Aryans And Dravidians
People living in northern India are called Aryans, while those in southern India have been called Dravidians for several centuries. How and when this division of the Indians came about is controversial and full of anomalies. The fact that there are differences in skin color and language led to the belief in this dichotomy, which the British created to divide the Indians so they could easily dominate them.
It was in the interest of The British to classify the Indians according to their race and cleverly divided the Indians into two separate races by saying that the Dravidians were South Indians. They said that the Dravidians were the native people of the country and lived in all parts of the country until the Aryans invaded the country from the north and the Dravidians pushed back into the country, leaving them confined to the south while the Aryans reigned North and Central India.
The Indians were told that the North Indians were the descendants of the Aryans while the South Indians were the descendants of the Dravidians. The fact that, aside from dietary habits, there are vast differences in language, culture, art, and dress between the North Indian and South Indian tribes helped confirm this racial distinction, as suggested by the British. The caste system is believed to have been in India, it appeared with the arrival of the Aryans, who selected the classes of Brahmins (priestly class), Kshatriyas (rulers or kings) and Vaishyas (businessmen), leaving the humble category of Sudras (untouchables ) for Dravidians and descendants of Aryans that were the result of crossing Aryans with local Dravidians.
Indian folklore describes the wars between the fair-skinned Aryans and the dark-skinned Dravidians. But the fact that the date of the Aryan invasion of India was around 1500 B.C. contradicts these reports as most of the events of the Hindu religion took place well before this date.
For centuries we have believed that the Aryans were extraterrestrials who invaded India from Iran and southern Russia. They annihilated the Dravidians and drove them down into the mountains and forests. However, this division of the Indians into Aryans and Dravidians does not correspond to the most recent findings of archaeologists. The epic wars of the Ramayana, in which the Aryans fought the demons of the south, followed by the Mahabharata, the epic battle between the Pandavas and the Kauravas, are said to have taken place at least 7,000 years ago well before the probable date of the Aryan invasion.
The Aryan-Dravidian Divide Is A Political Myth
The first thing that strikes you is that the purest Sanskrit names are found in Tamil Nadu and extend to Dravidian political leaders such as Jayalalitha and Karunanidhi. However, this is only the beginning of numerous connections between southern and northern cultures.
If you are looking for the region of India where the ancient Vedic teachings are best preserved, you will find them in Dravidian Kerala, where the Vedic rituals are ancient and fire sacrifices are regularly performed with precision and devotion.
In the south are the largest Hindu temple complexes, dwarfing anything in the north. However, the temples are of the same major deities as Shiva, Vishnu, Devi and Ganesha in the north.
The temples in the south ring with the same Sanskrit chants as in the north, with some chants in Tamil, while in the north some can be heard in Hindi.
Shiva, a Dravidian God?
Dravidian nationalists tell us that Lord Shiva was a Dravidian god dispossessed by the northern Aryans. However, Shiva is the great deity of Varanasi, Kashmir, Kedarnath and Kailas in the north, with the Ganges flowing through his head like a Himalayan god. Varanasi is considered one of the oldest cities in the world.
The great Vedantic teachers of the last 1,500 years came from the south: Shankara from Advaita Vedanta (non-dualistic), Ramanuja from Visishtadvaita Vedanta (non-dualistic. Qualified Dualist)and Madhva of the Dvaita Vedanta (dualistic) school.
If one makes a pilgrimage to the Char Dham in the north, the four Hindu holy sites in the Himalayas, one learns that this Sankara, the great Vedantic guru from Kerala, has large shrines renovated.
Priestly families from the south operate many temples in the Himalayas, such as Badrinath today, where the rawat or chief priest has to be chosen from certain families in Kerala.
Tamil and Sanskrit
Sanskrit learning is best preserved in southern India. Many of the Sanskrit chants used in Hindu rituals across India derive from the masters of the South, beginning with Shankara from Bhaja Govindam to Ganga Stotra. Of course, Tamil and Sanskrit are very different languages. but both have been used in South India for as long as history has been recorded, and shared common scripts such as the ancient Grantha script which gives rise to the modern Tamil script.
Grantha, in turn, originated from the North Indian script Brahmi, which reached Sri Lanka more than 2,500 years ago. Sanskrit has been used alongside Tamil since we can trace the history of the region.
South India as the Bastion of Vedic Culture
Many great Vedantic teachers of modern times have come from the South, including Swami Dayananda (Arsha Vidya), Swami Chinmayananda and Ramana Maharshi.
If one wishes to study traditional Ayurvedic medicine, one will discover the most authentic traditions in the south on which an entire tourism industry is based. Aryan or Hindu culture is much more vibrant in the south, including traditional dances or Bharat Natyam.
Spurious Theories
Behind this idea of the division between Aryans and Dravidians lies the historical debate as to whether the so-called Aryans invaded India from the north, or immigrated to India and pushed the Dravidians south, as Western historians have suggested (it is believed that it is over 3, years old around 1500 BC Its relevance to defining Dravidian versus Aryan culture is difficult to see today.
The origin of the Aryan-Dravidian split had a lot to do with the people of southern India the government of the old Brahmin class also happened in the North, by the way, but we must remember that these were their own local Brahmins who had lived there for many centuries and not a new group of immigrants from the North.
