Ethnogenesis of the Indus-Sarasvatī civilization
Sumeria, Elam, BMAC, Aryan, Dravidian, and Munda
["Ethnogenesis of Indus-Sarasvatī civilization" has been visited 221 times since 10 March 2007]
[Title is tentative—Digest is still being compiled, reformatted, copyedited and proofed – Sunthar]
This digest on
deciphering the nature of the Indus-Sarasvatī civilization—Part I of which
begins and ends with (a discussion of) Edwin Bryant’s book on the current
stalemate between the Aryan Migration Theory (AMT) and the Out-of-India Theory
(OIT)—is best understood against the larger backdrop of the ongoing debates
around the ethnogenesis of ‘Aryan’ identity in the Indian subcontinent in
relation to the purported ‘Indo-European’ (linguistic) heritage on the one hand
and ‘indigenous’ (Dravidian, Munda) cultures on the other. The initial exchanges
at the (now suspended)
I have inserted introductory comments to contextualize some of the posts [Do let me know if your views have been inadvertently omitted or distorted: this is an evolving archive!]. Having decided to make this archive available to the public, I would like to offer some concise clarifications—a conceptual grid as it were—of my own take on the various perspectives that are under scrutiny in this discussion:
AIT/AMT versus VHT/OIT:
Sumeria, BMAC,
and Indus-Sarasvatī:
Dravidian, Munda, and Indo-European:
Aryan Acculturation Theory (AAT):
Related threads at svAbhinava:
This compilation will be
eventually complemented by others including those listed above; in the meantime
please check out the (incomplete)
Index to threads below on “Ethnogenesis of Indus-Sarasvatī (Part I)” dialogue:
FW: Taoism & Art; Happy New Year
nakSatra/xieu—prehistoric relations between India/China (&
South-East Asia)
FW: nakSatra/xieu—prehistoric relations between
India/China (& South-East Asia)
Indo-Tibetan origins for North American Indian culture?
Religio-cultural affinities between Tibeto-Burmans (in
India) and Native Americans
What is the underlying 'ethnicity' Abhinava-Bhairava's
world-view?
Edwin Bryant’s book: the inadequacy of both AMT/OIT
approaches
Does Koenraad Elst (really) espouse the Out-of-India
Theory (OIT) of Aryan migrations?
Re: Rediscovering Sarasvati’s cerebral tongue—Sanskrit and
world culture
Austric contribution to Vedic and Indian
civilization—introducing Paul Manansala Kekai
Taking a ride across the Milky Way with Abhinava on
Sarasvatī's peacock...
Re: Indo-Aryan Tradition During Indus Urban Phase?
Re: Wheels, Chariots, Horses, Rinos
On the underlying (often unconscious) ‘racist’ bias of
Indo-European studies...
The Routes of Indo-Aryan Migrations (Cyril Babaev)—what
about back-influence from BMAC II?
Transgressive underpinnings of divine kingship: the
‘Indo-Mediterranean’ sacred bull
FW: Transgressive underpinnings of divine kingship: the
‘Indo-Mediterranean’ sacred bull
A breakthrough in Indus Valley civilization studies
Re: A breakthrough in Indus Valley civilization studies
Re: A breakthrough in Indus Valley civilization studies
Re: A breakthrough in Indus Valley civilization studies
Re: A breakthrough in Indus Valley civilization studies
Re: A breakthrough in Indus Valley civilization studies
Re: A breakthrough in Indus Valley civilization studies
Re: A breakthrough in Indus Valley civilization studies
Re: A breakthrough in Indus Valley civilization studies
Re: A breakthrough in Indus Valley civilization studies
Re: A breakthrough in Indus Valley civilization studies
[The Taoism and Art exhibition was the occasion to explore prehistoric Sino-Indian relations]
Subject:
From: Visuvalingam,
Sunthar
Sent: Saturday,
January 13, 2001 5:16 PM
To: Liung Cheong
Poh (E-mail)
Hi Cheong Poh,
I got to visit the Taoism and Art exhibition at the
Chicago Institute of Art just before catching my flight on the 15th to
Sunthar
Subject:
FW: Taoism & Art;
Happy New Year
From: Liung Cheong
Poh
Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2001 1:14 AM
To:
Visuvalingam, Sunthar
Dear Sunthar,
The beautiful catalog arrived yesterday—thank you very much—it is truly a collector's item—only managed a quick browse last night before retiring.
>
>
From that lightning browse last night, I was also struck by the worship of stellar deities, in particular the Dipper (Ziwei). The book you read recently suggests that the Chinese astrological system may be traced to Indian origins—are there clear similarities in the 2 astrological systems to suggest this or has the author reached this conclusion based on other historical information?
I remember that you had said in a previous email that your past was catching up with you—care to elaborate—and how are you handling this?
Once again, thank you for a lovely book,
Best regards and happy New Year,
Cheong Poh
[…and to introduce my recent readings on the Munda/Tibeto-Burman heritage from Bernard Sergent]
Subject:
nakSatra/xieu—prehistoric
relations between India/China (&
From: Visuvalingam,
Sunthar
Sent: Sunday, January 28, 2001 3:46 PM
To: Liung Cheong
Poh (E-mail)
Cc: [....]
Dear Cheong Poh,
Having finally received my own copy of Bernard Sergent's Genesis of India after Elizabeth's return from Paris (she left the earlier copy with Félix in Madrid as he was likewise fascinated by my readings from it...), I've finally found some time to revisit the section you've queried me about. So doing, I've discovered even more interesting stuff in a later chapter!
Within the Indo-European belt that extended from
India all the way across central Asia to the Atlantic coast of Europe, the
astronomical system that plots the lunar trajectory across the 27 (later 28)
constellations (nakSatra) is peculiar to India.
It's not found in the earliest Indo-Aryan document, viz. the Rig-Veda, except in
its 10th (i.e., the latest) book. This creation of the prior
I've myself been long intrigued by the striking
similarity of motifs between Indian and native American mythologies, and have
drawn on these parallels in my work (even in my interpretation of ritual
laughter). However, my suspicion is that the more sophisticated
elaboration/codification of these common beliefs in the Indian
sacrificial (brāhmana) and later texts
were probably not direct borrowings by the Indo-Aryan speakers from prior Munda
populations. Instead, these Munda elements would have been assimilated, refined,
and systematized by the
>
>
Enjoy the Taoism catalog!
Sunthar
P.S. You can easily see how my past is catching up with me... :-)
Subject:
FW:
nakSatra/xieu—prehistoric relations between India/China (&
From: Sunthar
Visuvalingam
Sent: Sunday, July 22, 2001 5:20 AM
To: Koenraad
Elst;
Dear Koenraad,
Considering your background in Chinese studies as
well, I wonder whether you've visited the exhibition on Taoism and Art which has (had?) been showing at the
Regards!
Sunthar
[The whole of the thread above was appended on 16 Dec. 01 by Sunthar in response to Stuart’s post below]
Subject:
Indo-Tibetan
origins for North American Indian culture?
From: Stuart
Sovatsky
Date:
Sun Dec 16, 2001; 4:05 pm
Anyone
have references for Indo-Tibetan pre-historic migration to
Thanx, Stuart
Subject:
Religio-cultural
affinities between Tibeto-Burmans (in
From: Sunthar
Visuvalingam
Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2001 6:45 PM
To: Yoga
Psychology
Check out Bernard Sergent, La Genčse de l'Inde, which talks about how the Munda/Tibeto-Burman populations share common
heritage with the (yellow races of East Asia and the) red races of the
Koenraad Elst had a long and informative (though polemical) review of the book in English, done especially for Indian scholars who don't read French (particularly the OIT camp...), but his site seems to be down. So you might find the following thread of interest in this regard.
Regards,
Sunthar
Subject:
What is the underlying 'ethnicity' Abhinava-Bhairava's world-view?
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam [Abhinava msg #122]
Date: Sat Jan 12, 2002; 4:51 pm
The names given by the Upanisad are, of
course, those of the traditional Seven Rsis, but also the names of the actual
stars of the Great Wain. Further, the passage actually says that the seven seers
sit right on the rim (tire) of the heavenly casket. In fact, we could not wish
for a clearer identification—and it is strange that it has eluded us for so
long.
If one actually pays attention to the movement of Ursa Maior
one can easily see that this asterism actually turns upside down every night.
[...] Observation shows that the Great Wain has the form of
a big spoon that is emptied out every night: it slowly turns around, scooping up
the heavenly waters and then releases them over the earth lying beneath it.
(...) To conclude: The heavenly casket, the great ladle on which the seven Rsis
sit according to BAU, turns round every night, emptying its (mythological)
contents, the heavenly waters.
Actually, this image actually is not so rare as we might think.
It has its similarities in
Michael Witzel, Looking for the Heavenly Casket
(Developing the insights of F.B.J. Kuiper into the
Vedic Night Sky)
Here's a good example of how looking East (instead
of West...) towards
Question: what is the 'ethnicity' of the Bhairava-doctrines as expressed in the 'primordial' Kula sacrifice (yāga) and of Abhinava's world-view?
Sunthar
P.S. This is meant to supplement my earlier
postings at Indo-Roma regarding the
Usitoria-related beliefs of the Roma.
[Bryant’s conceptual deadlock between AMT/OIT provides space for a fresh AAT model]
Subject:
From: gktk_us
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2002 2:11 PM [Abhinava msg
#120
– order of thread reversed]
To: indictraditions@yahoogroups.com
--- In
My preliminary conclusion is that the “Eminent Historians” are on their way out as far as the debate of origins itself is concerned. Their methods are shabby, their knowledge base is inadequate, incomplete and shallow—Thapar, Sharma et al seem like so much chaff.
That depends upon how you look at it. He hasn’t spared the other side too. I just finished reading some other portions of the book (the last few chapters). It is clear that Bryant has chosen to remain out of controversy (or stuck to the book title) by not taking sides. He has given a fair account of current to-and-fro about the AIT. Good part of the book is ample quotations that he has used while tracing the origins of the debate.
Eminently readable book, I should say.
Regards,
CRG
Subject:
Edwin Bryant’s book: the inadequacy of both AMT/OIT approaches
From:
Date: Thu Jan 10, 2002; 10:03 pm [Abhinava msg #120]
Do check out this short 1998 review of Klostermaier that Edwin wrote for
the ISKCON journal:
http://www.iskcon.com/ICJ/6_2/62edwin.htm
“Most representations of the Indigenous point of view are, at best, highly selective in their appropriation of the available and relevant data and, at worst, completely neglectful or dismissive of the fundamental and essential infrastructure of the problem. [...] All this is not to say that the evidence supporting the theory of Aryan migrations is not without problems. Far from it: my own research concludes that the debate (where it is conducted in a rigorous fashion) is a legitimate one and that the Indigenous position has its merits. The whole theory of Aryan migrations does indeed need to be subject to intense scrutiny. But this will only be fruitful when it is done by examining all the evidence and all rational points of view in a detached and thorough fashion. Selective or one-sided interpretations of the evidence are ultimately detrimental to such reconsiderations. As a result much Indigenous Aryanist scholarship is understandably viewed with suspicion, or dismissed as the product of predetermined conviction rather than objective scholarship.”—Edwin Bryant.
Search for the mythical ‘origin’—though the
historical method unearths a vast amount of valuable
physical data, civilizational artifacts and cultural ‘genealogies’ in its wake,
it’s driven by a fundamentally (i.e., philosophically or epistemologically)
flawed quest for the (ever-receding) ‘origins’ which has taken on the role of a
(‘secularized’) mythology (where the origins are foundational principles rather
than historical events). Granted a valid array of continuities between Sanskrit
texts and ‘Harappan’ culture, what is the critical mass required for the latter
to become Vedic? Granted that the Indo-Europeans were newcomers to the
subcontinent, at what point did they become self-conscious ‘Aryans’? When
Bernard Sergent affirms, in his
Genčse de l’Inde, that Rig Vedic ‘
It’s perhaps time to explore the Rig-Veda itself as the literary expression of a relatively ‘new’ religion, a foundational synthesis arising from a clash of opposing (not necessarily warring) civilizations, just as Christianity is a highly original ‘resolution’ of the Jew versus (esp. Hellenized) Gentile civilizational dilemma (i.e., Christianity is not simply Jewish monotheism + pagan sensibility, but still has to be understood as a refraction of both). It’s quite possible that one strand may be dominant linguistically, politically, etc., even while providing the opposing strand a geographical and historical scope that might otherwise have never been possible on the religious plane. If we focus instead on the ‘processual logic’ of this cultural synthesis and how the ‘inner conflict’ worked itself out along the gradient of history, the problem of ‘origins’ might will end up taking care of itself!
Much Indological ink, for example, has been wasted on the ‘origin’ of the VidūSaka (apagara, brahmacārin, VRSākapi, VaruNa-jumbaka, court-jester, Buddhist attack on brahmin-caste, etc.). Determine his true function and—lo and behold—not only are these incompatible ‘origins’ reconciled but a host of other things about him become suddenly intelligible (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indo-Roma/message/22). Who knows?—the Indian joker might still have something (not just funny but) worthwhile to say on the (continuing) genesis of Indian civilization....
