The Cradle that is India - Subhash Kak

Ideas about early Indian history continue to play an important role in political ideology of contemporary India. On the one side are the Left and Dravidian parties, which believe that invading Aryans from the northwest pushed the Dravidians to south India and India's caste divisions are a consequence of that encounter. Even the development of Hinduism is seen through this anthropological lens. This view is essentially that of colonial historians which was developed over a hundred years ago.


On the other side are the nationalist parties, which believe that the Aryan languages are native to India. These groups cite the early astronomical dates in the Vedas, noting these texts are rooted firmly in the Indian geographical region. But Leftist scholars consider such evidence suspect, politically motivated, and chauvinistic.
In recent years, the work of archaeologists and historians of science concluded that there is no material evidence for any large scale migrations into India over the period of 4500 to 800 BC, implicitly supporting the traditional view of Indian history. The Left has responded by conceding that there were probably no invasions; rather, there were many small scale migrations by Aryans who, through a process of cultural dominance, imposed their language on north Indians.


The drama of text-book revisions, both during the NDA and the current UPA governments, is essentially a struggle to impose one or the other of these viewpoints. In any other country, such a fight would have fought in the pages of academic journals; but in India, where the government decides what history is, it is a political matter.


Now, in an important book titled The Real Eve: Modern Man's Journey out of Africa (New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, 2003), the prominent Oxford University scholar Stephen Oppenheimer has synthesised the available genetic evidence together with climatology and archaeology with conclusions which have bearing on the debate about the early population of India. This work has received great attention in the West, and it will also interest Indians tremendously.


Much of Oppenheimer's theory is based on recent advances in studies of mitochondrial DNA, inherited through the mother, and Y chromosomes, inherited by males from the father. Oppenheimer makes the case that whereas Africa is the cradle of all mankind; India is the cradle of all non-African peoples. Man left Africa approximately 90,000 years ago, heading east along the Indian Ocean, and established settlements in India. It was only during a break in glacial activity 50,000 years ago, when deserts turned into grasslands, that people left India and headed northwest into the Russian steppes and on into Eastern Europe, as well as northeast through China and over the now submerged Bering Strait into the Americas.


In their migration to India, African people carried the mitochondrial DNA strain L3 and Y chromosome line M168 across south Red Sea across the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula. On the maternal side the mtDNA strain L3 split into two daughters which Oppenheimer labels Nasreen and Manju. While Manju was definitely born in India the birthplace of Nasreen is tentatively placed by him in southern Iran or Baluchistan. One Indian Manju subclan in India is as old as 73,000 years, whereas European man goes back to less than 50,000 years.
Considering the paternal side, Oppenheimer sees M168 as having three sons, of whom Seth was the most important one. Seth, in turn, had five sons which are named by him as Jahangir, H, I, G and Krishna. Krishna, born in India, is the ancestor of the peoples of East Asia, Central Asia, Oceania and West Eurasia (through the M17 mutation). This is what Oppenheimer says about M17:

South Asia is logically the ultimate origin of M17 and his ancestors; and sure enough we find highest rates and greatest diversity of the M17 line in Pakistan, India, and eastern Iran, and low rates in the Caucasus. M17 is not only more diverse in South Asia than in Central Asia but diversity characterizes its presence in isolated tribal groups in the south, thus undermining any theory of M17 as a marker of a 'male Aryan Invasion of India.'

Study of the geographical distribution and the diversity of genetic branches and stems again suggests that Ruslan, along with his son M17, arose early in South Asia, somewhere near India, and subsequently spread not only south-east to Australia but also north, directly to Central Asia, before splitting east and west into Europe and East Asia.


Oppenheimer argues that the Eurocentric view of ancient history is also incorrect. For example, Europeans didn't invent art, because the Australian aborigines developed their own unique artistic culture in complete isolation. Indian rock art is also extremely ancient, going back to over 40,000 BC, so perhaps art as a part of culture had arisen in Africa itself. Similarly, agriculture didn't arise in the Fertile Crescent; Southeast Asia had already domesticated many plants by that time.


Oppenheimer concludes with two extraordinary conclusions: 'First, that the Europeans' genetic homeland was originally in South Asia in the Pakistan/Gulf region over 50,000 years ago; and second, that the Europeans' ancestors followed at least two widely separated routes to arrive, ultimately, in the same cold but rich garden. The earliest of these routes was the Fertile Crescent. The second early route from South Asia to Europe may have been up the Indus into Kashmir and on to Central Asia, where perhaps more than 40,000 years ago hunters first started bringing down game as large as mammoths.'


This synthesis of genetic evidence makes it possible to understand the divide between the north and the south Indian languages. It appears that the Dravidian languages are more ancient, and the Aryan languages evolved in India over thousands of years before migrations took them to central Asia and westward to Europe. The proto-Dravidian languages had also, through the ocean route, reached northeast Asia, explaining the connections between the Dravidian family and the Korean and the Japanese.