Identifying today's local Tamil Brahmins with the descendants of putative Aryan invaders thousands of years ago has little credibility except as propaganda.
Others raise the question of skin color, which was the former basis of those now disproved by the Aryan and Dravidian races. It is not surprising that the people of equatorial southern India are darker in complexion than those in the north, although northern Indians are often also dark-complexioned.
Some have tried to say that the caste system was racist based on the placement of dark-skinned Dravidians at the bottom and light-skinned Aryans at the top ethnicity.
Such racial theories cannot be found in the texts of pre-colonial India and its racist worldview.
There is little in the so-called Dravidian culture, ancient or recent, that does not have strong connections to the so-called Aryan culture. The rift between Aryans and Dravidians is largely a modern political construction. South Indian culture has always been closely intertwined with Sanskrit, Vedic philosophies, Vedic culture and Yoga.
There are certainly cultural differences in India including between North and South as there are in Europe or any subcontinent.
But there is a common culture going back many centuries that cannot be divided between Aryan and Dravidian theories.
Early India
After the decline of the Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, the political center of India shifted from the Indus to the Ganges valley. The population grew between 4000 B.C. from about 87 million to 225 million. of the world's population lived under the Roman, Han Chinese, and Indian Gupta empires. India's population grew between 300 B.C. and the 18th century. In the second millennium BC. A series of Indo-European-speaking semi-nomadic migrations took place. Similarities with other Indo-European languages such as Avestan in Iran and Ancient Greek and Latin.
The term "Aryan" means "pure" and implied the conscious attempts of the invaders to preserve their tribal identity and roots while maintaining a social distance from the previous inhabitants. People speaking Indo-European (Aryan) languages settled around 1500 BC. in northwestern India that is, after the periods of the Harappan civilizations. The Aryans thrived in the fertile province of modern-day Punjab, which they called the region of the Seven Rivers or "Sapta-Sindhu".
Eventually, the Aryans from the Sapta Sindhu region migrated to the valleys of the Ganga and Yamuna rivers, where they founded several small kingdoms. Around 1000 BC. the Ganges plain was still covered by primeval forests. Around 300 BC. there were hardly any trees left. Around 300 BC c.
The Ganges Valley was perhaps the most populous region on earth with an estimated population of 25 to 50 million people.
Little is known about India's early history. Some scholars believe that ancient Sanskrit history may have been destroyed totally on purpose for some unknown reason. Others believe they were never written down due to the Hindu belief in reincarnation and the cyclical rhythms of nature. Why record history when events will only repeat themselves? The Aryans left little physical evidence of their existence. They did not build large buildings or leave significant archaeological sites. What we know about the ancient Hindu-Aryan civilization is based largely on the sacred texts of the Vedas, secondarily on written heroic myths from half of the first millennium BC.
Aryans
Around 1500 BC C. to 1200 BC. Indo-European-speaking pastoral tribes migrated to the subcontinent from the northwest, arriving via Afghanistan and settling in the middle Ganges valley, adapting to and influencing the cultures then inhabiting the area.
These people were called Aryans. They spoke Vedic Sanskrit, an Indo-European language. Over the next 2,000 years, the Indo-Aryans developed a Brahmanic civilization from which Hinduism developed. From Punjab, they extended eastward into the plain of the Ganges and towards 800 AD.
They settled in Bihar, Jharkhand and Bengal. The first great Aryan kingdom was Magadha, with its capital near present-day Patna;
The founders of Jainism and Buddhism preached there during the reign of Bimbisara (540-490 BC).
Kosala was another kingdom of the time. The Aryans were loosely federated, semi-nomadic, cart-riding, pastoral people that spread east and west from central Asia, carrying their gods from the sky with them. The Aryans first settled in Punjab and then moved to the Ganges valley. They are also ancestors of the Persians, the pre-Homeric Greeks, the Germans and the Celts. The Aryans are considered the first speakers of Vedic Sanskrit, an Indo-European language that formed the basis for all languages in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, as well as most of Europe, is based on linguistic evidence, the Aryans are believed to have originated in the Central Asian steppes. They were led by a warrior aristocracy whose legendary exploits are recorded in the Rig Veda.
The term "Arya" means "noble" in Sanskrit. .” The Aryans introduced the horse-drawn chariot, the Hindu religion, and the sacred books known as the Vedas to modern-day India.
The term “Aryan”
The term "Aryan" has been used by European writers since 1835 but fell out of favor in the mid-20th century due to its association with Nazi propaganda, which portrayed the people of northern and central Europe as the purest Representative. an "Aryan race". Today, when historians and ethnologists speak of Aryans, they make it abundantly clear that they are speaking of speakers of Aryan languages and not of Aryan blood, hair, eyes or other features.
"The term arya in Sanskrit means 'noble', no doubt referring to their dominant position in the society they invaded so long ago. Their descendants today make up the vast majority of the population of Nepal, Pakistan and northern India. , Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, although they do not identify primarily as Aryan.
Although the term "Aryan" has been used by European writers since 1835, it has done has fallen out of favor among more recent scholars because half a century ago it was abused by Nazi propagandists who envisioned northern and central Europeans as the purest representatives of an "Aryan race"." Today, the term "Aryan" is still used in the discussion of early Indian history and relation to the Indo-Aryan language subfamily.
