryan Migration @1500, but probably not enough to oust it out. Study is ongoing.

Also the points related to astronomical obeservations in Konrad Elst’s book are not well explained by Aryan Migration theory. I am not astronomy expert but the discussion presented by Konrad Elst in his book is indeed fact based.

Till a new theory is found, Aryan Migratio theory stays because this should get benefit of doubt. But at the same time, as an established theory, it has more burden of answering doubts that it’s not-proven-yet counterparts.

Yes, the Aryan Migration @1500 BC theory is accepted by several Foreign and Indian experts. But that does not mean the theory should not be doubted and overturned if some new evidence found against it tomorrow. No theory in science is blessed with immunity from doubt and further enquiry.

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https://kedarsoman.wordpress.com