Sunthar
Subject:
From: Vishal S. Agarwal
Sent: Friday, January 11, 2002 4:21 PM [Abhinava msg #121]
To: indictraditions@yahoogroups.com
--- In Indic Traditions,
Elst sets out to prove OIT (“Out of India Theory”).
That is incorrect. Elst is on record on several occasions that he does not support OIT. He regards himself as an AIT skeptic and shows that the quality of evidence available is such that it can be twisted to support even the OIT theory. He however does not claim that he supports the OIT theory as a matter of personal conviction. However, in print, some scholars like Michael Witzel never tire of alleging that Elst is a ‘perpetual OIT supporter’ despite repeated clarifications from Elst. Such dogged demonization of people who oppose the Aryan fantasies of mainstream scholars can only result from their own bigotry.
>
>
Vishal [Agarwal]
Subject:
Does Koenraad Elst (really) espouse the Out-of-India Theory (OIT) of Aryan migrations?
From:
Date: Sat Jan 12, 2002; 11:03 am [Abhinava msg #121]
Aryan Invasion Theory
The possibility of an Aryan invasion into
K. Elst: Well, one of the things I find causes a great deal of
tension in
1998 interview with Elst—http://bjp.org/history/elst-ivw.html
The above extract speaks for itself about the ambiguities of Elst’s position—fluctuating between espousing OIT and simply adopting the later as the ‘devil’s advocate’ to see how far seemingly contrary evidence may be re-interpreted in its light. Thus, his review of Genčse de l’Inde is largely devoted to turning Sergent’s various arguments on their head (even while praising the author!), whereas there is much in the book revealing even earlier connections with Africa, China, South-East Asia, and (I would add) even native America that may be fruitfully pursued.
[The above is the Google cache of review page—the actual site seems to be
no longer available...]
One would wish that someone with his talents, dedication, and ability to appreciate the ‘other side of the coin’ (as he has ably demonstrated in his review of Bernard Sergent, who thanks him in the acknowledgments to Genčse de l’Inde) would devote his formidable learning (less to the partisan bickering of others but) to the formulation of his own fresh hypotheses...
Sunthar
P.S. Why this obsession with
Subject:
Re: Rediscovering Sarasvati’s cerebral tongue—Sanskrit and world culture
From: S. Kalyanaraman
Date: Sat Feb 2, 2002; 8:34 pm [Abhinava
msg
#160
– order of thread reversed]
--- In
In his recent linguistic analysis of Aryans in the Rigveda, Kuiper concludes that Sanskrit itself “had long been an Indian language when it made its appearance in history” (1991:94). “The inherited Vedic culture, however, must for a long time have remained dominant, notwithstanding the foreign influence that made itself felt: a foreign myth could only be adopted by transforming it into an Indra-myth and non-Aryan sorcerers were incorporated and became Vedic [rshis], authors of a separate collection of hymns.... As a sociological term ‘Aryan’ denotes all those who took part in the sacrifices and festivals. There is nothing novel in this definition. Not always, however, may it have been realized that many among these ‘Aryans’ had non-Aryan names and that this fact points to some inescapable conclusions. Statements to the effect that the Rigveda was no longer purely Aryan (...) are therefore correct to the extent that they refer to the language and ethnic components: both were ‘Aryan’. Culturally, however, the Rigvedic society was Aryan without quotes, but this reveals how ambiguous the term is” (Kuiper 1991:96).
I would add to this a hypothesis found reasonable
by Hans Heinrich Hock, ”Out of
So, what does PIE linguistics of the last 150 years
tell us? Extrapolate Indo-Aryan into
PIE within Bhārata and seek for archaeological evidence for migrations out of
Bhārata: e.g., Mitanni Indo-Aryan names, Kikkuli’s horse training manual in
Hittite with Indo-Aryan lexemes, Bogazkoy texts referring to Mitra, Varun.a,
Indra. PIE has been obsessed with the land routes within Eurasia and has ignored
the possible maritime/riverine channels of the
[Rest of this thread at “Rediscovering
Sarasvati’s cerebral tongue—Sanskrit and world culture“]
Subject:
Religion, ethnicity, and culture in the genesis of Indian civilization—a taste of Veda-Vyāsa’s humor?
From:
Date: Mon Feb 4, 2002; 11:06 am [Abhinava msg #160 – order of thread reversed]
The Indus culture [...] once extended up the
Sunthar V.—7 female spirits—Saptamātrkā / Pleiades?—origin of the Roma
Here is a very
broad and sketchy outline of how I currently visualize the Indo-Aryan question:
Archeological evidence of Rig-Vedic religion in Bactria—the central cosmogonic myth of Indra slaying the dragon Vrtra is
reflected in artifacts from the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC)
that show suns within the belly of a horned serpent. The Soma and Fire cult is
attested with traces of ephaedra as burnt offering, as also depictions of sacred
thread investiture (upanayana). The Harappa-Bactria similarities led
Askorov to propose the “influence of northwestern
Indo-Iranian (II) versus Indo-European (IE)—Though integrated into pre-Zarathustra II religion, Mitra-Varuna (MV),
embodiments of the priestly function, would have been originally borrowed from a
non-IE (perhaps shared by
Simultaneous shift of Sarasvatī civilization towards Gangetic plain—in addition to the archeological
evidence, the (admittedly late) testimony of the Baudhāyana Zrauta Sūtra of the two sons of Urvazī taking their people in two opposite
directions, Āyu to the east to form the Kuru-Pānchāla and the Kāzī-Videha, and
Amāvasu moving to the west to form the Gandhari, Parsu and Aratta, might perhaps
be a reminiscence of a split migration of the Sarasvatī population, who only
subsequently became Sanskrit-speaking Rig-Vedic tribes and polities. The eastern
branch would first of all have undergone the cultural influence of Tibeto-Burman and
Austro-Asiatic populations
(whence the original Rāmāyana story). The real question then would be the nature
and extent of their continuing cultural ties (if any) with their western
(eventually Bactrian) cousins. OTOH I’d expect Indo-Aryan Bactria
(unlike subsequent religio-culturally distinct invaders in historical times) to
look to the subcontinent not so much as a tempting prey but as a sort of
spiritual homeland with ‘genealogical’ ties (like Anglo-America still does
towards England), OTOH I’d expect the essentially Indian culture developing in
the eastern confines to have become increasingly subjected, esp. post-1700 BC,
to the new Bactrian religion and worldview. It is the subsequent interaction
(movements, conflicts, alliances, exchanges) between these two poles, each with
its own characteristic mix of elements, that would have provided the matrix for
and been recorded as the Rig-Veda ‘narrative’. An acculturation model along
these lines would make it impossible to establish a single linear
migration-based (whether AMT or OIT) timeline for the 10 Rig-Vedic mandalas.
Rig-Veda
as a late foundational synthesis—its significance would lie not so much in its being the ‘earliest’
Indo-Aryan composition but in (tape-)recording for all time the late Indianized
phase (hence the Asuras are already being eclipsed as gods) of the new
Indra-religion. Much older (including ‘scientific’) knowledge from the Sarasvatī
civilization, perhaps even dating beyond 3000 BC (if the astronomical data are
to be believed), could have then been annexed to this new religious foundation
in the Yajur, Atharva and subsequent Vedic compilations. Similarly, the two
epics and the Purānas could likewise translate and conserve pre-Vedic (including
pre-Aryan) genealogies and memories that took longer to rework into the new
Rig-Veda-based orthodoxy. For example, the jar-born brahmin Agastya, who is
reputed to have civilized the Dravidian race, may have well been a Harappan sage
who, like his co-born VasiSTha, was only subsequently elevated to the status of
a Vedic sage (RSi). If the ‘foreign’ trifunctional heritage (it is the
Veda/Mahābhārata parallelism, with an appeal to Boghazkoy, that ultimately under
girds Dumézil’s rehabilitation of comparative socio-mythology) has survived
intact only in
Indo-Aryan
cultural radiation back towards Central Asia and beyond to Europe—if this ‘backflow’ from
Pre-historic cultural unity of the Indo-Mediterranean belt—Finally, ‘Indo-European’ itself is a
‘loaded’ teleological term that takes the geographical span in the 2nd
millennium of a particular linguistic family and projects this unity back into
an elusive pre-dispersal homeland. I couldn’t agree more with you that the
maritime (and overland) commercial relations of the Sarasvatī civilization with
Sumeria should be investigated further as part of a larger network of cultural
exchanges extending all the way to the
So here is a scenario that explains why the harder
you push AMT, the more credible OIT becomes....and vice versa! As our wise Irish
‘brahmin’ Merlin chided king Arthur’s shining knights in armor (academic kSatriyas?), who still keep falling off their
Indo-European horses in their vain quest for the holy grail of the Ur-Heimat, it all
depends on asking the right question!
Austric contribution to Vedic and Indian civilization—introducing Paul Manansala Kekai
Date: Wed Feb 6, 2002; 9:12 pm [Abhinava msg #167]
Please check out the following articles by Paul that break out of the
beaten ‘Indo-Aryan’ path:
A new look at Vedic India—http://home.attbi.com/~a.manansala/vedicindia.html (Austric
elements in Vedic and Brāhmana religion)
Austric Influence in
An Austro-Dravidian Languages Theory—http://www.geocities.com/pinatubo.geo/lang.htm (contextualizing
Panini’s BhāSā and Chandas)
Austric relationship of Sumerian Language—http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Temple/9845/sumer.htm (relevant
to deciphering
Austronesian Navigation and Migration—http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Temple/9845/austro.htm (incredible
use of stars & dead reckoning!)
Not only does it look like
Subject:
Taking a ride across the Milky Way with Abhinava on Sarasvatī's peacock...
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam [Abhinava msg #183]
Date: Tue Feb 19, 2002; 1:32 pm
"O Sarasvatī! best among mothers, best among rivers, best among goddesses..."
(Rig-Veda II.41.16)
"Continuity of local styles thus is to be expected a priori. However, when traditional style pottery
with traditional paintings, such as in the early post-Indus Cemetery H culture,
appears together with a new burial style, that is cremation or exposition and
subsequent deposition of the bones in urns, and with a new motif painted on
them, i.e. a small human, a 'soul', drawn inside a traditionally painted
peacock, then all of this draws our attention. The bird-soul motif seems to
reflect Vedic beliefs about the souls of the ancestors moving about in the form
of birds (Vats 1940, Witzel 1984, Falk 1986). While this assemblage seems to
indicate early acculturation, more data would be necessary in order to turn the
still little known Cemetery H culture in
Michael Witzel, Autochthonous Aryans? The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts.
"They adored the peacock, 'maraka'.
The lexeme also connoted the 'dead'. Hence, its depiction on funerary pots and
plates, together with a black buck, 'marg'
(homonym; Skt. mr.ga)."—Kalyanaraman on 'cryptographic writing' (mleccha vikalpa)
See also photo of a
burial urn and Kalyanaraman's own
interrogations on the peacock at his Sarasvatī Net site
"...even more importantly, one may look at Parpola's model of
decipherment holistically to assess its overall plausibility and the likelihood
of its being the generally correct solution. At this level the two major
problems as I see them are Parpola's excessive, almost obsessive, preoccupation
with the 'Harappan religion', and the inexplicable absence of matters relating
to the social life and administration of the Harappan polity, which one may
reasonably expect to be recorded in the Indus inscriptions. Parpola's
interpretations rely more on mythology than on textual or linguistic analysis.
For example, his interpretations of the 'fish' signs are mainly based on his
iconographic identifications of the 'Proto-Siva' and 'Fig Deity' seals which
lead him to believe that the signs must represent not merely stars or planets
but also gods. To him, the 'fish' sign is "not simply a phonetically used
grapheme, but a highly condensed religious symbol" (p.272) (with) "unbelievably
rich symbolism" (p.274). Parpola ranges far and wide in search of supporting
evidence from the vast resources of Hindu religious texts and traditions. As one
goes through the last part of his book dealing with decipherment, the
overwhelming impression one forms is of a treatise on Harappan religion rather
than decipherment of the
Iravatham Mahadevan, The
Indus Script: Assessment of Parpola's model of decipherment
"But it is only at the level of symbolism—through the conjoined
reading of myths, paraphernalia and gestures—that any transgressive meanings can
be deciphered in the classical sacrifice. By permitting the reintroduction of
the forbidden elements of impurity within the newly emerging context of
Tantricism, the Goddess clarifies the true meaning and scope of the feminine in
the brahmanical sacrifice. At the same time, she ensures that the new currents
of transgressive sacrality develop within the preexisting symbolic paradigm. Her
polarization into a benign (saumya) and a
savage (ugra) aspect could only help control
and maintain the vital two-way flow between these opposing yet equally
legitimate and complementary images of the feminine in the Hindu tradition.