The final word on usage was written by Max Müller over a century ago. : "I have said again and again that when I say Aryans I don't mean blood or bones, hair or skulls; I simply mean those who speak an Aryan language an ethnologist who talks about Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair is as sinful as a linguist who talks about a dolichocephalic dictionary or brachycephalic grammar.
Indo-Europeans
Around 3000 BC C. Indo-Europeans began migrating to Europe, Iran, and India during the Bronze Age, mingling with local populations who eventually adopted their language. In Greece, these people split into fledgling city-states, from which the Mycenaeans and later the Greeks developed. It is believed that these Indo-European peoples were relatives of the Aryans who immigrated to or invaded India and Asia Minor.
The Hittites and later the Greeks, Romans, Celts and almost all Europeans and North Americans descended from Indo-European peoples.
Indo-Europeans are the general term for people who speak Indo-European languages. They are the linguistic descendants of the people of the Yamnaya culture 3600-2300 BC in Ukraine and southern Russia, which took place as part of various migrations in the third, second, and early first millennium BC. BC settled the area from Western Europe to India. C. They are the ancestors of the Persians, the pre-Homeric Greeks, the Germans and the Celts. Indo-European invasions of Iran and Asia Minor (Anatolia, Turkey) began around 3000 BC. before 4500 BC. where they may have been the destroyers of the Vinca culture. Around 2500 BC Iranian tribes entered the plateau that now bears their name in the middle.
Aryan (Indo-European) Invasions (Migrations)
The Aryans, according to some, came to Pakistan in two major waves: one around 2000 B.C. C. and another large one around 1400 AD after being expelled from Iran by people In Pakistan, they were mainly based in Punjab. Over time, they migrated east, driving out the people of the Indus Valley. The Aryans established some great principalities, including Gandhara, but they were never strong enough or united enough to form a large kingdom. There is considerable disagreement as to when the Aryans arrived, how many migrations took place, and whether the migrations were an invasion or a gradual movement of people.
There were two main theories about the early development of early South Asian traditions:
1) The Aryan Migration thesis: groups from the Indus Valley who called themselves "Aryans" (nobility) migrated to the subcontinent and became the dominant cultural power.
2) the cultural transformation thesis: that Aryan culture is a development of Indus Valley culture. According to the Aryan migration thesis, there were no Aryan migrations (or invasions) and the culture of the Indus Valley was an Aryan or Vedic culture.
On the thesis of cultural transformation, which Hinduism derives from its religion recorded in the Veda together with elements of the indigenous traditions they found on 24 August 2009 Until the arrival of Europeans by the sea in the late 15th century and except the Arab conquests of Muhammad bin Qasim in the early 8th century, led the route of the peoples who migrated to India through the mountain passes, among which the Khyber Pass in north-western Pakistan stands out. Although earlier unrecorded migrations may have taken place, the migrations certainly took place in the 2nd millennium BC. Chr. Increases.
The records of these people speaking an Indo-European language are literary, not archaeological, and have been preserved in the Vedas, oral collections of hymns. In the largest of these, the Rig Veda, the Aryan speakers appear as tribal, pastoral, and pantheistic people.
An encyclopedic collection of Hindu legends, myths and genealogy) indicate an eastward movement from the Indus Valley to the Ganges Valley (called the Ganges Valley in Asia) and southward towards at least the Vindhya Range in central India. A political system developed in which the Aryans were dominant but accommodated and absorbed various indigenous peoples and ideas.
The caste system that remained characteristic of Hinduism also evolved. One theory holds that the three highest castes (Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas) were made up of Aryans, while a lower caste, the Sudras, came from indigenous peoples.
In the sixth century B.C., knowledge of the history of India is more concentrated due to the available Buddhist and Jain sources from a later period. North India was populated by a series of small princely states, established in the sixth century BC. rose and fell. It was in this environment that a phenomenon emerged that influenced the history of the region for several centuries: Buddhism. Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, the "enlightened one" (c. 563-483 BC), was born on the Ganges. valley. His teachings were spread in all directions by monks, missionaries and merchants. The Buddha's teachings proved enormously popular in comparison to the darker and more complicated rituals and philosophy of Vedic Hinduism. The original teachings of the Buddha also represented a protest against the inequalities of the caste system and attracts a large following.
Impact of Aryans
The Aryans "introduced to the Indo-Gangetic plains the horse-drawn chariot and Brahmanic religion which we still know from the four sacred books called Vedas. The earlier Indus Valley civilization was probably not Aryan language, it was already destroyed or dying at the time of their arrival. Archaeologically, their early presence in India is marked by the spread of Painted Gray Ware. The lands they occupied were called Aryavarta and are discussed in the literature oldest Sanskrit, which is our main source for the early Aryans.
For many centuries after their arrival On the Indus-Gangetic plain, the Aryans lived as horsemen and herdsmen, clearing patches of forest and inhabiting small villages rather than living in the ancient cities that their ancestors probably helped destroy. It was not until the beginning of the Indian Iron Age (around 700 BC) that the Aryan peoples began to appear; this development assumes a background of plains-based agriculture of the time.
