HISTORY 

ANCIENT HISTORY OF INDIA

Ideological fixation

Ancient history of India is beset with ideological fixation and rigidity. On one side are European scholars who have a long history of historical research on ancient India. They are supported in India by Marxist historians. Their principal bias is regarding the origin of Indian people. Their contention is that India has been a land of migration where three sets of people, the dravidians (migrating from Persian highland and bringing the Bronze Age Indus civilisation) the Aryans ( migrating from Eurasian steppes and responsible for Iron Age civilization)and    Austroasiatics migrating from southeastasia ( responsible for bringing rice cultivation from China to Gangetic valley) are the principal actors. As opposed to this the nationalistic school which has originated in last decade asserts that Indian culture and people are indigenous with unbroken link from prehistoric times.

Toba super volcanic eruption and jwalapuram

The Toba supervolcano in Indonesia erupted 74000 yrs ago. Its volcanic ash covered entire region from east Africa to Southeast Asia. The animal and plant life was largely destroyed in India due to it. The evidence was found in a village called Jwalapuram in Andhra padesh ,India. There is a layer of ash which corresponds in depth to the volcanic eruption of Toba. Human  stone tools belonging to middle Stone Age have been found below the ash layer corresponding to archaic humans around 76000 years ago.Above the ash layer corresponding to 40000 years ago microlithic tools belonging to modern humans have been found. These people were the original Indians.

Rigvedic river saraswati

 The Rigveda ,which was composed by ancient Indians after the last glaciation which ended 10000 yrs ago gives a description of rivers in northern India. Among other rivers it describes a river Saraswati which was the widest of them all It was supposed to lie between Sutlej and Yamuna rivers. Today there is no such river in existence but dry paleo channels of an ancient river have been discovered exactly in this location. It has been estimated that due to change in monsoon rainfall and tectonic shifts ,this river gradually dried up. The Rigvedic description of saraswati as  a tempestuous river would therefore place the rigvedic people around 6000BC. By 2000BC it had become a small stream and with stagnant ponds in between. This description of the dying river occurs in Mahabharata by Balaram.

  The plants which are found in abundant numbers and described in Rigveda are those belonging to a temperate climate,birch and cedars. During ice age Northern Europe and Asia was covered in an ice sheet.The temperate zone had shifted south to a horizontal belt from North Africa ,Middle East and India. The presence of such plants indicates a time for Rigveda immediately following the withdrawal of ice age .

The Indus saraswati civilization

Archaeologists have discovered huge number of settlements  along the banks of Indus River and extant river saraswati. The oldest settlements are of 7000 BC.The mature period of urbanization is supposed to be from 3500 to 2000BC.Some of the cities discovered are Harappa, mohenjodero along Indus River and Rakhigarhi  lothal along saraswati river. Numerically about two thirds of the settlements are along river saraswati and rest along banks of Indus river. Archaeologically many of these settlements have high degree of urban planning including paved streets ,granary,public baths .

 These urban settlements were preceded by a long period by villages which ultimately developed trade ways and markets ,developing into cities.This long period of rural settlements along the river saraswati probably corresponded to the rigvedic period

The Puranic kinglists

The puranas were composed much later than vedas. However though vedas are mainly religious texts puranas have diverse information regarding geography and historical list of kings of ancient India.Puranas give a description  of many regions outside India including Central Asia and Persia attesting to the fact of cultural contact between the regions.According  to historian Pargiter, information of king lists in puranas are authentic .The first king is named Manu and all king lines are descended from him.Both vedas and puranas were composed at a time when information and history was transmitted across generations in oral form . Oral memory typically cannot trace history beyond a few thousand years.Beyond this time period frequently mythological figures come in.. In the absence of writing the list of kings morever undergoes duplication and overlap.Manu’s descendants founded cities in the Gangetic valley, Ayodhya ,Pratisthan which still exist today by these names. Morever archaeology has not been able to establish the antiquity of these cities  beyond 2000BC.Puranic history thus probably covers the period of late saraswati civilization .During this period a two hundred year drought led to abandonment of settlements along the Indus River . The saraswati had already dried by 2000BC.So migration of people took place towards the Gangetic valley and Manu may have led it.

 Haryana and Aryans.

According to Puranic kinglists the Arya were a tribe along the confluence of river Drishtavati and saraswati in present day Haryana. They were surrounded by other tribes whom they called non Aryans. The Aryans had sages or Rishis and kings to lead them. The Rishi’s lived in ashrams along the banks of the river. They composed hymns that was transmitted orally through their pupils. The hymns were in praise of fire,water and they respected them because their survival depended upon them. The respect eventually turned to ceremonies in their honour. 

  The Aryan tribe was extremely successful in imposing its ceremonies on nearby non Aryan tribe.They founded the Vedic religion where the nonaryan Gods were equal to Aryan Gods and all were equal when they sat around the sacrificial altar. This acceptance of the religion of surrounding tribes profoundly  affected the inclusive character  of Aryan religion and is a distinctive feature of subsequent Indic religions including Buddhism and Jainism. This acceptance also helped the Aryan religion to gradually spread all over north India. The Aryan tribes considered  themselves living in the land of seven rivers. Initially these seven rivers were branches of river saraswati itself. With expansion along north India the rivers now included river Indus and its five  tributaries,river .ganga and Yamuna .

  Rishi Agastya is credited with spreading the Aryan religion to south of Vindhya mountains.

Mittani kingdom and aryans

The Saraswati Harappa civilization had a written script which was probably pictographic and logographic.Informationwas probably transmitted orally across generations as long written texts of that period have not been found. The Brahmi script probably was derived from the harappan script but was not ready by 500BC.It was only after 500BC that the vedas and puranas were written down from their oral form. 

    However the Aramaic script had been invented in Middle East by 1200BC.Even before that the cuneiform script in which long texts have been discovered were written in Mesopotamia.One of these texts in the mittani kingdom in turkey mentions about kings with Aryan names ruling over them. The Aryans are described as expert in driving chariots and fighting with bows and arrows.This is the only hard evidence of Aryans and Sanskrit their language in the world. The sanskrit words used in Mittani texts is not archaic Vedic Sanskrit but Sanskrit of later times. The Indians who migrated to turkey thus were preceded with a long history of Sanskrit speaking Aryans in India itself. Thus old archaic Sanskrit or the language of Rigveda is  definitely older than 3000BC.

The genetic and cultural continuity

Whenever an external invasion or migration occurs on a massive scale sufficient to change the demography and language of the incident population there is discontinuiy in the genetic pool and cultural artifacts like pottery.Thus when the anglosaxonsinvaded Britain after the departure of Romans there is a discontinuity in the gene pool as well as cultural artifacts of that period.

   The genetic pool as well as cultural artifacts  in Indian subcontinent show continuity till about 500BC. Thereafter historical evidence of Persian ,Greek and Saka invasions are there to account for it.

Ack:Aryans and the Indus civilization (Michel Danino),Ancient Indian historical tradition (F E pargiter),Early Indians(Tony Joseph),Land of the seven rivers(sanjeev Sanyal)