Perhaps this new understanding will encourage Indian politicians to get away from the polemics of who the original inhabitants of India are, since that should not matter one way or the other in the governance of the country. Indian politics has long been plagued by the Aryan invasion narrative, which was created by English scholars of the 19th century; it is fitting that another Englishman, Stephen Oppenheimer, should announce its demise.


(Link)

More Aryan Invasion Rubbish

I came across some typical crap coming from an American newspaper about the Aryan invasion through my RSS feed today(newsfeed, not the political party). A 1999 article was quoted to start off yet another pointless debate on the Aryan Invasion Theory on a forum. The signature of the person who started this topic says a lot about the mentality of people who buy into the Aryan Invasion Theory-  "Let's keep America beautiful by getting rid of niggers, spics, kikes, queers, and feminists!"

Defenders of the theory conveniently forget that haplogroup R1a1, which is most often associated with the Aryan Invasion, is prevalent amongst tribes as well as lower castes of India in very high frequencies and not restricted to the upper castes by any means. The age,diversity, variance and frequency of R1a is highest in South Asia - with the age and variance amongst tribals being higher than in upper castes, almost proving that the origin of Y-DNA haplogroup R1a1 is RIGHT HERE IN INDIA. The direct correlation of haplogroup R1a1 and R2(high/low freq and variance in the same areas across the country) further suggests that they cohabited throughout, and coincidence can almost be ruled out (R2 is exceedingly rare, whereas R1a1 is present in high frequencies in Europe). Indian society evolved from tribal groups over millennia. I won't even get into the fact that there is absolutely no archaeological evidence of any kind of invasion at the time the so called white Aryans "took the women and set up the caste system in India". Since '99 however, the Aryan Invasion Theory has almost totally lost ground due to research in many fields, including genetics. The current trend is to manipulate and model studies on Indo-European languages to suit arrogant western beliefs that 'Proto-Indo-European', the supposed precursor of all IE languages, originated in Europe or Central Asia. South Asia is always totally sidelined in these western studies even though it is a known fact that Sanskrit is still the most advanced language on earth and is still used in India. Why the obsession with Central Asia being the homeland of mankind outside Africa and the Middle East? It's was and still is quite an inhospitable place whereas South Asia was and is a country rich in resources - perfect for human habitation.

Aryan Invasion Theory supporters are alive and kicking till this day, flogging this dead horse regardless of countless studies disproving the theory. Many Indians themselves subscribe to AIT, maybe they love the idea of being partly European(it's common knowledge that most Indians look up to whites and white skin), however distant and  despite present day racist European supporters of this theory referring to ALL Indians as mongrels and half breeds who are literally 'bastards' - descendants of rape victims of the white invaders - not just North Indian 'Aryans'. All I can say is that I feel sorry for the low self esteem of these Indians. There are also many South Indians who love to support this theory because of their age old hatred of North Indians and possible inferiority complex due to their generally darker skin color(check out 'fair and lovely' sales in the south). The Brits also inferred that  since North Indian 'Aryans' are outsiders that stole the land and enslaved the local 'Dravidians' besides pushing them down south, they have every right to do the same. Also, after the discovery of the Indus Valley Civilization, the very same proponents of the Aryan Invasion Theory(AIT) had to change their story overnight from the Aryans being a noble and intelligent lot, to them being savages that destroyed the Indus Valley Civilization(IVC), LATER settling down and writing the Vedas and inventing Sanskrit. Oh yes, and of course they quickly added that the IVC was 'Dravidian' - thereby giving South Indians yet another reason to hate the North.

It's time Indians woke up and realize that this is just a very outdated, racist and divisive idea instilled till this day in the minds of the gullible. In fact it is still being taught in schools all over India as fact, when it was always just a THEORY. AIT is a sham. Both South Indians, who believe they have been victimized by the North, and North Indians who believe they are superior due to alleged white European ancestry are losers at the end of the day. Neither of these things are true.  It's only the racist white man that will have the last laugh if Indians go on being deluded and continue being subservient to the west, buying hook line and sinker any horseshit that is fed to them.

Updated list of R2 frequency

http://sites.google.com/site/r2dnainfo/R2-Home/r2-dna/r2-frequency/r2-frequencies-worldwide

Neo-Colonial Captive Minds By Devan Nair (former President of Singapore)

Devan Nair, former President of Singapore, has sent the following message to be posted to the ECIT egroup. As an intellectual, a follower of Sri Aurobindo, and student of the recent re-evaluation of the Aryan-Invasion Theory, his message is very interesting to ponder.

The age of colonialism may be over, but not that of neo-colonial Captive minds in India as elsewhere in the former colonial territories. Nations struggled for and won political liberation from imperialist thralldom. But their tertiary institutions of higher learning hardly ever (with rare indigenous exceptions) displayed any compelling urge to free themselves from the restrictive, eurocentric disciplinary paradigms inherited from western universities, or to delve into their own unique native spiritual, cultural and intellectual resources that, even if not altogether annulled, were rendered more or less otiose. And it was precisely from the corridors of domestic academia that the dangerous and divisive infection of captive minds spreads to all fields of the public life of a once subject nation.