There has been much speculation as to the later development of North Indian society and the subsequent colonization of the subcontinent by the Aryans; on the relations between them and the conquered "Dasas" or "Dasyu" (names mean "slaves" and probably refer to remnants of the earlier Indus Valley population ); and on the rise of the caste system. During the Vedic period (about 1500 to 800 BC) the Aryans developed the enormously elaborate rituals of Brahmanism, the forerunner of Hinduism; and they formed a stratified society in which the beginnings of the caste system were already evident. There was a priestly caste (Brahmana), a noble ruling caste (Rajanya), a warrior caste (Kshatriya) and the slave caste (Sudra). Pre-Moorish Empire (321 to 185 BC).) there was no organized Aryan government with one class of bureaucrats to administer the country throughout India. Instead, there were numerous ruling chiefs (Rajan) who commanded their armies and were assisted by Purohits, men who used their magical abilities to advise and protect the rulers.
As larger kingdoms arose, the Purohita became a combination archbishop and prime minister, consecrating the king, giving him political advice, and making great sacrifices on his behalf. Many of these kingdoms had a significant class of merchants in the cities who already used copper and silver coins. Siddhārtha Gautama, the Buddha, came from the ruling family of one of these kingdoms (Kosala, now in the state of Bihar).
Aryan Settlers
The Aryans settled in Punjab and wrote hymns to nature deities, 1028 of which are recorded in Vedic verses. The "Brahmanas" were born between 800 and 600 BC. written. C. Explain the hymns and speculate on their meaning.
Archaeologists mark the arrival of the Aryans by the presence and spread of their distinctive Painted Gray Ware pottery.
The land they occupied was called Aryavarta and is described in detail in the oldest Sanskrit literature, the main source of information about them. The Aryan settlers grew some wheat and hardly any wheat, but were mainly horsemen and pastoralists. They cleared small patches of forest and founded small towns and villages. They occupied no great cities or towns and left no great cities in ruins Until the Iron Age of India from 700 BC. They did not find really big cities or engage in agriculture. The Aryans were led by a hereditary king and divided into five main tribes. They remained warriors. They fought non-Aryans and they fought each other. They even persuaded non-Aryans to help them fight other Aryans. Tribes.
The war itself was described as "chasing cows". The Aryans were able to unite a variety of ethnic and linguistic groups under their integrated advanced culture, but they did not eliminate the rich diversity and variety that India still finds today. A sedentary lifestyle brought with it more complex forms of government and social patterns. This period saw the development of the caste system and the rise of kingdoms and republics.
The events described in the two great Indian epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, are said to have occurred around this time (1000 to 800 BC)... [Source: Glorious India]The Aryans were divided into tribes that settled in different regions of Northwest India.
Tribal chiefs gradually became hereditary, although the chief usually operated with the help of a committee or the entire tribe. With the specialization of labor, the inner division of Aryan society developed along caste lines. Their social structure mainly consisted of the following groups:
Brahmana (priests), Kshatriya (warriors), Vaishya (peasants) and Shudra (laborers).
It was initially a division of occupations; as such it was open and flexible. Much later, caste status and the corresponding occupation became dependent on birth, and moving from one caste or occupation to another became much more difficult.
Dravidians
When the Aryans came to India, they found people with an advanced civilization there. These people, called Dravidians, lived in cities and farmed. The Aryans gradually conquered the Dravidians and drove some of them south. Eventually, the Aryans extended their dominion over all of India except the south.
Dravidian is the name of a group of linguistically related people in India. They are said to have been the original first settlers of ancient India. Dravidian culture is very diverse, with some groups cultivating more traditional customs such as totemism and matralinealism, while others have developed the lifestyle of modern technological society. The Dravidians are believed to be the descendants of the earliest known inhabitants of India. These include the primitive Bhil and Gond tribes of the central and western mountain forests and the Tamils of the south. The first Dravidians inwere hunters and pastoralists.
It is not known what language they spoke. Some scholars believe that the Indus peoples of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, an ancient civilization dating from 3300 B.C. C. to 1500 AD c., spoke a language belonging to the Dravidian family. This language is believed to have spread south through the Maraashtra, particularly after 1000 BC. along with the horse and the iron. of contacts and intermarriages with other people on the Indian subcontinent. With over 170 million speakers, the Dravidians are now the fourth-largest language group in the world.
The Dravidians are often thought to have created the Indus Valley Civilization and occupied the entire Indian subcontinent when the Indo-Aryans fell out of Afghanistan in 2000 BC. The Dravidians were probably conquered by the Indo-Aryans and are the Dasus of the Vedic scriptures.
Other Dravidians remained a tribal state in central and southern India. The Dravidians in general were gradually Hinduized but retained their languages. The Tamil language is the first of the Dravidian languages to reflect the influence of Hinduism.
Dravidians were traditionally thought to be dark-skinned, while Northern Aryans were fair-skinned. Around 1500 BC. According to some historians, the Aryans conquered the Indus civilizations of Harappan and Mohenjo-Daro and the Dravidian people of South Asia. The caste system is believed to have been introduced to keep the native Dravidians in place for the invading light-skinned Aryans. Higher castes are generally associated with whiter skin and purer Aryan ancestry. The conquering Aryans gave the conquered dark-skinned Dravidians dirtier and less prestigious jobs. Varna, the Hindu word for caste, means color. It may have evolved from something other than skin color, but many think it's an indication of skin color. The Vedas refer to the conquered "Dasas" or "Dasyi" (names mean "slaves" and probably refer to the first Dravidian-speaking people of Indus).