[...] But Bhairava appears also as her father, son, and divine consort. I shall
argue that all these relationships are the different faces (phases) of a single
identity, that of the consecrated (dīkshita) preclassical Vedic sacrificer who regressed into an
embryonic condition (Heesterman 1962,1985,1993). Through a tantricization of
Vedic cosmogony, the dīkshita’s return to the
womb is symbolically equated with the interiorized death of the Tantric adept as
his vital energies are forced up the backbone along the median channel (sushumnā = ēmaēāna). [...] Through
the dīkshā, the sacrificer becomes assimilated
to a fetus of indeterminate sex [bhrūNa =
learned brahmin versed in the secrets of the Veda] within the womb of his own
wife. The embryonic fusion of the dīkshita with
the (surrogate) maternal womb permits the projection of traits like chaos,
death, evil, impurity, regression, violence, androgyny, etc., onto the mother
symbol itself, as we shall see in the case of Vaishno Devī having spent nine
months in her own womb." ECV—Bhairava
and the Goddess
Given the contradictory results, even among the experts, from the linguistic, archeological, ethnographic, etc., data, my own priority has been to decipher the 'world-view', interpretative lens or, rather, the underlying semiotic system before attempting to speculate on the 'origins'. Historical development is not the same as physical causality—human beings transform (the objects of) their environment though a frame of representations. I've no idea if the peacock is 'good to eat' but, like other crested 'Amazonian' birds, it's certainly 'good for thinking' (bon ą penser—Lévi-Strauss):
Death as
sacrifice—Hindus are cremated, devoured by (the) Fire (of Consciousness), before
their ashes are immersed into the (amniotic) waters of Mother-Gangā, who also
represents the Milky Way. This happens in
Tie up
your hair (veNī-samhāra)—Harappan dead in Cemetery H are likewise
assimilated to initiates (dīkSita = black buck)
in the maternal waters (wavy lines)
of the womb (urn = peacock's belly). Why the peacock (zikhin)? Because
its crest (zikhā prominently depicted) is the fiery median channel
emerging from the cranial sinciput, and its starry rainbow-hued tail ('dotted circle')
represents 'universalization' (vizva-rūpa) in the chromatic code. The
zikhā
is the invisible median Sarasvatī resulting from the fusion of the
lateral streams (of the Gangā and the Yamunā) at their
masculinized 'virgin' mother—uniting the left and the right is an androgynous
proposition, which is why Ambā-ZikhaNDin, who pierces the golden solar face of
the (day) Sky (BhīSma), has to be a 'transvestite' of sorts (a male who was born
woman = ZikhaNDinī). The only appropriate headrest for the dying 'Grand-Sire' (pitāmaha =
Brahmā) are three arrows supplied by Arjuna, who then pierces mother Earth with
yet another arrow so that the maternal Gangā gushes from the depths to quench
BhīSma's thirst with her ambrosia. Again, the change of sex (woman to man) was
enabled through a garland offered to Ambā by the 'peacock-riding' (zikhi-
or mayil-vāhana) Kārttikeya, himself nursed by the maternal
Pleiades.
Androgynous Sārasvata brahmin—why are the secrets of dharma revealed to
(Dharma-) Yudhisthira by a 'porcupine' in the clutches of Death
(Yama-Dharmarāja)? For all the feminine charms it struts before its entranced
mate, how can the peacock, sporting its brahmin's tuft of hair(zikhā), be
pregnant? The consecrated sacrificer, reborn from the womb of Brahman, takes the
place of the Mother (like the
Shia Imam). The male guru gestates his initiated disciples in his
womb before giving them a spiritual (re-) birth as the 'twice-born' (dvi-ja
= bird, born first as an egg). Hindu Dharma, like the Vedic Rta, is ultimately
rooted in the hidden light of the 'underworld' (sato bandhum asati niravindan...)
of Yama-VaruNa.
Who really
'laid' BhīSma?—the correspondence (Josselin de Jong, G.J. Held)
between social (PāNDava/Kaurava) and cosmogonic (deva/asura)
dualism extends to mystic physiology (iDā/pingalā—Kuiper). The
'white' (pāNDu) PāNDavas and the 'obscure' (= blind DhrtarāSTra)
Kauravas, these inimical cousins, are born from the sexual disequilibrium of the
'little mothers' Ambikā and Ambālikā when uniting with the disgusting Vyāsa,
composer of the Mahābhārata dualism. This is ultimately righted by their elder
sister Ambā, for her 'maternal' slaying of BhīSma is couched in sexual
metaphors. Yet, BhīSma insists that it's 'really' Arjuna's arrows that pierced
him mortally (like baby crabs devouring their mother...). As in the
Kula Yāga and the burning
of the Khāndava forest, the 'sexual union' is ultimately an
internal experience (hence the Tantric 'solitary hero'—eka-vīra), .
Proud as
an Indo-Aryan peacock?—though native to
Already in the Vedas, the Goddess of Speech (Vāc—the later Sarasvatī) was wavering between the Devas and Asuras, who were both tempting her to come over to their own camp. Let's just keep our fingers crossed that she doesn't once again, like her unpredictable counterpart Durgā, assume the form of a fiery lioness to devour everything both left and right....
Enjoy!
Sunthar
P.S. I have correspondence with F.B.J. Kuiper dating back more than 15
years that goes into the details of the slaying of BhīSma....
[Rest of this thread at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abhinavagupta/message/169]
Subject:
Re: Indo-Aryan Tradition During
Date: Tue, 25
Feb 2003 16:11:10 -0000
From: Raj Mohanka
To: IndicTraditions
-----------
Author: F. Allchin
Filed: 1/11/2003, 1:35:46 PM
Source: The Archeology of Early
Historic
Source: Allchin, F. (1995). The
Archeology of Early Historic South
A rather different picture is presented by the
evidence found in the
Gopalakrishnan,
The hearth evidence is correct and you can read Dr.
B.B. Lal's book, The Sarasvatī Flows On to read
and see more. There isn't a shred of
archeological evidence to support AIT (1500 B.C.E.). In fact, I am in the process of updating
my India Timeline (Royal Chronology-see below) to reflect the fact that even the
AMT (3400 B.C.E.) is flawed. The
word 'Aryan' (or 'Indo-Aryan') is not synonymous with any ethnic group and we
should only use the word 'Indo-European' or 'IE' instead. It now appears that human migration into
1) Australoid (62,000 B.C.E.)
2) Sino-Tibetan (55,000 B.C.E.)
3) Dravida (37,000 B.C.E.)
4) Indo-European (10,000 B.C.E.)
A number of sources are studying Indian genetic patterns and a slow consensus appears to be emerging showing roughly these 4 groups migrating in pre-historic times (some expand this to 7 groups).
Therefore, Indian civilization (Sapta-Saindvah) was
continuous, multi-ethnic, and indigenous.
On average, the gene pool of
Even though he is retired, Dr. Lal is currently
working hard on artifacts and data exhumed from the Kalibangan site.
- Raj Mohanka
Subject:
From: Michael Witzel
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2003
6:35 AM
To:
indictraditions@yahoogroups.com
1. Allchin is an archaeologist (and we are friends), but he obviously has not
checked Vedic texts (or asked Vedic specialists) to back up his statement of
1995. The Kalibangan archeology remains do not fit any Vedic text. All those
great specialists on this and other lists: figure it out...
Shortcut:
There should not be any animal bones in Vedic fire altars...
the 7 "fire altars" in a row have only the number "7" in common with Vedic
dhisnya hearths on the agnicayana Mahavedi..
Their form is not Vedic and there is neither Mahavedi nor the additional, "old" set of 3 fires here. Just a common, plain Harappan brick platform.
(The number "7" is typical for all of the Near East
and South Asia, as opposed to the predilection for 9 in northern Eurasia and 8
in
Allchin's "ancestral" is fine, but links between the Kalibangan "rituals (?)" and the Vedic rituals have not been established so far.
2. As I have formulated already in 1992 (in
Jamison & Witzel, Vedic Hinduism), see my web page for the
pdf : http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/Vedica.pdf or (provisional) html file:
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/VedicHinduism.htm where the last
sentence reads:
"Notably the remnants of so-called fire rituals at Kalibangan may represent
nothing more than a community kitchen."
Virtually the same sentence is found in the historian, R.S. Sharma's, 1995
booklet on the Aryans.
3. Archaeologists (and historians) should work together with
Vedicists/Indologists, as the (current) excavator of
http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~indst117/
That will help to avoid mistakes
such as the one above.
For that purpose we have also held yearly Round Tables since 1999,
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sanskrit/RoundTableSchedule.html
The last few of them were aided by the Infinity Foundation. Open-minded,
vigorous (and endless!) discussion has helped in clarifying such problems.
4. In sum: check out things yourself.
Don't believe what you read in commonly available summaries.
PS> R. Mohanka's
genetic "news" are half-truths as well:
5. His classifications are a mixture
of old-fashioned racist and recent linguistic terminology; both of them have
little to do with genetics proper.
Oldest mistake the book to identify
"race" = language = ethnicity = archaeological culture = ("Indian") civilization.
But it seems non-eradicable (in spite of his very words about Aryans)
To use Indo-European instead of
Indo-Aryan, as he proposes, will
create further confusion. These are 2 stages separated by an intervening one
(Indo-Iranian). French is not =
Latin = Indo-European (nor are the peoples, cultures, genes
etc. the same)
No comments necessary on early Bronze
Age and Neolithic "dynasties" -- just like Sioux and Olmec/Toltec
"dynasties"? Based on what reliable "evidence"?
6. His genetic summary also does not
distinguish between mtDNA and Y chromosome data, which do NOT always result in the same picture.
7.
"Sapta-Saindva", is wrong;
read: sapta sindhavaH "the seven [border] rivers/streams," = two words,
not a compound.
8. "Customs, traditions, Dharmic
ideas all show a continuous development from around 7000 B.C.E. to
today."
Wrong: around 7000 BCE, we have the
first Baluchistan (Mehrgarh) settlements and beginning agriculture (introduced
from
with human burials, accompanied by
goat sacrifice... = custom/dharmic, just like today??
And,
Mohanka's statement is based on
biased (email) summaries of summaries of summaries of the Mehrgarh excavations
by Jean-Francois Jarrige et al.;
see: his list of publ. in M. Kenoyer,
Ancient Cities... 1998;
Or just read Kenoyer's summary of
Mehrgarh, pp. 37-39
9. Of course, we have the initial
spread of agriculture (both botanic & linguistic data) out of Baluchistan/E.
Afghan hills to the Indus plains, after "Mehrgarh", -- but this is not the type
of "indigenous continuity" Mohanka would like to see.
10. B. B. Lal, distinguished by a lot
of previous excavations, but in his very old age now, has increasingly towed the
Hindutva line in recent years.
I have the video to back it up, from
his early retirement, c. 1985. His
very own "U-turn" then, still fairly innocuous, just nostalgically
"religious"...
IN SUM: the only useful observation
in all of the above for this list is:
Here and elsewhere on the list(s), a
lot of wishful construction of Indian identity, by using complex data from a
very distant past.
A nice hobby, but futile:
My "old European" palaeolithic
(Basque) genes do not argue with my Indo-Europan language or my
originally German ethnicity or my general modern (post-enlightenment) European
culture or modern US-Japanese-European technological civilization.
Give it a rest!
Cheers! MW
=====================
Michael Witzel
Department of Sanskrit & Indian
Studies,
Were there Vedic fire-altars in Kalibangan? Need to rethink continuities without falling prey to facile identifications or rejections!
Date: Tue Mar 11, 2003; 12:47 pm [Abhinava msg #697]
I raised this issue just now with Raymond (and
Birgit) Allchin here at the Collčge de France after the conclusion of
There may indeed well be a very valid relationship
between these hearths and Vedic fire ritual (after all, in both Greece and
India, symbolic notations related to cooking, etc., underlying the sacrificial
ceremonies were also transposed into the domestic setting). Similarly, we should
not reject off-hand the likelihood of a continuity between the ‘priest-king’ of
To fuel such pre-historical fires with the oil of religious passion or for anyone (least of all myself!) to pretend to have the last word on them—especially when its becoming increasingly evident (here, as in so many other scientific controversies...) that the issues have not even been adequately framed (searching for the right questions?) by specialists who talk past one another—is most counter-productive for everyone!