India is a prime example of a once great civilization with an Incredibly rich spiritual, literary, artistic, cultural and intellectual heritage, not to speak of production, manufacturing and medical expertise; a heritage that Indian academic and political leaders honor more in the breach than in the observance. Nationalist rhetoric and ritual genuflection, with an eye on the voting predilections of a volatile electorate, are the best the politicians seem capable of. Most worrisome of all is that the infection has affected the perceptions and self-appraisal of large sections of the Indian national collectivity itself, despite the intuitive pronouncements of great spiritual leaders of the Indian renaissance like Dayananda Saraswati, Vivekananda
and Sri Aurobindo.

In the highly praiseworthy cause of countering and arresting Trends inimical to India's right development as a member of a global Community of nations, I am confident that your work is of crucial importance, not only for Indian and international practitioners of Indian insights (as in Auroville), but also for the Indian social/political/national collectivity itself. I am sure you will agree that our aim should be, not to denounce everything western, as there is much of great value in western achievements, particularly in the vital fields of modern science and technology, which are today inseparably part and parcel of the global heritage of mankind. On the contrary, your goal is to counter the threat to genuine globalization posed by the tendency in certain western academic quarters to denigrate eastern traditions, and to shamelessly appropriate, using different terminology and without due acknowledgement, the work of Indian pioneers in the important field, for instance, of the psychology of consciousness, and to present such clearly dishonest efforts as original western discoveries. That is intellectually dishonest, which deserves to be exposed and dissolved in the blinding glare of broad daylight. A genuinely global community of nations can and should only proceed on the basis of honest scholarship. Unmasking self-serving dishonesty in some areas of western or eastern scholarship is a service towards expediting the irreversible evolutionary process towards a genuinely united humanity.

To give just one illuminating illustration, we might mention the Nearly universal and quite uncritical acceptance by both Indian politicians and the generality of national and international academics, of the 19th Century myth of the "Aryan invasion of Dravidian India" and of the arbitrary classification of the population into Aryan and Dravidian ethnic types. The damage inflicted on the political perceptions of the population poses a threat to the very integrity of India as a unique political and cultural entity. Witness the two most dominant political parties of Tamil Nadu, the DMK and the ANNA DMK (the 'D' standing for 'Dravida'). They swallowed hook, line and sinker the shallow, ill-researched "findings" of 19th Century European Indologists. Even India's present national anthem perpetuates the Aryan/Dravidian divide by referring to 'Dravida'. It was a wrong-headed decision to discard the original national anthem "Vande Mataram" ('Salutation to the Mother' Ð for the land of Bharatmata was originally conceived, not as a merely secular/geographical abstraction, but as Mother India Herself). It was the mantric potency of "Vande Mataram" that ignited the fiery beginnings (1905-1910) of the Indian aspiration for complete independence from British rule after Lord Curzon's partition of Bengal. And the man who picked it out from Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's classic Bengali novel 'Anandamath' was no less a leader than Sri Aurobindo himself. To the surprise and consternation of the British Viceroy and his officials, thousand-throated cries of "Vande Mataram" rent the skies of India during the inspiring beginnings in those dramatic years of the national independence struggle.

And what of the real intentions of these 19th Century western Gentlemen still so greatly revered by several leading Indian academics? In a marvelous book "THE INVASION THAT NEVER WAS" by Michael Danino/Sujata Nahar, published by THE MOTHER'S INSTITUTE OF RESEARCH in Delhi (1996), the best known icon of 19th Century Indology Max Muller was effectively demolished in his own words; hoisted on his own petard, as it were. I quote directly from Michael Danino: "Even the celebrated Max Muller (whose research work, interestingly, was commissioned and generously paid for by the East India Company after he had been engaged by Macaulay), wrote to his wife ((ref. Friedrich Max Muller, Life and Letters, Vol.1; London: Longmans, 1902, p328): 'This edition of mine and the translation of the Veda, will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India and on the growth of millions of souls in that country. It is the root of their religion and to show them what The root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has Sprung from it during the last three thousand years." So? The seemingly "impartial" scholar was in truth a Macaulayite tool for the accomplishment of grandiose imperial aims.

This plan misfired largely due to the great Indian savants (not academics, mind you!). The first to dispute the Aryan myth was Dayananda Saraswati. He rejected out of hand the whole 19th Century European view of the Veda. Here Michael Danino quotes Sri Aurobindo: "Dayananda seized justly on the Veda as India's Rock of Ages. In the matter of Vedic interpretation I am convinced that whatever may be the final complete interpretation, Dayananda will be honored as the first discoverer of the right clues." (ref: Sri Aurobindo, Centenary Edition 1972, Vol. 17, p. 334). Danino continues: "By the same token, Dayananda forcefully opposed the Christian missionaries' vilification of India's ancient culture, and engaged in public debates with some of them (with maulanas too), especially in Punjab where a wave of conversions had taken place."