The Dravidian peoples or Dravidians are a language group living in South Asia who predominantly speak one of the Dravidian languages. There are approximately 245 million native speakers of Dravidian languages. Dravidian speakers form the majority of the population of southern India and are native to India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. Dravidian peoples are also present in Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa, Myanmar, East Africa, the Caribbean and the United Arab Emirates through recent migration. Proto-Dravidian may have been spoken in the Indus civilization, indicating a "provisional date from Proto-Dravidian around the early part of the third millennium", after which it branched off into several Dravidian languages.
South Dravidian I (including Pre-Tamil) and South Dravidian II (including Pre-Telugu) separated around the 11th century BC. and the other main branches split off at about the same time. The origins of the Dravidians are a "very complex subject of research and debate". They may have been native to the Indian subcontinent, but West Asian origins or influences have also been suggested.
Its origins are often thought to be related to the Indus Valley Civilization, hence people and language spread from the Indus Valley after the civilization's fall in the early 2nd millennium BC. B.C. East and South. C., [20] [21] some suggest shortly before the arrival of Indo-Aryan speakers[22] with whom they interacted intensely.[23] Genetically, the Ancient Indus Valley People consisted of an Iranian hunter-gatherer related component and an Ancient Ancestral South Indian (AASI) component, while today's Dravidian speakers also have a small portion of steppe herders and additional AASI ancestry.[24][25]The 3rd century BC C. saw the development of great kingdoms in southern India. Medieval South Indian guilds and trade organizations such as "Ayyavole of Karnataka and Manigramam" played an important role in the Southeast. the trade with Asia[26] and the cultural Indianization of the region. The Dravidian visual arts are dominated by the stylized architecture of the temples in the main centers and the making of images in stone and bronze sculptures. Dating from the Chola period, the sculpture has become a notable symbol of Hinduism.
Earliest Evidence of Chariots
“In ancient tombs in the steppes of Russia and Kazakhstan, archaeologists have uncovered the skulls and bones of butchered horses and, perhaps most significantly, traces of spoked wheels. These appear to be chariot wheels, the first direct evidence of the existence of high-performance two-wheelers that transformed the technology of transportation and warfare.
The discovery sheds new light on the contributions to the world history of the energetic pastoral peoples who lived on the vast northern grasslands who viewed as barbarians by their neighbors to the south. From these burial customs, archaeologists conclude that this culture bore a striking resemblance to the people who would call themselves Aryans a few hundred years later and would expand their power, religion, and language with eternal consequences into the region of what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan, and north India The discovery could They also lead to a revision of the history of the wheel, the invention par excellence, and undermine the confidence of scholars in their assumption that the chariot, like so many other cultural and mechanical innovations, arose between the most advanced urban societies of the antiquity Middle East.
A new analysis of material from the tombs shows that these chariots were built more than 4,000 years ago, strengthening the case for their origin in the steppe rather than the Middle East. If the age of the burial sites is correct, Dr David W. Anthony, who directed the dating research, the steppe chariots were at least contemporaneous with, and perhaps even earlier than, the earliest Near Eastern chariots. The first reference to them in the Near East is found in clay seals dated to the century or two years later.
The seal impressions from Anatolia show a light two-wheeled vehicle pulled by two animals and supporting a single figure wielding an ax or hammer."The caution of the scholars tells me that the matter is unresolved ." said dr Anthony, an anthropologist at Hartwick College in Oneonta, N. "But my gut feeling is that the automobile was most likely invented up north first. While Mary Littauer, an independent archaeologist and co-author of Wheeled Vehicles and Ridden Animals in the Ancient Near East (Brill, 1979), reviewed the work of Dr Anthony and praised her, she wasn't willing to admit the point. "It's still debatable," he said, "a spoked wheel isn't necessarily a chariot, just a light chariot on its way to becoming a chariot on the steppes.
After all, shepherds were probably the first to mount and ride horses; like dr Anthony noted in other research reports four years ago, this could have been at least 6,000 years ago. They then developed chariots with solid disc wheels, and many centuries later learned to make wheels with lighter spokes, the revolutionary invention that led to the fast and agile chariot.
The rift between Aryans and Dravidians: How an entire region of India turned against another based on a false racist theory
On August 7, 2018, almost a year ago, M. Karunanidhi, a five-time Prime Minister of Tamil Nadu, died at Kauvery Hospital in Chennai. Politics', the foundations of which go back to the controversial 'Aryan invasion theory'. The Aryan invasion theory has been propagated for decades by those with vested interests, but after a DNA study of skeletons found in Rakhigarhi, the very foundation of, the Aryan invasion theory falls apart.
While the foundations of the Aryan invasion theory were based on "unscientific claims", it was more of a "normative theory" invented to rationalize British rule in India.
After colonizing India, the British wanted to know about the peoples they ruled and this created a new field of study: Indology. The first phase of such Indian studies was about the European interpretation of Indian culture. European scholars and the British government, which encouraged their study of India, wanted to justify British rule over the native population.