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date: Thu Mar 13, 2003; 2:37 pm
Another important observation of Asko Parpola is the frequency
of a motif that is manifestly important for the Harappans, the network of
trefoil designs: it adorns, for example, the famous statue of the ‘priest-king’
of Mohenjo-Daro [...] But Parpola goes further: because the trefoil
decoration—seen on the robe of the ‘priest-king’, on an animal of steatite (no
doubt a bull) likewise from Mohenjo-Daro, on objects of Harappan exportation at
Dasli and Quetta, and on a magnificent polished stone of Mohenjo-Daro bearing
trefoil incrustations—, because this motif, thus, seems to connote the stars, it
must be juxtaposed to the rites and ideas of later India concerning the god
Varuna. The latter is in fact the god of night and water, he is celestial in
opposition to his homolog Mitra, who is diurnal and close to men, he has a
thousand eyes that are his spies, which have been identified since a long time
with the stars. Now, with these remarks, Parpola gives good reasons to see in
the royal ritual of ancient
Bernard Sergent, La
Genčse de l’Inde (Payot, 1997), pp.121-22 (translated by Sunthar
V)
The second great thesis is the
attribution of the Bactria-Margiana civilization to the Aryans, more precisely
to the Indo-Aryans. Mr. Sergent relies on a large number of archaeological
parallels, some (in general Iranian) borrowed from contemporary archaeologists,
others (in general more ancient, Indo-European) of his invention (in the good
sense of the term). I shall not discuss the validity of these parallels. All are
not as surprising as that cited above (the number of stone weapons). Some are so
however. Let us admit that all these parallels are well-founded. How is it to be
explained that renowned archaeologists, for example Messrs. Jarrige and
Francfort, who are aware of them, or the Vedic scholars who are interested in
these problems, for example Mssrs. Witzel and Falk, have not drawn therefrom the
same conclusions as Mr. Sergent? The answer is simple. There are first of all
chronological difficulties that stem from the gulf between the supposed dates of
the Bactria-Margiana civilization and those of the composition of the Rig-Vedic
hymns. The hypothetical and sometimes very variable character of these datings
do not take away from the chronological difficulty, unless one thinks with Mr.
Sergent alone (supra) that the core of the
Rig-Veda was already composed 1800 years before our era. The other difficulty is
an application of the old principle that the trees should not hide the forest.
The multitude of parallels invoked by Mr. Sergent should not go against the fact
that the Rig-Veda and Indian archaeology gives us a global image of the material
civilization of the Indo-Aryans (I should say: the speakers of Indo-Aryan
languages) that is very different from that restituted by archaeologists for the
Bactria-Margiana civilization. The latter is an urban, pacific civilization,
making extensive use of bronze, relying on a sophisticated and artificially
irrigated agriculture and where the cult is rendered in constructed temples. The
Rig-Veda evokes a pastoral and warrior people with contempt for agriculture, and
ignorant of or disdaining the cities, using bronze especially for weapons and
practicing aniconic cults in open air. Even taking into account the metaphoric
or nostalgic character of certain Vedic hymns, even emphasizing that the texts
of religious inspiration are not descriptions of real material life, these two
images cannot be reconciled, unless a spectacular regression is invoked that Mr.
Sergent would, for good reason, deny. This regression would moreover have this
in particular that it would take us to times preceding the Bactria-Margiana
civilization because the material data of the Rig-Veda are hardly different from
those of the Avesta. The impossibility is patent: the bearers of the
Bactria-Margiana civilization have probably lived in contact with the pre-Vedic
populations speaking the Indo-Aryan language; but it is impossible to affirm
that they are the ancestors of the Vedic Indians. Not being a Vedic scholar
myself, I would be content with referring on this to the old article, although
it has only just been published, of Mr. H. Falk. [pp.483-84]
Gérard Fussman, “Review of Bernard Sergent, La Genčse de l’Inde,”
The term ‘Asura,’ (acquiring the unambiguous meaning of ‘demon’
in the post-Vedic period) used only in the singular in the earliest portions of
the Rig-Veda, seems to have originally referred to a ‘Lord’ of peoples hostile
to the Indra-worshipping Aryans [W.E. Hale, Asura in Early Vedic Religion (...),
who is however unable to explain Rgveda X.124 from his purely evolutionistic
perspective (pp.86-92), whereas Kuiper, VV, pp.13-42, has provided a coherent
interpretation of this “transfer of sovereignty” to Indra in terms of his
mythical dialectic. It would be sound methodological procedure to
provisionally separate the significance of Varuna from the evolution of the
Asuras before reintegrating the Asura Varuna of the Rgveda; contrast Kuiper, VV,
pp.5-13.], and probably characterizes this Lord as endowed, like the later
brahmįn, with mana-like magical power (māyā).
Though Mitra-Varuna, the Asura(s) par excellence, and the chief of the Devas
(‘gods’), Indra, stem from two different cultural worlds, and perhaps even two
opposing civilizations, they already reveal in the Vedic religion a significant
structural opposition which can be defined just as well in terms of priestly
‘first’ versus warrior ‘second’ function or as sacred versus profane kingship.
[Deppert, Rudra’s Geburt
...(sacral kingship of the pre-Aryan Middle-Eastern type).... Cf. Kuiper, VV,
pp.24-6 for Varuna’s ksatra]. Mitra-Varuna is a
dual divinity because it expresses the complementarity of the pure interdictory
Mitraic and the impure transgressive Varunic poles of Vedic sacrality, also
translated into the opposition between the upper and nether worlds of a
dualistic cosmos. [...Dumézil’s and Kuiper’s positions had remained
irreconcilable because the former had come to perceive Mitra-Varuna primarily in
sociologizing terms as the priestly summit of the trifunctional hierarchy
whereas the latter continued to relegate Mitra to the underworld simply because
he shares the Asurahood of his twin Varuna, despite the recognized difficulties
of Mitra’s partiality for the upperworld and the mythic interferences with
Indra;....We thank Prof. F.B.J. Kuiper and the late Prof. G. Dumézil for having
so sympathetically encouraged our efforts to synthesize their respective
insights into the basic structures of Vedic religion.] This internal opposition
is retained in the later Brahmā, the god of the ritual texts, for he is
primarily the mythical projection of the (royal) ‘chaplains’ purohitas, the foremost among whom, the Vasishthas,
are explicit ‘incarnations (maitrāvaruni) of
Mitra-Varuna.’
Elizabeth
Visuvalingam, “Mitra-Varuna and the niravasita-Bhairava: The Royal Mahābrāhmana“ (1989)
Prof. Gregory L. Possehl just completed his series
of 4 lectures at the Collčge de France on Indus Civilization [IVC]: A Contemporary Perspective
- The Foundations of the
- The Ideology of the
- Transformation of the
The main theme of his 2nd lecture was that, despite
all kinds of continuities with previous settlements in the region, IVC suddenly
sprang into existence in the course of a single century (2600-2500 BC) as a
planned urban environment inspired by a coherent ideology shared by a newly
emerged elite. Before this period, there are recognizable differences in the
archeological record between regional ‘domains’ such as Kulli, Sindh
(Mohenjo-Daro), Sorath, (chalcolithic) Ananta, Cholistan (Ganweriwala), Eastern
(Rakhigarhi), Harappa, North-Western, etc., that become unified during this
period through a common civilizational grid whose characteristic stamp is town
planning. A ‘founder’s city’, Mohenjo-Daro,
for example, is the only Bronze Age city where one can still explore the
streets, houses, etc., because they have all been preserved in baked brick
(which composes only half of Harappa, and is used only for drains and wells in
Lothal), and was, like (not so) ancient Alexandria and modern
Chandigarh (in Punjab), conceived as a plan before it was built. The ideological
founders apparently made a clean break with the local past for older townships
were abandoned and new cities built from scratch. In Cholistan, for example, of
37 early Harappan sites 33 were abandoned; and 132 of 136 mature sites are on
virgin ground. In ceramics, again, there is a sharp rupture between the typical
Kot Diji (i.e., early) and mature Harappan pottery and artifacts. This frenzied
urbanization was made possible by an amazing virtuosity in technological
innovation, especially in pyrotechnology, that reveals itself in varied
products: stoneware, faience, etching, baked brick construction (also of wells),
double-cropping, and the incredible reach of their deep-sea maritime
exploration. Critically developing earlier characterizations of the IVC peoples
by John Marshall (austere, peaceful, bourgeois merchants, etc.) and Mortimer
Wheeler & Stuart Piggot (uniform, ordered, regulated, monotonous, without
individuality, etc.), Possehl, after dismissing all speculations about their
being governed by priest-kings as in Sumer/Akkad, emphasized instead the
universalizing ‘fundamentalist’ ethos of a vigorous, rigid, disciplined elite
intent on imprinting their cast of mind on the diverse populace. In fact, he
goes so far as to characterize them as ‘nihilists’ undertaking a socio-cultural
revolution against a useless, meaningless past. So central was this ideology
that when it collapsed so did the IVC peoples and the civilization itself from
around 1900 BC.
A revolution may be fomented from within by
emerging elites with the backing of disgruntled ‘proletarian’ elements but, when
coupled with sudden access to highly technical skills, should we not suspect
that the impetus for these spiritual and material developments came from outside
the subcontinent, perhaps even in the form of immigrant elites from a different
civilization? In posing this question publicly after his talk, I ought to have
also explicitly reminded him of his own declaration that there was, moreover, no
history to the art of writing anywhere within IVC. [The following week, he
showed us A.H. Sage’s letter to the editor of the Illustrated London News
pointing out the parallels in Susa (Elam) and Ur, and recounted the attempt by
C. J. Gadd and Sydney Smith of the British Museum to substantiate them with an
attempt to decipher the script with the Sumerian counterparts of the glyphs.
Marshall had even first referred to Harappa as an Indo-Sumerian civilization!
Though no one has as yet succeeded in deciphering the Indus script, I was struck
by the close similarities between so many of the Mesopotamian and IVC signs.]
Oscillating like a see-saw between inside and outside origins, Possehl was
reluctant to weigh in favor of either and was inclined to opt rather for a
combination of factors, with the likelihood of native peoples adopting the new
ideology and implementing it themselves. Considering his subsequent comparisons
in the privacy of Fussman’s office, where he had invited me to follow, to
Islamic fundamentalists and Nazi brainwashing, I might have added that even the
massive de-urbanization program by the Pol-Pot regime was the handiwork of
Cambodian intellectuals who, having spent too much time in Paris, took all this
revolutionary rhetoric far more seriously than the French ‘nihilists’ ever
did... Prof. Possehl, who has a vast hands-on familiarity with IVC archeology,
confessed that he was largely improvising from his slides, depending on what
came to his mind. Before taking leave, I exclaimed that I had so many questions
to ask on the relations between IVC and BMAC cultures!
The 3rd lecture revealed IVC to be a major league
player in what he calls the 3rd Millennium Middle Asian interaction sphere with
trade extending from Central Asia (Indus dice at Gonor Depe, etc.) across the
Iranian belt to the Middle East and with tentacles into
Most significant was Possehl’s slide showing the
BMAC depiction of a plowing-scene, with Bos Taurus (not Indicus!) above which
are represented various seated figures in robes that Possehl interpreted as
reflecting some kind of social structure. A close comparison with Mohenjo-Daro
statuettes seated in the same peculiar posture of the limbs led him to conclude
that the famous IVC ‘priest-king‘
would have been Bactrian! If he were to go back and look at his slide again,
he’d recognize that the robes of 2 of those Bactrian figures bear (the
tridentine prototype of) the trefoil design
(also found in early IVC sites). When I questioned publicly why he did not
rather, given that IVC (2500 BC) precedes BMAC (2200BC), infer the inverse that
the Bactrian depictions might have derived from the Indus, he eventually claimed
that the (according to him unfinished art-piece of the so-called) ‘priest-king’
is late for he was found in the upper strata (of the DK-B area) in
Mohenjodaro. The problem here is that, quite apart from other mature IVC
artifacts being found in the BMAC area, Possehl himself delineated the IVC
satellite enclave at Shortugai (northern border of Afghanistan!) beside the
confluence of the Kokcha and Amu Darya rivers along which ran the difficult route to the
lapis lazuli mines in Badakshan. From
In his concluding talk last Tuesday, Possehl
attributed the demise of the mature urban model and the eventual abandonment of
all the core sites to a breakdown in the Indus ideology: properly speaking,
neither an ‘eclipse’ nor an ‘end’ (much less a ‘Vedic night’), but a movement of
populations between 1900-1500 BC into the northern zone in the Punjab, Haryana
and western Uttar Pradesh, and also south into Gujarat (Sorath). A survey of the
1052 documented mature sites reveals that many, along with the 5 major cities
(including Harappa,
The IVC culture seems to have collapsed because it
had adapted too well for too long to its immediate and larger regional
environment, so well that it could no longer respond creatively to the
inevitable changes brought by the inexorable passage of time. Dynamic adaptive
societies thrive on (self-regulating) ‘inner conflict’ (as opposed to
centrifugal chaos) where consistency, integration and optimization of
performance is based on perpetual (re-) negotiation (as opposed to ideological
rigidity). This is Robert McC. Adam’s insight into the long-term survival and
demise of (especially millennial) civilizations that Possehl, pointing to the
Roman Empire and the Soviet Union, sought to apply to the IVC ideology as having
been an overly integrated social system. Its transformation into what eventually
survived it on the peripheries already began 150-200 years before the lively
urban network disintegrated into ghost cities, buried eventually by the sands of
time. Whereas Reagan’s ‘Evil Empire’ collapsed due to identifiable internal
socio-political causes and the economic costs of the arms race against the USA
(the previous questioner had queried this implicit ‘Darwinism’...), and similar
historical processes have been described (since Gibbon) for the Fall of the
Roman Empire, I pointed out that Possehl had not even sketched any such
causalities, for what happened to the Great Bath was only a surface effect or
symptom. After all, Mohenjo-daro had already pre-existed in the mind of its
founder(s), who had the required technological know-how to materialize their
blueprints. No calamity whatever its scale would have prevented them from
rebuilding and starting afresh elsewhere. If the arrival of an elite animated by
a shared ideology had given spiritual birth to IVC in the relatively short space
of a century, then the collapse 500 years later of all that was characteristic
of this civilization must be attributed to the exodus of those who had inherited
their mantle.