Danino proceeds to quote: "Dayananda's performance in public debates not only stopped further conversions, but also gave birth to a new movement, 'shuddhi' (purification) of those who had been enticed away from Hindu society ...... It sent a wave of consternation through the missionary circles and restored Hindu confidence. In days to come, the missionaries became more and more reluctant to meet Dayananda in open forums."

Writes Danino: "With Vivekananda's deep knowledge not only of Hindu scriptures but of Western history and religions, he was quick to see the gaps in the Aryan edifice." In a lecture in USA, Vivekananda remarked scornfully: "And what your European Pandits say about the Aryans swooping down from some foreign land snatching away the land of aborigines and settling in India by exterminating them is all pure nonsense, foolish talk. Strange that our Indian scholars too say 'Amen' to them.... And all these monstrous lies are being taught to our boys." (Vivekananda Complete Works, Calcutta: Advaita Ashram, 1963; Vol. V, p. 534-535).

Danino goes on to write that in another lecture, this time in India, Vivekananda was in a more humorous mood, but mercilessly to the point: "Our [European] archaeologist dreams of India being full of dark-eyed aborigines, and the bright Aryans came from, the Lord knows where. According to some, they came from Central Tibet, others will have it that they came from Central Asia. There are patriotic Englishmen who think that the Aryans were all red-haired ....... If the writer happens to be a black-haired man, the Aryans were all black-haired. Of late, there was an attempt to prove that the Aryans lived on the Swiss lakes.... Some say now that they lived at the North Pole. Lord bless the Aryans and their habitations! As for the truth of these theories, there is not one word in our scriptures, not one, to prove that the Aryan came from anywhere outside India, and in ancient India was included Afghanistan. There it ends. And the theory that the Shudra caste were all non-Aryans ..... is equally illogical and equally irrational..... The whole of India is Aryan, nothing else...... And the more you go on fighting and quarrelling about all trivialities such as 'Dravidian' and 'Aryan,' and the question of Brahmins and non-Brahmins and all that, the further you are from that accumulation of energy and power which is going to make the future India." (Vivekananda Lectures from Colombo to Almora; Calcutta: Advaita Ashram, 1992; p. 222, 230).

Coming to Sri Aurobindo's immense contribution, Danino writes: "A systematic refutation of the Aryan invasion theory had to wait until Sri Aurobindo. In 1910, after he had worked for a decade to awaken the spirit of independence in India, and spent a year in prison, he learned that the British had finally decided to deport him under new draconian laws (they regarded him as 'the most dangerous man we have to deal with at present"); leaving Bengal he sought refuge in Pondicherry, then a French possession. There, soon afterwards, he took up his study of the Veda....While reading the Sanskrit text, he also came to question the European scholars' view of the Veda which, 'like the majority of educated Indians,' he had so far 'passively accepted without examination.' (ref. Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, Centenary Edition, vol. 10, p. 33-34). He soon realized that 'If the modern interpretation stands, the Vedas are no doubt of high interest to the philologist, the anthropologist and the historian; but poetically and spiritually they are null and worthless. Its reputation for spiritual knowledge and deep religious wealth is the most imposing and baseless hoax that has ever been worked upon the imagination of a whole people throughout many millenniums. Is this, then, the last word about the Veda? Or is it not rather the culmination of a long increasing and ever progressing error?'" (Sri Aurobindo Archives and Research, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, April 1985, p 27).

Danino: "With his usual keenness of vision, Sri Aurobindo wrote: 'In India we have fallen during the last few centuries into a fixed habit of unquestioning deference to authority....... We are ready to accept all European theories, the theory of an 'Aryan' colonization of a
Dravidian India, the theory of Nature-worship and henotheism of the Vedic Rishis...... as if these hazardous speculations were on a par in authority and certainty with the law of gravitation and the theory of evolution.' (ref: Ibid., p 41). 'So great is the force of attractive generalizations and widely popularized errors that all the world goes on perpetuating the blunder talking of the Indo-Aryan races, claiming or disclaiming Aryan kinship and building on that basis of falsehood the most far-reaching political, social or pseudo-scientific conclusions.'" (Sri Aurobindo, the Origins of Aryan Speech, in The Secret of the Veda, op.cit., p. 193).

"How prophetic', writes Danino, "if we consider that this was written some twenty year before the growth of Nazism with its claims to 'Aryan kinship'! In his Secret of the Veda, which started appearing from 1914, Sri Aurobindo called on his fellow countrymen not to be 'haunted by the unfortunate misconstruction of the Veda which European scholarship has imposed on the modern mind.'" (The Secret of the Veda, op. cit., p 193).