European scholars found similarities between Sanskrit, Persian and the Greek language. This prepared the basis for the 'linking' of Indian and European peoples and thus the justification of British rule in India. Then Max Muller proposed the theory of the two Aryan races: the Western and the Eastern. According to Mueller, the western Aryan race conquered and inhabited Europe, while the eastern Aryan race invaded the Indian subcontinent, driving the native population (Dravidian people) to southern India and founding a Vedic civilization.
The area of the invasion theory created a north-of-Southern division of the country. The South Indians were called the "darker-skinned" descendants of a devastated Indus Valley civilization, while the North Indians were the "lighter-skinned" descendants of the Vedic civilization. Southern politics has been cloaked in this failed theory, designed only to fuel dividing lines between North and South.
Politicians in Tamil Nadu have been the first to benefit from this new dividing line. Tamil Brahmins, well versed in Sanskrit, was said to represent the "Aryan race" and civilization. The administration of the Madras Presidency was completely dominated by the Tamil Brahmins, and to eradicate this Brahmin hegemony, the non-Brahmins invoked the Aryan invasion theory. Non-Brahmins suggested that Brahmins emigrate from northern India and establish themselves as the ruling class in the southern states.
The Dravidian movement, which began in the mid-1910s, propagated that the "Aryans" should first conquer their glorious civilization and now they rule the Dravidians through hegemonic representation in government services.M.Nair and Fr. Theagarya Chetty founded the Justice Party to fight for the rights of non-Brahmins.
The first Dravidian moment brought a new leader named Periyar E. Ramasamy who demanded an independent Dravidian state for the speakers of the so-called Dravidian languages: Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada. The Dravidian movement led by Periyar gained prominence in Tamil. Nadu in the 1930s and 1950s, but the other southern states didn't join the bigoted herd.
Periyar created a "Brahmin enemy" for other non-Brahmin castes and this "majority practice" worked very well. He repeatedly expressed his desire to practice an Adolf Hitler-style regime and used the journal he edited to warn Brahmins in Tamil Nadu to learn from the plight of Jews in Nazi Germany and to advocate for one to choose the right course. Periyar has made statements such as: “Brahmin is the root of caste. To eradicate the caste, we must eradicate Brahmins.”In August 1944, Periyar founded the justice party “Dravidar Kazhagham” to advance his intolerant agenda through administrative power, although he never did. A few years after the founding of DK, Periyar married a young Maniammai and named her his successor.
This led to a rebellion by several of his followers, led by C.N. Anndurai and M. Karunanidhi, who was popular screenwriter at the time. and these rebels formed a new party called Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK).DMK is famous for its anti-Hindu and anti-Brahmin bigotry masquerading as Dravidian ideology. This anti-Hindu attitude is evident from the statements made by the late President of the DMKM. Karunanidhi who said: "Lord Rama is a drunkard." The late President also commented that the term "Hindu" means "thief". He said: "Who is a Hindu? You should ask Periyar EVR. A good man would say that the word Hindu means thief.
In 1967 C.N. Annadurai led the DMK, won the general elections in Madras and Annadurai became Prime Minister. Since then, politics in Tamil Nadu has been dominated by DMK and AIADMK (both Dravidian parties), with these parties being elected alternately most of the time. Tamil Nadu politics was also marked by anti-Indian and anti-Hindu sentiments.
The British left created and left behind many flaws in the polity of the Indian state. The two most prominent fault lines are the "rigid" definition of a highly flexible caste system and the other is the north-south divide.
The net result of the DNA study has shown that the premise of the Aryan invasion theory and consequently the Aryan-Dravidian split is wrong. Karunanidhi may not have seen the day when the Aryan invasion theory is finally disproved, but contemporary Tamil Nadu politicians should have got the gist by now. The policies of leaders like MK Stalin and Kamal Haasan could be considered irrelevant as they are based on an incorrect historical theory.
Rewriting Ancient Indian History
With more and more archaeological, genetic, astrological, geological, and scientific data becoming available, it is now clear that the myths about the ARIANS and DRAVIDERS arose out of the average knowledge of foreigners about the ancient Indian past. They interpreted Indian history based on what they saw in Harappa and Mohanjodaro, excluding any other misinterpretations that might have preceded it. A word composed of two Sanskrit roots AA+RI——-AA means NO and RI means common man, as in RIYYA in Old Persian. Hence ARYAN - NO COMMON MAN or simply - meant a NOBLEMAN. Indian scriptures refer to kings and princes and people of high social status. They had nothing RACIAL or ETHNIC about them.
The MYTH of ARYA as a race was created by the Europeans, or specifically the GERMANS, who were looking for a racial identity. Domination. Therefore, when such great archaeological sites as HARAPPA and MOHANJO-DARO were excavated in the early 1920s, they were immediately associated with something larger imported into the Indian continent from outside. People like MAXMULELLER and MORTIMER WHEELER could not believe that ANCIENT INDIA could have created such ARCHITECTURAL MARVELS OF CITY LIFE.
The world that existed before. This belief could have arisen out of an event of GEOLOGICAL SHOCK that could have caused a serious catastrophe for people and geography. It supports my point about the REVERSE JOURNEY of the NAGAS to their original land and the cause of SARASWATI losing its two tributaries i.e. YAMUNA and SATLUJ.
