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invention of about second millennium BC. He claims that the ara word for
spoke in RV is later interpolation or alternatively originally ara could have meant
something else other than spokes.
Here, we must consider few facts. Vedic Ratha could have been even a simple
bullock cart or wagon, sometimes drawn by the horses as per need. Oxen werent
unknown to the Vedic tribes, hence to move heavy loads bulls too could have been
used alternatively to pull carts or wagons. World civilizations have used different
animal, available in their regions, to draw the carts or chariots. There is nothing
special about horses and chariots, whether spoke-wheeled or not, to make some
group of the people superior over others. It also is but natural that the solid wheels
gradually would have been replaced with spoked wheels for making them lighter.
However, till recently solid-wheel carts too were in vogue in India. If Rig Vedic
Ratha just meant cart and not the chariot, as some indigenous Aryan Theorists
claim, it will just prove that the Rig Veda had no vocabulary to denote carts or else
they could not differentiate between the chariots and carts.
Which tribe or civilization first invented spoked wheel cannot be proved
conclusively! David Anthony admits that there is no proof where originally the
wheel was invented and wool was brought in use for cloth! 2 Hence building some
theory on pre-conceived notions could prove to be dangerous to draw any
conclusion.
The only intention, it seems, Kazanas wants to discard the previous ideas about the
swifter horse-drawn spoked-wheel chariots of the Vedic people, as mentioned in
the RV, to take back period of the RV to pre-Harappan era, when spoke-wheeled
vehicles were yet to be invented! However, he knows he is playing on a flimsy
ground and do not hesitate to admit that, The spoked wheel poses, in fact, no
problem for dating the RV. There are other more clearcut types of evidence.
And what are those proofs?
Claim 2)- Kazanas claim that many features of the Harappan culture are absent
from RV and hence RV must be pre-Harappan! For example, he states, RV doesnt
know of fired bricks, urbanization, cotton etc. those were common features of IGC.
He claims that the pur of RV doesnt mean necessarily town or fort. He asserts,
This is a very general misconception. In the RV pur never means anything other
than an occult, magical, esoteric defense or stronghold which is not created nor
ever destroyed by humans.
Now, for time being, let us consider that the RV did not know towns or fortified
cities or forts as the term pur might denote. But how does it prove RV to be preHarappan? There were several civilizations even during the beginning of Common
Era those did not reside in the towns. Every civilization has its own peculiar
lifestyles depending on their psychological moulds and therefore the preferred
ways to lead the life. Tarkateertha Laxmanshatri Joshi has stated that even during
Brahmana era, Vedic people showed dislike towards urban life and preferred to
delve in the villages. 3 It does not mean that the other contemporary societies too
led the life in same fashion!
RV indeed knew the towns having as much as hundred gates those were destroyed
by Indra. (RV 10.99.3). These could be exaggerated descriptions, but certainly
these wouldnt have come out of sheer imagination of the Vedic seers. Rather the
struggle of the Vedic people seems to be with the people those delved in the purs
but it is not indicated anywhere that the Vedic people too resided in some kind of
purs.
What we just can deduce that the Vedic peoples lifestyle preferred village-like tiny
settlements to reside rather than urban centers. Purs of Vedic era and their region
may not have been as big as of Harappans, but the Vedic people certainly knew to
differentiate the pur (urban centers) from Vish (rural settlement). RV knows purs
but not similar to the urban centers of IGC. The purs of RV are made of the stones,
not of the bricks like of IGC. This is simply because they never were part of the
IGC.
Had they been the part of it, when pre-Harappan people gradually started building
the architectural monuments, the process of urbanization would certainly reflect
somewhere in RV or post RV literature. The technological advancements that
feature the IGC too would find mention here and there. IGC didnt form as a
sudden event but was a gradual process through constant development through
technological advancement. But Vedic literature is silent on these major
advancements that the IGC people achieved!
Apart from this, waning of IGC that too continued for several hundred years till its
final collapse, too, finds no slightest mention in RV or post Vedic literature.
Decline of a civilization, to the people those were part of it, must have been a
socio-psychological setback because of the unfortunate, inevitable, forced changes
exerted on them. This change too nowhere reflects in the Vedic literature. The
dramatic change IGC underwent after gradual climatic changes, from urban centers
to rural settlements, couldnt have been that easy to face and accommodate with.
But it is completely absent from any of the Vedic literature.
If same art is applied, some or other Vedic description of the objects can be, no
matter how forcibly, identified with the finds from any civilization to make Vedic
people founders of it. What one may need is to draw any meaning and deny any
Kazanas plays with the word Dvaya too of Atharva Veda and connects it with
the motif on a seal, of two headed Bovine-like (Actually similar to the Unicorn)
animal and Pipal tree growing out of it! However, the motif in question is not of
the two headed animal at all but the unicorn-like long necked animal-heads set
artistically to form an aesthetic design, representing a mirror image of a onehorned animal-neck and tree. The wonder Kazanas make is that he claims this
motif could be symbol of OM!
Interestingly the seals, a major feature of IGC, dont find any mention at all in RV
or post RV literature. Kazanas claim that some IGC features are present in post RV
literature, such as bricks, rice etc. However, if post-RV literature is not only
contemporary but of the people those were part of it, why would, at the least,
disappearance of these vital features from that literature?