I wondered aloud whether he had ever considered the
possibility of the elite having emigrated and taken with them elsewhere the
inner life of their ideology and the conceptual paradigms underlying their
technology. The tell-tale changes at the Great Bath take place at the very
period when the BMAC civilization had begun to dominate, from afar, not just the
subcontinent but the whole Iranian belt. Through its growing wealth and cultural
dynamism, Bactria must have been a powerful pole of attraction just as America
has been (until recently?) for not just Indians. There are entire brahmin
villages that have been transplanted, through kinship ties, to specific cities
in the
IVC archeology has made sufficient progress for us
to declare conclusively that—unlike
How then did the elites exercise ideological
control over the material aspects (as opposed to just the spiritual ideals) of
the IVC civilization? No doubt, through some notion of socio-cosmic order whose
vestiges we still find in the Rig-Vedic principle of Rta (= ‘rhythm’) whose
Asuric custodian is Mitra-Varuna. But this would have been a far more ‘rational’
and scientific conception of universal order, whose coordinates would have been
provided by the regular movements of the heavens (astronomy) and the physical
properties of matter (pyrotechnology), somehow integrated into a salvific inner
discipline for the soul: could the so-called ‘priest-king’ of Mohenjo-daro have
rather been the Indian (pre-) incarnation of Plato’s ‘philosopher-kings’, who
‘ruled’ through superior wisdom? When the IVC elites emigrated to
Disclaimer: what I’m proposing above is merely an
alternative model that is intent on the logic of interactions and transitions
between systems rather than the affirmation of identity and/or difference
between named elements, which seems to be the prevailing procedure... As for the
details, they will certainly evolve with time and generous input from those who
know the relevant domains and disciplines much better than I!
P.S. Fussman had observed in the course of my 3
interventions over the weeks that I was practically (re-) delivering Prof.
Possehl’s lecture (on his behalf)....unfortunately I don’t have his slides!
However, I’ll be adding links to relevant images and sites that should help
(especially the non-Indologists) better access and visualize the argument in the
version of this review that I’ll be maintaining and updating online.
[rest of this thread at
Immigration as a weapon of mass (re-) construction in the 3rd
millennium conflict of civilizations: should we emigrate to Central Asia or to
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date: Thu Mar 20, 2003; 7:51 am
There’s a better way to punish
Hit the Road, Jacques: Forget “freedom fries.” Punish the
French with green cards
(Wall
Street Journal, March 20, 2003)
Thanks indeed for having alerted us to the work of Emmanuel
Todd, for otherwise I would not have discovered a resource that might end up
being central to the long-term vision behind the Abhinavagupta project. Now that
I’ve read his most recent book After the Empire, then heard him present his book
last Wednesday evening (9 Oct.), and thus got to meet him in person, it’s
finally time to get back to you with gratitude! [...] he outlined
three vulnerabilities of the United States that have led him to conclude that it
is no longer really the super-power most of us make it out to be:
military: power to bombard weak nations without aerial
defenses but not to challenge stronger powers that could inflict heavy costs
economic: trade deficit with regard to even
under-developed countries like
ideological: post-war universalism of 1950-65 regressing
into differentialism both within (racism, etc.) and without (intolerance of
difference)
[...] My subsequent intervention was rather on the cultural
level: what about the human resources of the US in terms of immigration, for
example, Asians like myself who enjoy an (at least) dual identity, proudly
Indian (not to mention Malaysian...) and American (not to mention French...).
Indian, Chinese and others (like the Jews before them...) play an increasingly
significant role both in the development of American social mores and in the
politico-cultural (even economic) development of their home countries, an area
where, for the moment, I see no sign of Europe (and especially France...), with
its insistence on assimilation or ghettoization, being able to compete. Perhaps
America’s most opportune policy towards the rest of the world, if it doesn’t end
up disintegrating due to the centrifugal thrust of these same constituencies
(not to mention the problem of blacks and hispanics that Emmanuel predictably
insisted upon again in his answer), might be to relinquish gradually its
exaggerated pretensions on the economic and military fronts and instead focus on
developing and adapting the ideological framework to express and tap this
unparalleled wealth in the constantly replenished diversity of its human
resources. On a more reduced scale, but perhaps with greater effectiveness, this
is how
Sunthar V.,
Anthropological Basis for Current Conflict? Introducing (anthropo-historian)
Emmanuel Todd!
(Oct 13, 2002)
After my query to Prof. Possehl, at the close of
his lecture-series at the Collčge de France on the (demise of the mature) Indus
Valley Civilization, as to the likelihood of the precipitating factor being
their emigration to northern Afghanistan (Bactria), Bridget (Raymond and she
were there only for the last lecture) Allchin followed up with a conciliatory
comment emphasizing the need to be receptive to fresh and even conflicting
paradigms to solve this ancient riddle. During my personal conversations with
both of them (they were returning the next day to
Would the Indo-Aryans of Bactria have been able to
lord it over the Middle East through the mere ‘horse-power’ of their 3rd
millennium two-wheeled ‘armored cars’ and the intelligence-network of the
thousand-eyed Asura (-Varuna) if (unlike the recent pseudo-Aryans of Europe...)
they had not, above all, propagated a universalizing ideology that embraced (at
least the elites of) all nationalities (Dumézil’s tri-functionalism)? Can the
Europeans of the 3rd millennium even begin to compete with the United States in
this conflict of civilizations, without drastically rethinking their approach to
the fate and role of their own immigrant populations (where rhetoric seems to
far exceed reality...)? Will an American eagle that successfully implements such
a melting-pot policy as an instrument of war end up still remaining (merely)
American?
If academics paid as much critical attention to
what is happening around them right now instead of just poring over loot
recovered from prehistoric tombs, tantalizing etymologies in search of a lost
language, and religious symbols abandoned by the worldview that had once given
them life, we might enjoy far more productive insights into the minds of our
ancestors, insights that would serve us well for the future...
Sunthar
P.S. Yesterday, I received Prof. Parpola’s paper
(thanks!!!) on “Pre-proto-Iranians of
Subject:
[Abhinava msg #713 – order of thread reversed]
Re: Wheels, Chariots, Horses, Rinos
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2003 8:03 AM
To: austronesian@yahoogroups.com
--- In austronesian@yahoogroups.com, Juha
Savolainen wrote:
Mr. Manansala,
Yes, Roger Pearson is a racist and hence deserves contempt for
his attitudes. However, projecting this attitude of contempt onto the
Indo-European scholars who write for the JIES [Journal of Indo- European
Studes—SV] is quite unwarranted unless one can show that (a) they do not live up
to the scholarly standards one can expect of them and (b) they are influenced by
an ideological bias that contributes to explaining their failure to live up to
these standards. It is now up to you to document your insinuation. Let us see to
what standards of rational discussion you can live up to it—the track record is
not exactly promising...
There is no onus on me to prove anything.
These are professional scholars who definitely should know about Roger Pearson and the Pioneer Fund. Even many amateurs know of this information.
The question is why do they continue to work on the journal’s board and to contribute to this journal? It is not different than associating with a Nazi publication.
In terms of ideological bias, I think this is very obvious and am certainly not the first and only one to think this way. There are whole very popular movements worldwide that agree with this view.
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Subject: [Abhinava msg #713]
On the underlying (often unconscious) ‘racist’ bias of Indo-European studies...
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date: Fri Mar 21, 2003; 1:41 am
Walter Burkert, the leading modern authority on Greek religion
wrote about this traditionalist Indo-Europeanist spirit as it affects Greek:
“Greek linguistics has been the domain of Indo-Europeanists for nearly two
centuries; yet its success threatens to distort reality. In all standard
lexicons, to give the etymology of a Greek word means per definitionem to give
an Indo-European etymology. Even the remotest references--say, to Armenian or
Lithuanian--are faithfully recorded; possible borrowings from Semitic, however,
are judged uninteresting and either discarded or mentioned only in passing,
without adequate documentation. It is well known that a large part of the Greek
vocabulary lacks any adequate Indo-European etymology; but it has become a
fashion to prefer connections with a putative Aegean substratum or with
Anatolian parallels, which involves dealing with largely unknown spheres,
instead of pursuing connections to well-known Semitic languages. Beloch even
wanted to separate the Rhodian Zeus Atabyrios from
[...] Jasanoff and Nussbaum have worked entirely within the
Neogrammarian tradition. Jasonoff’s one small book is entitled Stative and
Middle in Indo-European; Nussbaum’s more substantial volume is Head and Horn in
Indo-European. The latter’s cultural blinkers, as well as those of his teachers,
colleagues, and referees, are clearly and significantly indicated in this study
of the Indo-European root *k[h]er (“head”) and *k[h]R-n (“horn”). He does not
mention, let alone discuss, the fact that the Semitic root for “horn” is *qarn.
Martin Bernal, *Black Athena Writes Back*, “Ausnahmslosikeit
über alles, Reply to Jay H. Jasanoff and Alan Nussbaum”
You’ll find my complete post, from which the above quote has been
extracted, at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abhinavagupta/message/294
Between Europeans, Semites, Egyptians and Indians—rehabilitating the
Greeks! (Jul 18, 2002)
The harm they have done to the understanding of Indian civilization is
only now being unraveled.
Sunthar
Priestly Mitra-Varuna and the twin Azvin producers: who really held the reins of the mixed Indo-Aryan charioteering culture?
Date: Sun Mar 23, 2003; 2:41 am
In the Sintashta-Arkaim culture this plank-wheel chariot was
yoked to the horse and the wheels made lighter. Later the [<p.238-239>] chariot was made broader to accommodate
the two-man team of charioteer and car-fighter. The importance of the
horse-drawn chariot was reflected in the religion and social structure, where
the divine horsemen assumed importance. The ‘twin sons of Heaven’ are thus
attested in the mythology of the Greeks, Balts and Aryans and associated with
dual kingship [<p.239] [...] [p.242>] A second, Proto-Indo-Aryan wave of Aryans
replaced the Pre-Proto-Iranians as the rulers of BMAC c. 1900 B.C. [...] The
twin charioteer gods, the Azvins/Nāsatyas, are likely to have been initially
most important in the Proto-Indo-Aryan pantheon at this stage. [<p.242] [...] [p.244>]
Assyrian merchants operating from Anatolia and
Asko Parpola (
Festschrift
for C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky
* Indo-Iranian (II) versus Indo-European (IE)—Though
integrated into pre-Zarathustra II religion, Mitra-Varuna (MV), embodiments of
the priestly function, would have been originally borrowed from a non-IE
(perhaps shared by Elam and Harappa?) Asura religion. Sergent compares the Near
Eastern IAs to the Arabs sweeping out rapidly under Muhammad to conquer and
incorporate their former trading partners. But the force behind this sudden
expansion was a new religion that borrowed its universalizing thrust from
Judaism (and Christianity) while retaining deep roots in the local Meccan cult.
Similarly, the new Asura/Deva synthesis within a common tri-functional hierarchy
(priestly MV, warrior Indra, material producers Azvins) would have provided the
unifying banner for the explosion from
Sunthar V.,
Religion, ethnicity & culture in the genesis of Indian civilization—a taste of
Veda-Vyāsa’s humor? (Feb 4, 2002)
Prof. Parpola and I seem to agree that the Asura
Mitra-VaruNa was a pre-existing supreme deity of the urban civilization of the
Indo-Iranian belt subsequently adopted by the BMAC religion to be incorporated,
through a process of ‘syncretism’, finally into the (pre-) Rg-Vedic religion.
One might even speculate that the Asura’s (power of) māyā (later ‘magic’ and ‘illusion’) might have referred
primarily to (creative) ‘measure’ (*mā-) as
reflected above all in the extreme standardization of (binary and decimal)
weights, (brick) ratios, (street) orientations. And that, over and above their
abstract social dimension, the Ādityas might have simultaneously represented
(the attributes of) the planets, who are still worshipped in (especially South
Indian) Hindu temples, all offspring of the ‘unbounded’ (a-diti)
universal matrix, Aditi. Likewise, we agree that the Azvins, who are intimately
linked to the twin horses that powered the Indo-Aryan war-chariot, as if steered
by a single harmonious will, reflect an alien world-view intruding from the
grassy plains of the Central Asian steppes. Two horses have been found as far
away as Hyksos
However, what Dumézil’s analyses of the Bogazkhoy (
Parpola’s attempt to account for the impressive
wealth and range of materials presented in his paper through multiple
(propagating from his earlier 2 to now 4-5) waves of conquest is symptomatic of
a core inadequacy being buttressed by a multitude of ad hoc hypothetical extensions (like those little
Ptolemaic circles now so familiar to historians of science?). Taken at
face-value, the Indo-Aryan world-view, as still reflected in the
Rig-Veda, accords the supreme position to a priestly dual-divinity apparently
common to the entire Indo-Iranian belt before the intrusion of ‘(Indo-)European’
speakers from the steppes. Who then would have been the elites guiding—if not
directing—the expansion of this new, apparently very supple, religious
ideology radiating from Bactria outwards (and southwards only?) from the Aegean
to India?