In time and space, Western scholars, therefore, reduced everything to within 2000 BC. C. and originally from Central Asia. Therefore, based on the weakest foundations, the theory of ARIAN INVASION and CONQUEST was constructed.
When a mountain of corpses was found in MOHANJO-DARO.It was believed that they may have been massacred by the HIGHER AREN. This myth led to the rise of a SUPERMYTH about the supremacy and superiority of a great ARIO & VEDIC KNOWLEDGE imported from abroad. New archeological excavation and interpretation of ORAL HISTORY reveal that both the MYTH and SUPERMYTH were cruel jokes about the ANCIENT GREATNESS OF INDIA.
The word DRAVIDIANS is a derivative of the ancient Sanskrit root - VID - meaning water - RI – means people and DRI – to have/possess/live, as in Old Persian DRIn-CHE-SHAK, (Have no doubts) Thus, DRAVID meant people who lived in the coastal region or the water. FIVE regions were described as DRAVIDAN in ancient writings: Maharashtra, Gujarat, TAMIL NADU, ANDHRA, and KARNATAKA.
It was the region closely linked to the now-flooded Sunda land. It is also called the LOST LIMURIAN ISLAND or KUMARI KANDHAM in ancient Tamil texts. his bool TANTARIKAVARTIYA. He used the term to describe the people from these five regions who, as mentioned above, DO NOT SPEAK SANSKRIT. The word DRAVID could also be a derivation of the Sanskrit word DRAMILLA or DRAMIL or even TAMIL. , Robert Caldwell, who tried to relate it to ethnicity and race because he found similarities in the grammar and dialects of 73 variations of the TAMIL LANGUAGE, including BARHUI spoken in BALOCHISTAN and Afghanistan.
However, he could not connect it to the NAGA CIVILIZATION of ancient India that left SUBMEGED SUNDALAND at the end of the last Ice Age.
The people of Sundaland were called NAGAS because NAAG also means BODY OF WATER in ancient Sanskrit. They are the people who founded the FIRST HUMAN AGRICULTURAL CIVILIZATION. When interpreting the Harappan script, one should know that the Harappan used the natural symbols of fish and stars to develop their script as they were natural objects seen by them as they lived near bodies of water. It confirms my research and interpretation that the Harappan were SUNDALAND NAGAS who left the coastal areas in the year at the end of the last Ice Age when SUNDALAND arrived submerged due to rising sea levels with melting glaciers and the advent of rivers and riverine civilizations. SUNDA LAND was the cradle of HUMAN civilization.
Vedic knowledge was developed by and with these people as they migrated north and west at the end of the LAST ICE AGE (8000-10000 BC). They established RIVER CIVILIZATIONS along the Saraswati and Indus rivers. Archaeologically, 75% of the excavations of ancient settlements dating back to the Harappan period have been found in the ancient course of the Saraswati River. Therefore, IVC really should be the SARASWATI VALLEY CIVILIZATION of NAGAS.
It is they who migrated north and later returned some 4000 years later due to geological upheaval. It is these people that some historians refer to as ARIANS and the rest of the people of ancient India as Dravidians. But this is half a fragment of ancient Indian history.
The Aryan Invasion Myth
One of the most interesting mysteries in archeology, yet to be fully resolved, concerns the alleged Aryan invasion of the Indian subcontinent. The story goes like this: The Aryans were a tribe of European-speaking, horse-riding, Indian nomads who lived on the arid steppes of Eurasia. Around 1700 CE, the Aryans invaded and destroyed the ancient urban civilizations of the Indus Valley. The civilizations of the Indus Valley were far more civilized than any other horse nomad, having a written language, agricultural skills, and living a truly urban existence. Some 1,200 years after the alleged invasion, the descendants of the Aryans are said to have written the classical Indian literature known as the Vedic manuscripts.
Aryans And the History of Archaeology
During the 19th century, many European missionaries and imperialists traveled the world in search of conquest and converts. One country that had much experience with this type of exploration was India (including what is now Pakistan). Some of the missionaries were also antique dealers by vocation, and one of these companions was the French missionary Abbé Dubois (1770-1848). His manuscript on Indian culture is unusual reading today; the good Abbé tried to reconcile what he understood about Noah and the deluge of what he read in the great literature of India. It didn't fit well, but it did describe the Indian civilization of the time and provided some poor translations of the literature.
It was Abbot's work, translated into English by the British East India Company in 1897 and with a laudatory foreword by the German archaeologist Max Muller, that formed the basis of the Aryan invasion story, not the Vedic manuscripts themselves. Long ago I noticed the similarities between Sanskrit, the ancient language in which classical Vedic texts are written, and other Latin-based languages such as French and Italian. A century and was recognized as a truly advanced civilization, a civilization that is not mentioned in the Vedic manuscripts. In some circles this was widely taken as evidence that an invasion by people related to the peoples of Europe had taken place, destroying the previous civilization and creating the second great civilization of India.