The fact is, post-RV literature is of the time when seal making had seized to be in
the IGC for technological shifts and end of the foreign trade with Mesopotamia and
other civilizations for many reasons, such as global climatic changes and political
upheavals. Since it remained no longer the practice of the civilization, there
naturally wouldnt have been any mention in the post Vedic literature. Rather
Rigveda shows its geography being south Afghanistan, not IGC.
Hence fixing age of the Brahmanas and other post- RV literature contemporary to
the mature IGC period is not correct. Rather it suggests that the Brahmana era is of
the far later times, about 1000 BC or even later, when the IGC was flourishing in
new forms maintaining inherent traits of the past and had coped up with the
changed climatic conditions!
This is why, even if RV is considered to be pre-Harappan creation, it doesnt prove
at all that the Vedic Aryans were present in Indus region at that point of time and
even later as none of the IGC progress and later setbacks reflect anyway in that
literature.
Claim 4)- Further, Kazanas use astronomical references, just like Tilak and Jacoby
had used, to substantiate his claim that the RV can be older than the 3000 BC.
Satapatha Brahmana makes a reference that the Krittikas (Pleiades) do not swerve
from the east. The verse of SB goes like this, And again, they do not move away
from the eastern quarter, whilst the other asterisms do move from the eastern
quarter. Thus his (two fires) are established in the eastern quarter: for this reason
he may set up his fires under the Krittiks. (SB 2.1.2.3, Trans.: Julius Eggeling,
1892.)
settled in this area no large perennial river had flown there for a long time. (p.
91)
Bryant quotes Francfort for his earlier expedition in Ghaggar channels , The team
included a strong geo-archaeological element that concluded that the actual large
paleo courses of the river have been dry since the early Holocene period or even
earlier (Francfort 1985, 260). Ironically, the findings of the French team have
served to reinforce the mythico-religious tradition of Vedic origins. Rajaram's
reaction (1995) to the team's much earlier date assigned to the perennial river is
that this can only mean that the great Sarasvati that flowed from the mountain to
the sea must belong to a much earlier epoch, to a date well before 3000 bce. 5
Early Holocene period would mean about 12000 to 10,000 years ago. Francfort is
clear in his observations and conclusions. Still Kazanas seem to twist the facts.
Rajarams remarks, as quoted by Bryant, makes it clear that how the attempts are
made to connect anyhow Ghaggar with Sarasvati and stretching back the RV era
substantially before Harappan era to claim IGC! Unfortunately Kazanas too is no
exception.
CONCLUSION:
Kazanas does not prove beyond doubt that the IGC features are reflected anywhere
in Brahmanas or other post-Vedic literature and that the era of RV was preHarappan. Vedic people coming across cotton, fired bricks for altars does not make
them part of the IGC; it only does prove that the later composers of the Vedic
literature had come across those features only in post-Harappan era, in far later
times. The IGC was then already shaped up in Gangetic plains taking new forms
based on the foundation of the waned IGC when Vedic adherents came across it.
Ignorance of cotton, rice etc. to RV can only be attributed to the fact that the
regions Vedic people had occupied didnt grow cotton but produced wool from the
ships, to be used for cloths. The Vedic river Parusni derives its name from the
flocks of wool. (Parus - flocks, Urna- Wool would mean flocks of the wool.)
This river cannot be equated with Ravi but some river from Gandhar region. 6 RV
is well aware of the woolen cloth, not cotton.
However, in absence of any proof that would indicate mass migration in India at
any time since +7000 BC, it only can be derived that the Vedic tradition traveled to
India by some faithful Vedic preachers those continued compositions of the postVedic literature while spreading out the religion. By that time IGC had lost its past
glory, urban centers had shifted towards Gangetic plains, the situation which is
well reflected in Brahmanas and later literature.
Kazanas attempts to stretch back Rig Vedic period substantially only because it
doesnt know any of the Harappan features is thus becomes untenable!
References:
1) Rigveda is pre-Harappan by Nicholas kazanas. June 2006. Online available at
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/41692083?
sid=21105802145531&uid=4&uid=70&uid=3738256&uid=2129&uid=2
2) The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian
Steppes Shaped the modern world, by David W. Anthony, Pub.: Princeton University
Press, 2007, p. 34 and 59-77)
3) Vedic Sanskruticha Vikas. by Tarkateertha Laxmanshastri Joshi, Pub.:
Pradnyapathashala Mandal, third edition, 1996, p. 35.
4) The Vedas: An Introduction to Hinduisms Sacred Texts, By Roshen Dalal, pub.:
Penguin, 2014.
5) The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate, by
Edwin Bryant, Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 167-68.
6) Vedic Index of Names and Subjects, Volume 1, By Arthur Anthony Macdonell &
Arthur Berriedale Keith, Indian edition, pub. Motilal Banarasidas Publishers Pvt.
Ltd.,1995, p. 499-500.
(Also read Origins of the Vedic Religion and Indus-Ghaggar Civilisation by Sanjay
Sonawani, Prajakta Prakashan, 2015.)