I thank Prof. Parpola for his timely dispatch of a
most ambitious and fertile synthesis of domains that few Indo-Europeanists could
emulate!
Sunthar
P.S. I’d prefer to wait for Prof. Parpola’s paper (in
press) on “Horse and chariot in Indo-Iranian and Greek religion: Common heritage
from the Pontic-Caspian steppes,” before elaborating my observations on the
nature and function of the twin Azvins, horse (-headed) deities...
[Rest of this thread at Sunthar V. (Mar 13, 2003)
“Indus
civilization, Bactria-Margiana archeological complex (BMAC) and (pre-) Rig-Vedic
religion“]
[Anthropology: Indian Civilization]
Subject: [Abhinava msg #731]
The Routes of Indo-Aryan Migrations (Cyril Babaev)—what about back-influence from BMAC II?
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date: Thu Apr 10, 2003; 10:19 am
Forefathers of the Greek, Armenian and Aryan speakers stayed in
the old Proto-Indo-European homeland in the east European steppes, forming the
Pit Grave culture (c. 3500-2800/2200 BC). The split into the preforms of
Graeco-Armenian and Aryan branches came about sometime around 2800 BC with the
divergence of the late Pit Grave culture into the Catacomb Grave culture of the
Pontic steppes on the one hand and the Poltavka culture of the steppes between
the
Asko Parpola (
On the Scythian/Zaka affiliation of the Dāsas, Nuristanis and Magadhans," Iranica Antiqua vol. 37 (2002:233-324)
Festschrift
for C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky
Assuming that the last known 'homeland' of the Indo-Aryans was indeed the Pontic Steppes, and that part of this speech-community may have remained there after migrations into Bactria (BMAC, en route to India) and North Mesopotamia (Mitanni), the following questions arise:
By 1900 BC, Bactrian culture was already Indo-Aryan speaking and
the Mitanni kingdom (post-1700 BC) seems to have been controlled by a
BMAC-derived charioteering aristocracy, who had assumed a dominant role in
northern Mesopotamia (and elsewhere in the Middle East). How would these shifts
in (material and) religious culture have affected those cattle-rearing
Indo-Aryan nomadic kinsmen still in the Pontic steppes?
Since Soma is known to the Indo-Iranians, but not to the Greeks (who only
have the mead = madhu), it would seem that the Indo-Aryans started
acquiring the Soma-cult only after taking over the BMAC (where there is reliable
evidence of the cultic use of ephedra) and, curiously enough, developed
the mythico-ritual universe around its psychotropic effects only en route into
northern India. Where did the cult originate?
Assuming that the proto-Greek speech community were originally their
Pontic neighbors, who would later descend via the Balkans into the Greek
mainland, just how much of this common language and culture would they have
taken into
Whereas Greek shows archaic 'Indo-European' (IE) traits, such as wide
range of inflections, whose closest parallel is Vedic (not classical) Sanskrit,
half its lexicography cannot be traced to common IE roots. Would this be
explicable in terms of the post 1000 BC Dorian+Achaean (= Mycenaean) fusion that
would have resulted in Egyptian, Semitic, Pelasgian, etc., vocabulary being
absorbed into a Dorian framework?
Sunthar
P.S. Cyril's (attempted) reconstructions seem unaware of the scope and
significance of BMAC civilization (c.2200—1600 BC) for the
[Rest of this thread at Sunthar V. (Apr 8, 2003 )
Dartmouth Devlad courses on
Mycenae—very useful but dated? No references to Bactrian parallels!
Ways of Indo-Aryan Migrations
[Cyril’s complete article is available at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abhinavagupta/message/731]
Subject:
Transgressive
underpinnings of divine kingship: the ‘Indo-Mediterranean’ sacred bull
From: Sunthar
Visuvalingam
Sent: Monday,
July 08, 2002 7:31 PM [order of thread reversed]
To:
Cc:
[Rest of this thread at Transgressive underpinnings of divine kingship: the ‘Indo-Mediterranean’ sacred bull (Jul 8, 2002)]
Subject:
FW: Transgressive
underpinnings of divine kingship: the ‘Indo-Mediterranean’ sacred bull
From: Sunthar
Visuvalingam
Sent: Thursday,
April 10, 2003 11:46 AM
To: Indo-Greek@yahoogroups.com
The (priestly-merchant) elite of the Indus
Civilization represented themselves as (unicorn) bulls (Taurus rather than
Indicus...) on their seals and, in other contexts, the bull is shown mating with
a supine ‘priestess’ in what would amount to a hieros
gamos.
Bull (vRSabha)
is retained in the subsequent Rig-Vedic religion as an epithet of ViSNu, Soma,
and even Indra, with connotations of ‘virility’ (vRS-),
and in this new Indo-Aryan context the bull and buffalo are replaced by the
horse as in the imperial Azva-medha sacrifice.
This pre-Indo-European bovine motif is retained not
only in the Minotaur legend attributed to Crete but also in the mainland art and
artifacts of the horse-charioteering Mycenaean aristocracy, another indication
of a new and dominant cultural synthesis from around 1600-1200 BC.
Unicorns in the
Date: Fri Apr 11, 2003; 6:57 am
In this area, known to the ancients as Margiana, the Russians
uncovered a number of sites of monumental architecture dating from the second
millennium BC. One of these sites, Gonur South, consists of a fortified complex
of buildings, a number of private dwellings and a fort. Within this complex
there is also a large shrine (known to have been used as a sacred fire temple)
consisting of two parts: one clearly used for public worship and the other,
hidden from the gaze of the multitude, an inner sanctum of the priesthood. In
one of these private rooms were found three ceramic bowls. Analysis of samples
found in these vessels by Professor Mayer-Melikyan revealed the traces of both
cannabis and Ephedra. Clearly both these psychoactive substances had been used
in conjunction in the making of hallucinogenic drinks. In the adjoining room of
the same inner sanctum were found ten ceramic pot-stands which appear to have
been used in conjunction with strainers designed to separate the juices from the
twigs, stems and leaves of the plants. In another room at the other end of the
shrine a basin containing remains of a considerable quantity of cannabis was
discovered, as well as a number of pottery stands and strainers that have also
been associated with making psychoactive beverages. The excavators believe that,
given the considerable size of the fortress, the shrine may well have been
dispensing the entheogenic drink to worshippers from all over Margiana in the
first half of the second millennium BC [centuries earlier per calibrated
carbon-dating—SV]. The shrine at the later site of Togoluk 1 (probably dating
from the mid-second millennium) seems also to have been used to make
hallucinogenic drinks as a similar pottery strainer has been found there,
although traces of psychoactive plants have not been detected. The shrine at a
third settlement, Togoluk 21, dated to the late second millennium, contained
vessels which revealed remains of Ephedra again, but this time in conjunction
with the pollen of poppies. An engraved bone tube from the same shrine was also
found to contain poppy pollen. These sites also yielded up other artifacts that
gave tantalising clues as to what sort of rituals took place in these Bronze Age
shrines. Designs on a cylinder seal depict a drummer, an acrobat and two men
with the heads of monkeys. The rituals that took place under the influence of
the psychoactive drinks seem to have involved the participants wearing animal
masks. [...] the discovery in the shrines of the remains of opium, cannabis and
Ephedra in ritual vessels that are dated between 2000-1000 BC show that soma in
its Iranian form haoma may be considered as a
composite psychoactive substance comprising of cannabis and Ephedra in one
instance and opium and Ephedra in another.
Soma,
from The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Substances
The original Proto-Indo-European cultic drink *medhu ‘mead’, made of honey and water, appears to
have continued in use in the forest-steppe rich in honey-trees; in Vedic
religion honey was associated with the cult of Azvins, the charioteer gods. In
the grass steppe, however, it appears that ‘wine’ started being used by the
Proto-Greeks as well as by Proto-Iranians, but was still called *medhu. [<p.239] [p.245>] Analysis of the Vedic texts
suggests that the principal new element introduced by the last wave of
Proto-Indo-Aryans to come to southern Central Asia was the worship of Indra with
the drink called *Sauma (whence Vedic Soma
[<p.245-246>] and Avestan Haoma) and in all
likelihood prepared out of plants of the genus Ephedra (...). Cultic vessels containing remnants of
Ephedra have been found from the BMAC sites of
Gonur and Togolok 21 in Margiana (...) in the last period of ‘urban’ occupation
(...). Ephedra twigs bundled into little bags
accompanied into the grave the famous mummies of the early Sinkiang culture of
Loulan alias Qäwrighul (c. 2000-1550 BC). This oasis culture is supposed by
Elizabeth Barber to have been founded by BMAC colonists (...). Additional
evidence for this (...) is the compartmented metal seal discovered by Sir Aurel
Stein at Kucha in the
Festschrift
for C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky
It is clear that when the Proto-Indo-Iranians migrated into the
areas with which they became associated historically, they already possessed a
tradition involving a sacred drink extracted from a certain hard-to-obtain
plant, and an elaborate ritual and mythology to go along with it. The
deification of the sacred drink is also already well-entrenched within the
tradition, in both of its branches. Somewhere between their departure from their
IE homeland and their arrival at their historical destinations, the
Indo-Iranians acquired a sacred drink that was uniquely theirs within IE [i.e.,
that was significantly different from the old IE traditions revolving around an
ancient drink of immortality], and migrating southward, they brought their *sauma tradition with them. This has obvious
implications for a search for the origins of soma. [...] When we turn to
the Rgveda itself, other issues arise, which also indicate that the inherited
Indo-Iranian *sauma -cycle was very much in
flux at the time of the ‘purification’ of the soma-hymns from the rest of the RV
Samhitā into Book 9. Of course, the word ‘sóma’ can be found in every nook and
cranny of the RV [nearly 1000x], but the word ‘pįvamāna,’
though attested roughly 173x, is found exclusively in the 9th bk [with one
puzzling exception]. With regard to the word ‘sóma’, throughout the RV one
encounters frequent, extensive word-play [Sprachmalerei ] on the verbal root
su-, ‘to press, extract’ [cf. sóma sutį, Av. haoma huta, etc.]. This motif is replaced in the 9th
book by comparable word-play on the root pū-,’
to cleanse, purify’: in particular with the word ‘pįvamāna.’
In general the word ‘sóma’ as a theonym behaves
irregularly, insofar as it does not follow the paradigm of other theonyms, in
which the theonym functions within whole hymns, or parts of hymns, as the
keyword around which the progression of the hymn unfolds. In my view, there is
something deviant not only about the word ‘sóma’
here, but also about the god Soma. [...] It is claimed here that the cult of
Soma Pavamāna is a cult of a Soma utterly ‘purified’ of its origins in a Central
Asian shamanic cult, involving a powerful, possibly hallucinogenic, drink,
extracted from a plant foreign to the Indian sub-continent, and probably also
from the Iranian plateau. It is also claimed that on the basis of the material
offered here more rigorous comparisons can now be made between the linguistic
culture of common Indo-Iranian and the material culture of BMAC or the
George Thompson, Soma and amzu:
On the Indo-Iranian Drink,the Plant, and its Geographical Origins (May
2001)
Third Harvard Round Table on the Ethnogenesis of South and Central Asia
[...] my proposal that the mysterious cult object that you find
before the unicorn on the unicorn seals is a filter. I have said this after
studying in original more than a thousand unicorn seals in the Indian
collections. According to me, the cult object is made of three parts, an upper
cylindrical vessel, a lower cylindrical vessel with holes like a colander for
example, and the whole thing is stuck on a staff. [...] Now the question to ask
is this: Since we know that the unicorn seals were the most popular ones, and
every unicorn has this cult object before it, whatever it represents must be
part of the central religious ritual of the Harappan religion. We know of one
religion whose central religious cult was a filter, that is the soma of the Indo-Aryans. [...] But the Indo-European
heritage does not know of soma. The Indo-Aryans
knew soma, and the Indo-Iranians knew
homa, but the Hittites, or those who went to
Unicorn bull and the Indo-Sumerian goddess—I once
asked Jhājī what the Rig-Vedic soma
might have been and, after a moment, he ventured it might have been like bhang (cannabis, of which he, more than most
Banarasis, was a great connoisseur...). The elite entrepreneurs of the Indus
civilization (IVC) seem to have been (pyro-) technical yuppies and spaced-out
hippies rolled into one, whose closest contemporary incarnations would be found
in the futuristic ‘gurus’ of our information age (Lotus-presiding Mitch Kapor?).