Danino continues: "Taking a straight look at the original text, with no preconception, no a priori theory, Sri Aurobindo observed, 'it did not take long to see that the Vedic indications of a racial division between Aryans and Dasyus and the identification of the latter with the indigenous Indians were of a far flimsier character than I had supposed.'" (ref: Ibid., p 36). 'This division was "a conjecture supported only by other conjectures ...... a myth of the philologists". (ref: Ibid., p 40). "Sri Aurobindo added. 'The indications in the Veda on which this theory of a recent Aryan invasion is built, are very scanty in quantity and uncertain in their significance. There is no actual mention of such an invasion'" (ref: Ibid., p. 24). "Above
all, he wanted the Indians to develop their own independent judgment: 'A time must come when the Indian mind will shake off the darkness that has fallen upon it, cease to think or hold opinions at second and third rank and reassert its right to judge and enquire in a perfect freedom into the meaning of its own Scriptures. When that day comes, we shall ..... question many established philological myths; the legend, for instance, of an Aryan invasion of India from the north, the artificial and inimical distinction of Aryan and Dravidian which an erroneous philology has driven like a wedge into the unity of the homogeneous Indo-Afghan race ....(India's Rebirth, Paris: Institut de Recherches Evolutives, 1993 , p 91-92) '".

Continues Danino: "Some eighty years later, we know that the 'wedge', driven now not only by scholars but also by politicians, has only gone absurdly deeper. Yet Sri Aurobindo's study of Tamil, which he did with the help of Subramania Bharati (the national poet of Tamil Nadu), led him to discover that the 'original connection between the Sanskrit and Tamil tongues' was 'far closer and more extensive than is usually supposed' and that they were 'two divergent families derived from one lost primitive tongue'". (Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, op. cit., p 36). "The division between Indo-European and Dravidian languages had collapsed: 'My first study of Tamil words had brought me to what seemed a clue to the very origins and structure of the ancient Sanskrit tongue.'" (ref: Ibid., p 46).

"Sri Aurobindo's study, however, led him to far more momentous results, for he recovered the long lost symbolism of the Veda, and brought to light the Rishis' extraordinary experience." These results, however, are of far greater value to living practitioners of Indian Yoga, than to academics, and recourse must be had to the major portion of Sri Aurobindo's "Secret of the Veda" for that purpose.

I make no apologies for continuing with quotes from Danina, for The good reason that they cannot be improved upon. He next writes: "The Question we should now ask is: Are our latter day historians, who still swear by Marx or Max Muller, or both, and often have a poor knowledge of Sanskrit and India's traditions, better equipped than a Swami Vivekananda or a Sri Aurobindo, with their depth of understanding and erudition, to tell us what the meaning of the Veda is and the conclusions we are to draw from it?...Yet it is not as if there were no scholars in India to agree with these great seers. We will cite here only two of these striking examples of genuine but ignored Indian scholarship.

"Some ten years after the serialization of the Sri Aurobindo's 'Secret of the Veda', R. Swaminatha Aiyar, a Tamil administrator, linguist and mathematician, carried out extensive research on the so-called Dravidian languages, but not 'without previously disposing of a large number of misconceptions and untenable theories about Dravidian languages and Dravidian culture, which have come into existence since the publication of Bishop Caldwell's 'Dravidian Grammar'. (Ref: R. Swaminatha Aiyar, Dravidian Theories (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1987). "After a thorough scrutiny of the grammar and roots of these languages, his conclusions confirmed Sri Aurobindo's own findings on the deep connection between Tamil and Sanskrit. Swaminatha Aiyar found most Dravidian verb forms of 'Indo-Aryan origin,' and that 'the basic portion of Dravidian vocabularies consists of words of Indo-Aryan origin though ..... these words have been greatly corrupted and are very difficult of recognition.' As N.S. Rajaram, also a mathematician and linguist from South India, remarks in a recent study, 'Dravidian languages are strongly inflected like Sanskrit, and cases and declensions
are also quite similar.... In some ways these so-called Dravidian languages have preserved ancient forms and usages from Sanskrit better than North Indian languages like Hindi.'" (N.S. Rajaram, The Politics of History, op. cit., p 175).

To continue with Danino. "B.R. Ambedkar is our second example. Known in India chiefly for his campaign in support of the lower castes (he himself was a Harijan) and his work on the Indian Constitution, it is often overlooked that in order to find out the truth of the European
Theories about Aryans and non-Aryans, high and low caste, he did precisely what Sri Aurobindo exhorted Indians to do: he went to the source, and studied the Veda for himself, with an open mind. His conclusions are unequivocal, though regrettably they are largely ignored by those who profess to follow his lead and who more often than not make a strident use of the very theories he sought to demolish: 'The theory of invasion is an invention. This invention is necessary because of a gratuitous assumption that the Indo-Germanic people are the purest of the modern representatives of the original Aryan race. The theory is based on nothing but pleasing assumptions, and inferences based on such assumptions. The theory is a perversion of scientific investigation. It is not allowed to evolve out of facts. On the contrary, the theory is preconceived and facts are selected to prove it. It falls to the ground at every point.' (ref: B. R. Ambedkar, quoted by D.B. Thengadi in The Perspective [Sahitya Sindhu Prakashan]).