Flawed Arguments and Recent Investigation
The serious problems with this argument are that there is no evidence of invasion in the Vedic manuscripts; and the Sanskrit word Aryan means noble, not a higher cultural group. Second, recent archaeological evidence suggests that the Indus Civilization was brought to an end by a drought coupled with a devastating flood rather than a violent confrontation. Recent archaeological evidence also shows that many of the so-called "Indus" valley peoples lived along the Sarasvati River, which is mentioned as homeland in Vedic manuscripts. There is no biological or archaeological evidence of a mass invasion by humans of any other race. Recent studies of Aryan/Dravidian myths include language studies. The seal language of the Indus Valley has been deciphered and it has been proved that the origin of the Indus script is essentially the origin of the Sanskrit script.
Excavations at the Gola Dhoro site in Gujarat have shown that it also contains evidence of Vedic civilization. Born from a colonial mindset corrupted by a Nazi propaganda machine, the area becomes the invasion theory finally undergoing a radical reappraisal by all the pioneering archaeologists and using the Vedic documents themselves. Ancient language studies, physical evidence unveiled by new archeological excavations, and the rediscovery of the ancient Indian Saraswati River provide the basic tenets of the Dravid-Aryan theory and the Destroys theory of the Aryan invasion in question.
Saraswati River
It is known that in the Rig Veda, the honor of the greatest and holiest of all rivers was given not to the Ganges but to the Saraswati, which is now a dried-up river but was once a mighty river that flowed out of the river Himalayas to the ocean through the desert of Rajasthan. The Ganges is mentioned only once while Saraswati is mentioned at least 60 times. Extensive research by the late Dr Wakankar has shown that the Saraswati changed course several times, and around 1900 BC Chr. completely dried up. The most recent satellite data combined with archaeological field investigations have shown that the Rig Vedic Saraswati existed well before 3000 BC. and had ceased to be a perennial river. c.Satellite photos show that a large prehistoric river, more than 7 kilometers wide, actually flowed through the area at some point. This was the Saraswati described in the Rig Veda. Numerous archaeological sites have also been found along the course of this great prehistoric river, confirming the Vedic accounts. The great Saraswati that flowed "from the mountain to the sea" now belongs to a date well before 3000 BC. This means that the Rig Veda covers the geography of North India well before 3000 BC. describes. c.All this shows that the Rig Veda is no later than 3500 BC. must have existed.
Conclusion
Put simply, the mix of Iranian farmers and South Asian hunter-gatherers was the first to produce the population of the Indus Valley. Then, around the second millennium B.C. Around 3000 BC, shepherds from the steppes migrated south into the subcontinent and encountered the people of the Indus Valley in a way that likely caused an upheaval. Subsequently, some of the Indus Valley population appears to migrate further south and mix more with South Asian hunter-gatherers, creating a South Indian population of ancestry.
In the north, on the other hand, herdsmen from the steppes mixed with the people of the Indus Valley to form the ancestral North Indian group. Most of the later South Asian populations are the result of the further mixing of North Indian and South Indian ancestry.
It also means that the inhabitants of the Indus Valley Civilization form the bridge to the more existent Native American populations. "By jointly analyzing the ancient DNA and genomic data of several modern South Asians, we show that people related to the Indus River periphery are the most important source of ancestry in South Asia." the term is not used.
The introduction of steppe herders to the subcontinent may have been in as we know it. The Indo-European language and culture spread as the same multitude of steppe peoples moved east and west into Europe. In addition, there may be a connection between the migration to the steppes and the priest's caste and culture.
Scientists say they have found 10 out of 140 Native American groups who have more Steppe than Indus Valley ancestry.
These two groups were titled "Brahmin_Tiwari" and "Brahmin_UP". More generally, groups with priestly status appear to have a higher degree of the ancestral steppe, suggesting that people with this admixture may have been instrumental in the spread of Vedic culture. at least on a genetic level. Researchers say that Iran's best farmers do not have a significant admixture of South Asian hunter-gatherers, "so the patterns we see are determined by gene flow into South Asia, not the other way around."
Nevertheless, there is evidence of human movement from the Indus Valley to the Turan region, based on data from the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex. The ancestry of the locals indicates a very small number of South Asian hunter-gatherer mixes, and the presence of three outliers is taken as evidence of the migration of the Indus Valley population to Turan.
The ancient history of India was among the peoples inhabiting the lost lands of SUNDALAND, also called KUMARI KANDHAM and LIMURIA, even before Harappa and IVC. These worshipers of Lord Shiva were the creators of Vedic knowledge. It was the FIRST HUMAN CIVILIZATION in the world. that the ancient history of India after the NAGA CIVILIZATION or LAST ICE AGE is a history of MIGRATIONS, RETURN MIGRATIONS AND CROSS MIGRATIONS. HIGHLANDS and returned under different identities.
Regarding the confusion surrounding the merger of ANI and ASI, I would like to reiterate that it took place 40,000 years ago. It took another 20,000 years for the first human civilization to develop in these coastal regions.
Interestingly, intermingling ceased in India around 1,500 years ago, during the Gupta period, when a particularly strict understanding of hereditary caste lines and endogamy developed - the absence of intermarriage among thousands of groups of caste jati became the social norm.
However, over time each group in the subcontinent has mixed to some degree, such that there is ancestral DNA in Afghans and steppe DNA in Tamil Nadu peoples of the southern tip of India. The social, regional and cultural implications of Indian genetics and their relation to caste will be the subject of the next part of this series.
By Harshit Mishra | April 16, 2023, | Writer at Gurugrah_Blogs.