Whereas Rig-Vedic descriptions of (its effects) are still closely modeled on the
physical appearance, pressing and purification of the (ephedra) plant,
the later Hindu Soma doctrine (siddhānta)
identifies the ‘milk’ (in which Banarasi bhang
is dissolved to be ingested) of the temperate plant, after it was no longer
accessible in India, with an exalted state of Consciousness deriving from and
inducing a transmutation of bodily fluids. The sexual connotations and practices
of this transmutation may be likewise traced back to the IVC steles which depict
a bull copulating with a (woman attired like a) ‘priestess’ in what must have
been a hieros gamos. The ‘ithyphallic’ unicorn-bull, with its horn
pointing towards the Soma-press, would thus express an inner ecstatic state of
the initiate that could also be induced by sacred sex. The gazelle-like traits
could be seen as a prefiguration of the Vedic religion where the black deer
becomes the representation par excellence of the consecrated (Soma-) dīkSita,
the theriomorphic form assumed by Prajāpati to be pierced by Rudra’s arrow at
the very moment he was spilling his milky seed into his daughter the ruddy Dawn.
Soma, ecstasy and sexuality—already in the
Rig-Veda, the semantics of ‘Soma’ is focused on the fluid(s), ecstatic
experience, and the divinity, as opposed to the plant proper (the semantic orbit
rather of the term amzu). This transmutation
of fluids was also achieved through sexual ecstasy coupled with esoteric
techniques, the latter becoming the primary meaning of the Soma doctrine (siddhānta) among later Zaiva currents,
especially after loss of the original plant concoction (but substituted with
beverages like bhang). While the deliberately sought for sexual
effervescence was represented well enough by the ithyphallic (Pāzupata) ascetic
(who had to indulge in zRngāraNA—acting
lewdly towards women even while avoiding them), the process whereby this energy
was transmuted and channeled upwards to the brain is best portrayed by the
single-horn-on-the-head (note that the Kāpālika ingested his ‘soma’ from a skull-bowl...). This motif is a
constant in the Hindu mythico-ritual universe, whether as the Vedic dīkSita having to scratch himself with an antelope
horn, the innocent horned sage RSyazRnga seduced by the princess, or
single-tusked (eka-zRnga) divinities such as
the boar Varāha and elephant-headed GaNeza, etc. So central is this
‘transmutation’ principle that it has given its name to the (enjoyment of the)
erotic sentiment of Sanskrit theater: zRngāraNa!
It reappears in the (crooked) upraised stick of the ‘horny’ clown (vidūSaka) who likewise indulges in lascivious
gestures towards women while remaining chaste. And with the VidūSaka and GaNeZa,
the quintessential Soma reappears in the form of rounded sweetmeats (modaka).
These ‘shamanistic’ and esoteric connotations of the Soma would both predate and
survive its specific assimilation to a psychotropic concoction (ephedra,
etc.)
Where and how did the Indo-Aryans develop the Rig-Vedic Soma cult?—We are now faced with a contradictory situation where the proto-Indo-Aryans would have descended from the Pontic steppes upon the BMAC civilization, which was already using ephedra for cultic purposes, and yet their Soma-cult, as developed in the Rig-Veda, finds its closest parallel in the IVC unicorn seals! If the most representative gods of the charioteering proto-Indo-Aryans were the twin horsemen, the Azvins, how come the Vedic tradition explicitly affirms that they were originally excluded from the Soma drink (and had to content themselves instead with the mead)? If the (later separate proto-) Iranian-speakers had original and independent access to the Soma-cult, how come these wide-ranging nomads did not pass on (elements of the same) to their neighboring populations? Indra himself, according to RV X.124, won over Soma (and Agni = Fire) from the Asuras along with Varuna. If the latter was originally a non-‘Indo-European’ divinity, so must the original Soma-cult have belonged to the pre-existing substratum culture of the BMAC and regions further south. The fact that the Avesta retains the hoama (and Fire) cult along (Varuna in the form of) Ahura (Asura) Mazda (Medhā), even while demonizing (Indra and) the Nāsatyas, i.e., the divinities proper to the IE speakers, would seem to only further confirm this.
Cultural dialectics between Indus and BMAC
civilizations—the most appropriate framework for resolving the vexed
question of (not just) the Soma (but of Fire) is to assume a religio-cultural
polarity between the Indus Valley (IVC) and
It seems to me that the real problem is not so much
with the (pre-) historical data (of which have enough already) but rather with
our models of cultural interaction that need to go beyond mechanical diffusion
(based primarily on a confused play of resemblances...) to a study of
(especially religious) ‘ideology’ as a coherent system of representations. We
may well discover that our ancestors might have had a much better handle on the
civilizational processes that overtook them than do our own ‘elites’ about
what’s happening around us these days...
Sunthar
[Rest of this thread at Sunthar V. (Apr 4, 2003)
The Virgin and the Unicorn: does Christianity have an
esoteric dimension?]
[Esotericism:symbolism;
Anthropology:Indian civilization]
Subject:
From: Virendra Qazi [Abhinava msg #736 – order of thread reversed]
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2003 2:50 PM
To: Abhinavagupta@yahoogroups.com
Hymn To Goddess TRIPURĀ
(
First Zloka of First Canto of PANCHASTAVI )
“May the Goddess TRIPURA, [...]
may She by means of three mighty syllables ‘AIM ‘ , ‘KLIM’ , ‘SAUH’
speedly destroy all our impurities.”
The above hymn is the gem from
Goddess Tripura or Tripura Sundari , personifying the ‘Divine
Energy ‘. TRI denotes number three and PURA means among other things (or
the basis).
We can enumerate the triple form of Gods (Brahmā, ViSnu, and Maheza),
Fire (household, sacrificial and funeral),
Vedas (Rig, Yajus, Sāma)
Gunas (Sattva, Rajas and Tamas)
and other Cosmic manifestations .
Coming to the three mystic Bija Mantras mentioned above [...].
>
>
Virendra Qazi,
[Virendra’s complete unedited post at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abhinavagupta/message/735]
Subject:
Beauty of the fortified triple-city (Tripurasundarī)—on the Bactrian warrior-dimension of Durgā and Zākta tantrism
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date: Fri Apr 18, 2003; 11:09 am
We paused in the cool shade of the overhang and talked of the
goddesses to whom Hinglaj is consecrated. When the goddess Durga died her body
parts fell in various locations on earth. One consecrated this remote and
desolate gorge and the temple that the believers raised was to become one of the
most celebrated in the entire subcontinent. Her festival in January was once the
object of her followers from all over the Indian subcontinent; now only the few
remaining Hindus in
Salman Rashid, From Nana to Bibi Nani
3.3 The ‘palace’ of Dashly and the Tantric maNDala: The
groundplan of the modern Afghan qalas and
similar BMAC manors is usually square. Two remarkable monumental buildings of
the BMAC having a square groundplan are the ‘fortress’ of Sapalli-tepa in [<p.263-p.264>] northern
Asko Parpola (
On the Scythian/Zaka affiliation of the Dāsas, Nuristanis and Magadhans,” Iranica Antiqua vol. 37 (2002:233-324)
The bloody obstetrics of the dīkSā
is particularly evident in Andhra Pradesh where Ankammā dismembers the fetus of
her homonym, the queen-mother Gangā (Gangammā), at the twelfth year of her
pregnancy, and the sacrificial scenario finds its prolongations on the
folk-level in the Tamil cremation-ground cult of the infanticide Ankālamman
where Irulappan, the child-Shiva, is not only the ‘dark-one’ like Kāla-Bhairava
but is also identifiable with his royal-father (Kāzī-) Vallālarājan. [...] The royal character of the pure central
divinity, even in the absence of a real king, is also seen at Tiruvannāmalai
where once every year Shiva-Annāmalaiyār is informed of the death of the
virtuous king Vallāla, and after a mourning ceremony is crowned son-successor
to the childless king. A historical Ballāla stands in the Ankālamman myth behind
the demoniac Vallālarājan, whose seven-walled palace, equated with the
cremation-ground at whose centre lies the pregnant queen-goddess, is but an
image of Annāmalaiyār within the womb (garbha-gRha)
of the Tiruvannāmalai temple with its seven concentric enclosures. Moreover, at
Kumbhakonam, where the Kāzī-Vizvanātha temple stands on the Mahāmagha lake
formed from the ‘nectar’ (amRta) spilled from
Brahmā’s primordial pot (-womb), and wherein the nine most sacred rivers of
India led by the Gangā mix their waters once every twelve years, Vallālarājan is
even promoted to the king of Kāzī, embryogonic center of the Hindu sacrificial
universe. Would this not be precisely because the dīkSā underlies all legitimate kingship in
Elizabeth V., “The
Sin-Eating Bhairava: Death and Embryogony in Kāshī,” Bhairava’s Royal
Brahmanicide
Hello Virendra,
The most satisfactory explanation as to why the Zākta goddess is called ‘the beauty of the three cities’ (tri-pura-sundarī) is that offered by Prof. Parpola that during the late Bronze Ages she ‘inhabited’, and was identified with, the Bactrian ’city’ fortified by three concentric walls:
BMAC militarization of the Near Eastern goddess—Though her
pre-existing cult in the Indo-Iranian-Mesopotamian belt already had violent
elements (animal and human sacrifice) and even a war-like function (e.g.,
Inanna-Istar), the urban goddess seems to have been well-integrated by her
priesthood into a relatively pacific civilizational system of mercantile
exchange. Only when the north-eastern rim of this belt was taken over from
around 2100 BC by an alien warrior society composed of nomadic tribes was her
cult there transformed and generalized into a blood-thirsty culture where she
presided over death and victory in battle. And though Durgā-pūjā has long seen
the onset of military expeditions, there is hardly any justification within the
Hindu subcontinent itself for her original association with ‘tri-pura’ or
even with the number nine (as in nava-durgā). By publicly projecting the
underlying maNDala pattern onto an impressive architectural form,
Dashly-3 (and other such palace-fortress-townships), with the nine turrets of
its innermost circle, seems to have immortalized the image of the goddess in the
Hindu imagination. It seems to me that these epithets have been conserved
primarily because of their pre-existing esoteric connotations.
Bactrian inspiration for Durgā cult in Kashmir—Over and
above the role of the Central Asian Kushanas in popularizing this goddess of war
in
From demonic fortress to Beauty of the Three Worlds—Just as the
virile Indra and his ‘storm-troopers’ (maruts) battered the citadels of
the Dāsas in the Rigveda, the still quite masculine Ziva of the Puranic
mythology continues to burn down the stronghold of the ‘demon of the
triple-city’ Tripura. How is it that this beautiful matron of the enemy enclave
has remained relatively unscathed by the process of ‘demonization’ and has
instead succeeded in crossing over with (almost) full honors (like Vāc, the
goddess of Speech...) to the ‘Indo-Aryan’ tradition? Simply because the
(fortified) ‘city’ was always identified with the (otherwise) ’inaccessible’ (dur-ga)
maternal womb (to which the warrior killed in battle returned) within a
thorough-going ‘sacrificial’ representation of the world. Similarly, seen from
the ‘outside’ as it were, Indra’s violent penetration of the fortress was also
charged with sexual connotations that become very explicit in the Tantric
understanding of his phallic vajra. For FBJ Kuiper, Indra’s slaying of VRtra
(= Samvara = Zambara), the central event of the Rig-Vedic cosmogony celebrated
especially at the New Year (as even now by by the Newars...all
non-Indo-Europeans!), is the mythico-ritual expression of a
regressus ad uterum.
This is precisely how the the Tantric maNDala as visual support, like the
dynamic process of the Vedic sacrifice, serves as a vehicle of reintegration.
Whereas we’ve been habituated to approaching the development of tantricism in terms of the subsequent interaction between the patriarchal Vedic tradition and aboriginal Indian goddesses, it should be noted that Parpola’s reconstruction situates the (proto-) Zākta cult not only well outside the subcontinent, in south Central Asia, but also well before (2100 BC onwards) the redaction of the Rig-Veda itself....
Regards,
Sunthar
[Rest of this thread at
Unicorns in the Indus civilization—did Indo-Iranian speakers take over the
Soma-cult from the BMAC culture?
Esotericism:symbolism; Anthropology:feminism, Indian civilization]
by Cyril Babaev
[Cyril’s complete article is also available at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indo-Greek/message/33]
Subject:
The Origin of Rome
and Romans (Cyril Babaev)—durable macro-effects of imperial formations on linguistic map and cultural evolution
From: Sunthar
Visuvalingam [Abhinava msg
#737
– order of thread reversed]
Sent: Saturday, April 19, 2003 5:48 PM
To:
Indo-Greek@yahoogroups.com
The linguistic
map of modern Europe cannot be understood simply in terms of successive waves of
various Indo-European populations (Celt, German, Greek, Slavic, etc.), without
taking into account the geographical extent and cultural impact over 400 years
of the Roman empire. Latin exercised a transformative effect through the
creation of the Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and
Rumanian) and on the post-Norman development of English. If the Germanic
languages remained relatively intact, this was because the German tribes (unlike
the Gauls, Iberians, etc.) were never successfully subdued by the Romans.
In many respects, the cultural impact of Roman law, administration,
architecture and eventually religion (Christianity) on European civilization is
even more profound today than that of linguistic consolidation.