My conclusions are:

1. The Vedas do not know any such race as the Aryan race.
2. There is no evidence in the Vedas of any invasion of India by the Aryan race and it having conquered the Dasas and Dasyus supposed to be the natives of India.
3. There is no evidence to show that the distinction between Aryans, Dasas and Dasyus was a racial distinction.
4. The Vedas do not support the contention that the Aryans were different in colour from the Dasas and Dasyus.....If anthropometry is a science which can be depended upon to determine the race of a people..... (then its) measurements establish that the Brahmins and the Untouchables belong to the same race. From this it follows that if the Brahmins are Aryans the Untouchables are also Aryans. If the Brahmins are Dravidians, the Untouchables are also Dravidians.....' (B. R. Ambedkar, 'Writings and Speeches' [Bombay: Education Department, Government of Maharashtra, 1986-1990], Vol. 7, p. 85 and 302-303, quoted in Koenraad Elst's Indigneous Indians, Agastya to Ambedkar, op. cit., p.410-411).

Danino completes this particular chapter of his book, thus: "Despite these remarkable protests, none listened; we Indians have long had the inexplicable habit of accepting change only if comes to us from the West. Yet in recent years, some voices have begun to be heard, both in the West and in India, asserting that the time has come to chuck out this worm-eaten theory once and for all. The cumulative evidence from all scientific branches of knowledge, especially archaeology, has become simply too overwhelming to be ignored, except for historians with dubious motives."

Voila! as the French would say. I have done my bit of 'nishkama karma' (desireless action) for your more than worthwhile cause in respect of at least the demolition of the fictitious Aryan/Dravidian divide Indian politicians and a good number of India's leading academics continue to subscribe to. There is no such thing as an "immortal bubble". This bubble too will one day burst for good and be seen no more.

You have other challenges to meet head on, by way of dissemination Of your objectives to opinion in India itself, but also among the Indian diaspora in the West, particularly in the USA. In the psychological field, as in the study of yet another speculative discipline like Indology, Ken Wilber and his undoubted intellect may be safely left to the attention of formidable Indian and non-Indian practitioners of Indian spiritual practices (these, incidentally, are not speculative, but experiential disciplines in which seekers consciously ascend and descend what Sri Aurobindo called the "ladder of consciousness"). Don Salmon, for instance, is himself a master in the same field as Wilber. But he also possesses an additional SOMETHING ELSE of one who devotedly treads the path of the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. Be assured that Mr. Wilber will by no means arrive at the stature of an Avatar. No barefaced plagiarist of ideas and conceptions ever did.

Warm regards and best wishes,

C. V. Devan Nair

Link

Y-DNA Haplogroup Frequency of Indian Muslims

Indian Muslims average:

• R2 - 10.2%
• R1a1 - 32.25%
• R1* - 2.08*
• P* - 3.24%
• O - 0.2%
• L - 3%
• K* - 2.78%
• J2a - 8.58%
• J2 - 6.72%
• J(*xJ2) - 5.56%
• H2 - 2.32%
• H1a - 11.83%
• H* - 1.39%
• G - 3%
• F* - 4.4%
• E1b1b1a - 0.7%
• C5 - 1.6%

Dawoodi Bohra (Gujarat(West))
R2 - 8/50
R1a1 - 15/50
P* - 4/50
L - 3/50
J2 - 4/50
H1a - 8/50
H* - 5/50
F* - 2/50
C5 - 1/50
Dawoodi Bohra (South - TN)
R1a1 - 14/26
L - 2/26
H2 - 2/26
H1a - 8/26

Iranian Shia (South)
R2 - 4/25
R1a1 - 1/25
K* - 7/25
J2 - 6/25
H1a - 1/25
G - 2/25
F* - 4/25

Mappla (South)
R2 - 2/40
R1a1 - 13/40
L - 4/40
K* - 2/40
J2 - 4/40
J*(xJ2) - 4/40
H2 - 2/40
H1a - 9/40

Shia (North)
R2 - 15/161
R1a1 - 45/161
R1* - 6/161
P* - 8/161
O - 1/161
J2a - 22/161
J2 - 7/161
J*(xJ2) - 17/161
H2 - 2/161
H1a - 11/161
H* - 1/161
G - 8/161
F* - 9/161
E1b1b1a - 3/161
C5 - 6/161

Sunni (North)
R2 - 15/129
R1a1 - 51/129
R1* - 3/129
P* - 2/129
L - 4/129
K* - 3/129
J2a - 15/129
J2 - 8/129
J*(xJ2) - 3/129
H2 - 4/129
H1a - 14/129
G - 3/129
F* - 4/129

Total - 431

Source: Traces of sub-Saharan and Middle Eastern lineages in Indian Muslim populations

Indo Aryan and Slavic Linguistic and Genetic Affinities Predate the Origin Of Cereal Farming

Joseph Skulj, Jagdish C. Sharda, Snejina Sonina,  Ratnakar Narale
Paper read at: The Sixth International Topical Conference: Origin of Europeans
Ljubljana, Slovenia June 6th and 7th 2008.

