Written by London swaminathan
Date: 9 March 2017
Time uploaded in London:- 20-08
Post No. 3708
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Nicholas Kazanas, a scholar from Athens has given amazing details about Hindus in his latest book “VEDIC AND INDO EUROPEAN STUDIES”. It is written for scholars with lot of linguistic studies and a layman can’t follow it easily. But he himself summarised beautifully well in the introduction. I will give only interesting points from the intro and the contents of the book.
Migration
AIT (Aryan Invasion/Immigration Theory) is wrong. On the contrary Hindus went into Europe 8000 years ago. He quoted the following:
Genetics also has in the 2000 decade established beyond any doubt the fact that genes flowed into Europe from N W India (Gujarat, Rajsathan, Sindh); these are the R1a 1a and the M458 and they travelled north westward before 8000 years ago (see underhill 2010)
Emeneau’s Ignorance
M B Emeneau wrote in 1954 : “At some time in the second millennium BC a band or bands of an Indo European language, later to be called Sanskrit, entered India over the North West passes. This is our linguistic doctrine which has been held now for more than a century and a half. There seems to be no reason to distrust the arguments for it, in spite of the traditional Hindu ignorance of any such invasion”.
Nicholas, in his book says: “However it is Emeneau himself who suffers from ignorance, not the Hindu tradition. For only 12 years later, in 1966, an article by the eminent archealogist George Dale in the Scientific American showed beyond any doubt that there has been no invasion, no bloodshed, no conquest, no violence. Note, too, that Emeneau talks of a doctrine and arguments and not of data, evidence and facts. Now where as historians like A L Basham accepted it readily (1975), it took Western and many Indian Sanskritists to accept this fact and change the theory into one of peaceful immigration.
Date of Rig Veda 3500 BCE!
All modern texts on Sanskrit and ancient Indian literature refer to the chronological scheme set out by Max Muller in his History of Sanskrit Literature (1859). What they don’t say is how he arrived at this’
This scheme was based on a ghost story in Katha sarit sagara (composed in 1100 CE) which mentions a certain Katyayana. This person was identified by Muller with the sutra writer Kaatyaayana, placed in the third century BCE. Thus working from that date as his basis, he set up the following chronological scheme:
Chandas (RV) – 1200-1000 BCE
Mantras (Atharva, Yajus) – 1000-800 BCE
Brahmanas, Upanishads – 800-600 BCE
Sutras etc. – down to 200 BCE
This chronology came into criticism at that time ( by Goldstrucker, Whitney, Winternitz and others) and even Muller admitted that nobody could determine the dates of the Rig Vedic hymns which could be from 1500, 2000 or even 5000 BCE. But his earlier scheme stuck and is being taught today in all Western Universities and most Indian ones.
However, all archaeologists today, experts in the area of Saptasindhu (Allchin, Kenoyer, Poschel, Shaffer and many others), emphasize the unbroken continuity of the native culture from c.7000 to 600 BCE, when the Persians began to invade the region.
The Indo- Aryans are indigenous to Seven River region (Sapta Sindhu) what is today North West Pakistan and North West India, since there is no evidence for any intrusion into that area before 600 BCE. The Rig Veda was complete but for minor passages by 3100 BCE when the Harappan culture begins to arise
Consequently, I take it that Rig Veda was composed in the 4th millennium BCE at least, the Brahmanas and the Upanishads early in the 3rd and some of the Sutra texts 2500 BCE.
Egypt, Babylonia learnt Maths from India!
Of great significance are two articles by American historian of science A.Seidenberg wherein he argues that Egyptian, Babylonian and Greek mathematics derive from the Indic Sulbasutras of Apastamba and Baudhayana or a work like that, dated c 2000 BC as lower limit, thus furnishing totally independent evidence; in these he took account of the work of Neugebauer, Cantor et all. Seidenberg wrote of this original work: its mathematics was very much like what we see in the Sulabasutras. In the first place, it was associated with the ritual. Second, there was no dichotomy between number and magnitude. In geometry, it knew the Theorem of Pythagoras and how to convert a rectangle into a square. It knew the isosceles trapezoid and how to compute its area.
(Source: Vedic and Indo-European Studies by Nicholas Kazanas, Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi, year 2015)
—to be continued………………………
Tamil and Vedas 