Similarly, the
cultural topography of southern Eurasia cannot be fully appreciated without
according, over and above the various Greek colonies established throughout the
Mediterranean, a central place to Alexander’s Hellenistic empire that stretched
from the Aegean to north-western
By the same
token, we cannot do justice to the linguistic map of (south) Central Asia and
the Indo-Iranian belt in terms of successive waves of ‘(proto-) Indo-Iranian’
speakers without according a central transformative role to the BMAC expansion
(c. 1900-1500 BC) from
Sunthar
Subject:
Was the BMAC ‘taken-over’ by successive waves of ‘Aryan’ speakers? Durable macro-effects of ‘imperial’ formations on linguistic map and cultural evolution
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date: Wed Apr 23, 2003; 12:14 pm
[p.240>] First wave if BMAC
Aryans: Pre-Proto-Iranians It seems to me that c.2100 BC, when the Sintashta-Arkaim culture was emerging but the
horse-chariot had not yet been developed, a group of ‘Pre-Proto-Iranian’
speakers, ancestors of the Dāsas, came to southern Central Asia from the lower
Volga-Ural steppes and took over the rule of the BMAC in its Namazga V phase
(Dashly-3 in southern Bactria, Sapalli in northern Bactria). [...] [<p.240-241>]
I will argue below (...) that this earliest wave of BMAC Aryans infiltrated the
élite of the Indus Civilization as well, some proceeding as far east as the Ganges-Yamuna Doab where their presence is
represented by the ‘Ochre Coloured Pottery’ and the Gangetic Copper Hoards; some
seem to have continued southwards to the Deccan as well. In the Indus Valley,
the mighty water buffalo, the animal symbolizing the chief male deity of the
Harappans, was transferred to the main deity of this Aryan wave, Yama alias
Samvara; this was probably easy, as both gods seem to have been connected with
kingship, fertility and death. Of equal importance in the pantheon was the
goddess of fertility, essentially the ancient Near-Eastern lion escorted goddess
adopted in
Asko Parpola (
On the Scythian/Zaka affiliation of the Dāsas, Nuristanis and Magadhans,” Iranica Antiqua vol. 37 (2002:233-324)
The search for an Indo-European
homeland has taken us some two hundred years by now. The discussion can easily
be summarized, if somewhat facetiously, by: the homeland is at, or
close to the homeland of the author of the book in question...The same
applies, mutatis mutandis, to the homeland of
the Indo-Iranians, or Arya/Ārya, as they call themselves. [...] [<p.1]
[p.4>] While the ultimate ‘‘home’’ of the speakers of Indo-Iranian thus
seems to have been in or near the Greater Ural region, and while their trail up
to the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC, see below) is clear
enough, it is lost precisely there, as only BMAC impact is found all across
Greater Iran and up to Harappa, but not direct steppe influence. At the present
stage of research, neither the exact time frame, nor the exact trail, nor the
details of the various movements of the speakers of Indo-Iranian and Indo-Aryan
are clear. We can only state that some of them suddenly appear as a superstrate
in the Mitanni realm of northern Syria and Iraq (middle of the second millennium
BCE) and others as authors of the hymns of the Rgveda in the Greater Panjab (at
about the same time). [<p.4] [p.5>] All such
interpretations are, in my opinion, premature. What is clear is that there was a
mixture in the BMAC of many cultural elements from
[<p.5-6>]
Mesopotamia to E. Iran and the
Michael Witzel, The Home of the Aryans (Anusantatyai, Dettelbach: J.H. Roell 2000, 283-338 )
Prof.
Parpola’s attempt to reconstruct (successive stages of) early Indo-Aryan (IA)
culture in
Why so many waves of ‘take-overs’ from the north and/or west of the BMAC?—1) 2100 BC ‘Pre-Proto-Iranians’ = to account for arrival of
Indo-European speech and worship of Yama; 2) 1900 BC ‘Atharvavedic’
Proto-Indo-Aryans = horse, chariot-warfare, Mitra-Varuna and Azvins in the IA
pantheon; 3) 1750-1500 BC Rgvedic (RV) Proto-Indo-Aryans = Mitanni kingdom in
Syria, Yadus and Turvazas tribes of 8th and 1st RV books, complementary square
(= male) āhavanīya and round (= female) gārhapatya fireplaces of
Vedic ritual, worship of Indra with Soma; 4) 1500-1200 BC ‘Proto-Iranian’
mounted nomads = assimilated all ‘Indo-Aryan’ speakers and replaced chariotry
with riding, partly transformed into sedentary agriculturists at the BMAC,
pushed proto-IA tribes (Pūru and Bharata of RV ‘family’ books 2-7) from Central
Asia and Greater Iran into South Asia; 5) 1200-800 BC fresh waves of Iranians =
bring iron, Scythians bring polyandry (800 BC), before historically attested
Achaemenid Persians, KuSāNas, Sakas and Pahlavas. What is noteworthy in this
entire schema is that all formative influences on early Indian, both Vedic and
Zākta, culture is visualized as being imposed by successive waves of alien
settlers passing through and (partly) fusing together in
Collapse of
Indo-Aryan traces in Finno-Ugric and around the Black Sea—though
I’m not aware of any satisfactory explanation as to when, where and how
the Indo-Iranians would have acquired the Soma cult (as opposed to simply using
a hallucinogenic plant) outside of the BMAC, the speculations on the ‘original’
home of the Indo-Aryans have been guided by loan-words in neighboring languages
(Finno-Ugric) and toponyms north and east of the Black Sea. However, I see no
reason why these traces could not be attributed to back-influence on the
steppe-regions by the also westward expanding BMAC, where the newly emerging
‘proto-Indo-Aryans’ would be more agriculturalists (--> the later Sindes and
Maeotes of the Greek authors?) as compared to
their nomadic proto-Iranian neighbors, cousins and progenitors, who would have
themselves become increasingly (culturally) ‘Indo-Aryanized’. Even if any of
these IA linguistic traces were to be definitely dated to before 2000 BC.
(??), they might have originally belonged to the vanished Central Asian
‘Indo-Iranian’ substratum language that was assimilated in
Was BMAC the ‘original homeland’ (Urheimat) of the ‘Aryans’?—If the
Iranian nomads came from the steppes region of the southern Urals and yet ended
up venerating, in the Avesta, the Afghan highlands (to the north-east) as the
‘Aryan expanse’, their ‘originating’ center, we may surmise that the late BMAC
was where the common Indo-Iranian (pre-Vedic) religious synthesis was forged
from pre-existing local elements and continuing southern influences. They would
have adopted Yama (Dharma-rāja...), who is closely related to (and perhaps even
a ‘popular’ manifestation of) the underworldly, deathly and inauspicious aspects
of VaruNa (-mRtyu, guardian of the Rta) along with the Indo-Sumerian goddess
from the indigenous culture, whose practices would have in many ways been
transformed prolongations of IVC (not to mention Mesopotamian and Elamite)
representations. This would in turn have had a transformative effect on the
language and culture of the Panjab, all the more so if the remnants of the
IVC (along with other) elites had integrated into and contributed to the
evolution of the uniquely BMAC characteristics. The warlike Indra cult,
integrated into the tri-functional pantheon (between Mitra-VaruNa and the twin
Azvins), would have triumphed there during the expansionist phase, spreading
thereby both to the Near East and
For two
hundred years, ‘Indo-Europeanists’ have been molding the ‘uncooked’ clay of
Indian prehistory according to their (representations of the) ‘Aryan homeland’
(so much so that now even Zākta tantrism would be an ‘Iranian’ importation...).
While seeming to provide the long sought-for ‘staging area’ for the Aryan
invasion of
Sunthar
P.S. I hope to develop some of the above points in greater detail in due
course...
[Rest of this thread at (Sunthar V, Apr 18, 2003)
Anthropology:
Indian civilization]
Subject: [Abhinava msg #767]
Between
Euro-Semites and Indo-Sumerians—can world-history be reduced to
‘ethno-linguistic’ mutual exterminations?
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date: Wed May 14, 2003; 3:26 am
Serious things, if one may say so, began towards the beginning
of the IVth millennium when, in the southern part of the country, two
populations that were wholly foreign to each other found themselves face to
face: on the one hand, the Sumerians; on the other, those who are called, by
convention, the Akkadians.
The Akkadians were Semites. The Semites seem to have originally
occupied
During the entire history of the country, right down till after
our own era, from the same north-west, poured down, all the way between the two
rivers, further waves of Semites, speaking closely related languages that had
become sufficiently differentiated in the meantime from each other, and some of
which are still in use today: Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic... Through their language
and their history, these Semites are familiar enough to us.
[<p.63] [...]
[p.64>] Already from the IIIrd millennium, the southern part of
Low-Mesopotamia was locally called ‘
During a first phase—that we cannot estimate nor specify—it is
clear that the Sumerians were culturally dominant; more active, more ingenious,
more creative, they introduced into the life of the country numerous
institutions, techniques, and ideas; whereas the Akkadian Semites, though they
evidently added their own (thus, the words—and consequently the things
themselves—for ‘merchant’, ‘pasture’, ‘slave’, [<p.65-66>]
‘rider’, ‘combat’, just like the name for ‘garlic’, have passed from their
language into Sumerian), seem to have been content to introduce into the life,
notably the religion, a new and original spirit that was their own and slowly
pervaded the civilization of the country. Up till the moment when, being less
numerous, ethnically less powerful and seeming not to have ever received the
least amount of fresh blood from kinsfolk they must have abandoned in coming to
settle in Mesopotamia, the Sumerians, in the course of the IIIrd millennium, and
after a long symbiosis, were totally absorbed and swallowed up by the Akkadians,
who never ceased, on their part, to receive ethnic and cultural reinforcements
from the north-west.
But the most glaring sign of the inestimable importance of the
Sumerian contribution to Mesopotamian civilization is to be measured not only by
the number of terms for occupations, techniques, but plenty of others that
express all sorts of institutions and notions, economic, social, political,
religious realities that Akkadian had received from Sumerian; but also, and
perhaps especially, by the fact that the Sumerian language, after having been
spoken (less and less), first at the official level, almost for the whole of the
IIIrd millennium, and although dead afterwards, has imposed itself and has
continued to be at least written, if not jabbered,
[<p.66-67>] by the literati and scholars right till the end of the
Mesopotamian civilization. Exactly as among us, down till the Renaissance,
Latin, whose continuous use demonstrates that we owe a great deal to
Jean Bottéro, Babylon and the Bible
(Hachette, 1994), translated from the French by Sunthar V.
The strength of Mesopotamian religious tradition, which gave
The origins of
As a culture, ancient
McGuire Gibson, “Nippur—Sacred City of Enlil, Supreme God of
Sumer and Akkad” (Al-Rafidan,
Vol. XIV, 1993)
Dear
The nature and evolution of Sumero-Akkadian civilization certainly cannot be understood without assuming a certain cultural tension, even opposition degenerating into conflict, between the (earlier dominant) southern urbanites and the (subsequently triumphant) northern nomads:
Who was
responsible for the militarization of Sumero-Akkadian society? A politico-religious opposition is
discernible around Shiruppak from the earliest Sumero-Semite period: to the
south are cities with limited territories whose communal life was organized more
‘democratically’ around temples whose administrators (ensi) are (re-) elected, whereas to the north are large
expanses of land whose economy is centered on the palace and directed by
autocratic kings. The latter militarization was, no doubt, the natural result of
(having to defend against) the northern vulnerability to attacks by waves of
Semitic nomads from without and the increasing Akkadian dominance within
Mesopotamian society itself. More important, however, is that the Sumerians
themselves became gradually so transformed that the northern city of
Did the
Rig-Vedic jihadis carve out their ‘Indian homeland’ through ‘ethnic cleansing’? Among the wealth of archeo-linguistic
clues that Prof. Parpola has amassed to support his schema of successive ‘Aryan
invasions’ between 2100-1200 BC is irrefutable evidence of militarization of
North Indian culture going back to the Harappan period itself: late BMAC
(Bactrian) seals found in the Indus show weapon-bearing soldiers, the unique
‘race-course’ at Dholavīra would have been for (war-) chariots, burial practices
show continuities with steppic pre-historic cultures, etc. Prof. Possehl, in his
lecture here, had argued that the famous
Did
‘Āryans’ repopulate the
Are the
Pashtuns responsible for the militarization of Pakistani society? The symbiosis between the two ‘national’
cultures, with the free movement of Pashtuns back-and-forth across the
north-western border, has ended up with gun-toting Taliban remnants and
hot-headed local fundamentalists dominating after the recent elections in
Indeed,
the Sumero-Akkadian symbiosis at
Regards,
Sunthar
P.S.
‘Hindu-Kush’ does not derive from Kushans but from the ‘ethnic cleansing’ (‘kush’ = ‘slaughter’, i.e., genocide) of
Hindus in
[Rest of this thread at Sunthar V. (May 5, 2003)
[Ethnogenesis; Cross-Cultural:Mesopotamia; Ethics:violence]