Abstract:

Linguistic comparisons between Indo-Aryan languages, Vedic Sanskrit in particular, and Slavic languages show evidence of remarkable similarities in words of elemental nature and those describing the process of domestication of animals specially the terminology regarding the sheep and the cattle. Similarly, Haplogroup (Hg) R1a1 (HG3 in Rosser’s nomenclature), the male lineage Y-Chromosome genetic marker found at high frequencies both in the Slavic and the Indo-Aryan male populations points to a common genetic origin of a large percentage of speakers of Slavic and Indic languages. Judging from the linguistic evidence, the separation of these Indo-European branches appears to predate the advent of cereal domestication. Applying Alinei’s ‘Lexical Self-Dating’ (LSD) methodology to date the linguistic and the genetic evidence, we estimate that the split between Indo-Aryans and the ancestors of Slavs occurred, afer the domestication of the sheep and cattle, about 10,000 years ago, but before cereal farming became a common industry amongst the ancestors of Slavs in Europe and Indo-Aryans on the Indian sub-continent. Moreover, the genetic evidence does not indicate that there were any major migrations of people from Europe, including the ancestors of the present day Slavs, to the Indian sub-continent during the last 8,000 years. The migration appears to have come from the Indian sub-continent to Europe. However, there is a record of many military incursions over the millennia into the sub-continent.

Furthermore, based on the linguistic, genetic, zoo-archaeological and population growth evidence, the coalescence of R1a1 in an ancestor common to many Indo-Aryans and Slavs, probably occurred during the hunting-gathering era and there is evidence that the close contact between the ancestors of Indo-Aryans and Slavs continued during the sheep and cattle domestication, up to and including the nomadic pastoral age. Based on this evidence, the major population expansion from the Indian sub-continent into Europe appears to have come, before the age of cereal farming.

Also the patrilineal Y-Chromosome genetic marker Hg R1a1, that accompanied this expansion, appears to be more than 100,000 years old, based on its relative high frequency, diversity and wide distribution extending from the Balkans to the Bay of Bengal. This estimated age, based on the reproductive rates of historical individuals, is considerably older than the molecular ages calculated on the basis of mutation rates as reported in literature.


Conclusion:

• In many instances, the Slovenian language appears to be grammatically closer to Sanskrit than other Slavic languages and even Indic languages such as Hindi, Bengali and Gujarati.
• Genetic and linguistic afnities between the Indo-Aryan and Slavic speaking populations indicate that a large percentage of their ancestors had a common sojourn during the pre-pastoral and also during the pastoral age.Linguistic evidence suggests that the separation of the Indo-Aryans and the ancestors of present day Slavs occurred prior to the innovation of the cereal farming in agriculture.
• Hg R1a1-M17 lineage appears to have come to Europe, via the ancestors of the present day Slavs, from the Indian sub-continent, before the spread of farming ~9000 years ago.
• Genetic evidence does not support a large scale invasion of India from Europe during the prehistoric times, since no evidence of Hg R1*-M173, Hg I-M170 or of Hg N3-TAT has been found in India, although these Haplogroups are very frequent in Europe (Rosser et al. 2000, Sengupta et al. 2006).
• The coalescence of Hg R1a1, the most frequent genetic marker in Indo-Aryan and Slavic populations, very likely occurred more than 100,000 years ago. Only if the most recent common ancestor of such a large percentage of Indo-Aryans and the Slavs lived more than 100,000 years ago, could the male population with this genetic marker grow to such high absolute numbers of 325 million men representing more than ~10 % of the world’s total male population.

Link to full article

Traces of sub-Saharan and Middle Eastern lineages in Indian Muslim populations

Abstract:
Islam is the second most practiced religion in India, next to Hinduism. It is still unclear whether the spread of Islam in India has been only a cultural transformation or is associated with detectable levels of gene flow. To estimate the contribution of West Asian and Arabian admixture to Indian Muslims, we assessed genetic variation in mtDNA, Y-chromosomal and LCT/MCM6 markers in 472, 431 and 476 samples, respectively, representing six Muslim communities from different geographical regions of India. We found that most of the Indian Muslim populations received their major genetic input from geographically close non-Muslim populations. However, low levels of likely sub-Saharan African, Arabian and West Asian admixture were also observed among Indian Muslims in the form of L0a2a2 mtDNA and E1b1b1a and J^*(xJ2) Y-chromosomal lineages. The distinction between Iranian and Arabian sources was difficult to make with mtDNA and the Y chromosome, as the estimates were highly correlated because of similar gene pool compositions in the sources. In contrast, the LCT/MCM6 locus, which shows a clear distinction between the two sources, enabled us to rule out significant gene flow from Arabia. Overall, our results support a model according to which the spread of Islam in India was predominantly cultural conversion associated with minor but still detectable levels of gene flow from outside, primarily from Iran and Central Asia, rather than directly from the Arabian Peninsula.

 New Paper from the European Journal of Human Genetics(link)

Sanskrit and Lithuanian

One of the most important stimuli for the emergence of historical-comparative linguistics was the acquaintance of Europeans with Sanskrit, the old language of India. Europeans believed that a Sanskrit scholar could understand and be understood by a Lithuanian farmer.

In 1786, William Jones (1746-1794), an English Justice of the Supreme Court of Judicature in Calcutta, read a paper before the Asiatic Society, founded by himself, in which he proclaimed that Sanskrit, this "wonderfully structured old language of India" is derived from the same source as Greek, Latin, and perhaps even Gothic and Celtic. This was a very bold idea, which produced a veritable revolution in linguistics.

European scholars turned their attention to Sanskrit, and started with old European languages. They created precise methodology which enabled them to understand phonetic changes and distinguish original words from loans. They taught themselves through the comparison of related words in different languages to reconstruct the extinct forms, which were very often similar or even identical with Sanskrit forms.

Linguists believed that comparative linguistics without Sanskrit is like astronomy without mathematics.

It is not difficult therefore to imagine the surprise of the scholarly world when they learned that even in their time somewhere on the Nemunas River lived a people who spoke a language as archaic in many of its forms as Sanskrit itself. Although it was not exactly true that a professor of Sanskrit could talk to Lithuanian farmers in their language, coincidences between these two languages were truly amazing, for example:

Sanskrit sunus son - Lith. sunus;
Sanskrit viras man - Lith. vyras;
Sanskrit avis sheep - Lith. avis;
Sanskrit dhumas smoke - Lith. dumas;
Sanskrit padas sole - Lith. padas.

We can be safe in asserting that these Lithuanian words have not changed their forms for the last five thousand years.

The most prominent European linguists visited Lithuania in order to learn this archaic language from the lips of Lithuanians themselves, which helped them investigate the history of other Indo-European languages.

Today, there is no doubt that Lithuanian has retained many ancient Indo-European forms. It is hard to say whether it was due to the character of the Lithuanians or of geographic position that their language has changed so little in the course of several thousand years. Scholars often make references to the Lithuanian language when conducting research on the history of other languages.


From "Lithuania in the World", 1996 No1.

Lithuanian words similar or exact to Sanskrit

• Lithuanian du/dvi, Sanskrit dvi/dve, Greek duo/dwo/tyu, Latin duo ("two")
• Lithuanian trys, Sanskrit tri/traya, Greek trios/tria/treis, Latin tres ("three")
• Lithuanian penki(os), Sanskrit páñcan, Greek pente/pende(cis) ("five")
• Lithuanian šeši(os), Sanskrit sas, Greek heks/hecs/hex, Latin secs/sex ("six")
• Lithuanian septyni(os), Sanskrit saptahn/sapta, Greek hepta(cis)/septa, Latin septem ("seven")
• Lithuanian aštuoni(os), Sanskrit ashtan/ashta, Greek akto/okto/oktu(cis), Latin octo ("eight")
• Lithuanian dešimt(is), Sanskrit dasham, Greek deka/deca(cis), Latin deci/decem ("ten")
• Lithuanian žiema, Sanskrit hima ("winter")
• Lithuanian derva/darva, Sanskrit druma/taru ("tree")
• Lithuanian vilkas, Sanskrit vrika ("wolf")

• Lith. and Skt. sūnus (son)
• Lith. and Skt. avis and Lat. ovis (sheep)
• Lith. dūmas and Skt. dhumas and Lat. fumus (smoke)
• Lith. antras and Skt. antaras (second, the other)
• Lith. vilkas and Skt. vrkas and Lat. lupus (wolf)
• Lith. ratas and Lat. rota (wheel) and Skt. rathah (carriage).
• Lith. senis and Lat. senex (an old man) and Skt. sanah (old).
• Lith. vyras and Lat. vir (a man) and Skt. vira (man, hero).
• Lith. angis and Lat. anguis (a snake in Latin, a species of snakes in Lithuanian)
• Lith. linas and Lat. linum (flax, compare with English 'linen')
• Lith. ariu and Lat. aro (I plow)
• Lith. jungiu and Lat. iungeo (I join)
• Lith. gentys and Lat. gentes (tribes) and Skt. jánas (genus, race).
• Lith. mėnesis and Lat. mensis and Skt masa (month)
• Lith. dantys and Lat. dentes and Skt dantas (teeth)
• Lith. naktys and Lat. noctes and Skt. nakt (night)
• Lith. sėdime and Lat. sedemus (we sit) and Skt. siedati (sits).

Peculiar Renderings of 'Chief Living Races of Mankind' from a 1907 British Encyclopedia

 

 

Haplogroup Charts - Castes and tribes

Data from Senguptas 2006 paper.

Proposed R2 Migration Map

 

Haplogroup R2 Website

I've started putting together a website on Haplogroup R2 and related subjects. It's still work in progress but it's online from now. The layout and content may change every now and then till I come up with something that ... works! The website address is: http://sites.google.com/site/r2dnainfo/