Talk:Shrikant Talageri

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In the first millennium BCE and onwards, we have recorded evidence of countless kinds of foreigners (Greeks, ancient Persians, Chinese pilgrims, Shakas, Kushanas and other Central Asians, etc., in the earlier centuries and Muslim Central Asians, Persians, Turks, Arabs and countless others in the subsequent centuries). All of them stayed and got mixed in the local populations, even introducing some cultural elements but they all adopted the local languages and got Indianized: the Muslims, it is true, introduced Arabic and Persian words into Indian languages (as their religion mandated a cultural imperialist policy), but still they basically adopted the Indian languages. Any Central Asian or West Asian genetic elements we find in the present-day Indian polulations are the results of these immigrations followed by millenniums of admixtures. If genetists can prove influx of genes in the second millennium BCE, they will only show that what happened in later millenniums also happened in the second millennium BCE: people came and mixed, but they did not bring and establish new languages; the archaeological records (as testified by all archaeologists, including western ones, show that there was no notable change in the archaeological record: Of the papers presented by archaeologists in a volume edited by Witzel himself, (being papers presented at a conference on Archaeological and Linguistic approaches to Ethnicity in Ancient South Asia, held in Toronto from 4-6/10/1991), the paper by K.A.R. Kennedy concludes that “while discontinuities in physical types have certainly been found in South Asia, they are dated to the 5th/4th, and to the 1st millennium B.C. respectively, too early and too late to have any connection with ‘Aryans’” (ERDOSY 1995:xii); the paper by J. Shaffer and D. Lichtenstein stresses on “the indigenous development of South Asian civilization from the Neolithic onward” (ERDOSY 1995:xiii); and the paper by J.M. Kenoyer stresses that “the cultural history of South Asia in the 2nd millennium B.C. may be explained without reference to external agents” (ERDOSY 1995:xiv). So such a massive and total change of language could not have taken place in the second millennium BCE, leaving no memory or record either in archaeology or in traditional memories.

The Rakhigarhi DNA of around 2000 BCE shows no Central Asian DNA. The definitely "Aryan" chariot of around the same date further east in Sanauli in western U.P. shows that there already Vedic people further east at that point of time. If any DNA is found and analyzed from the Sanauli site, it will show that the people of the Sanauli chariot also, like their western brethren in Rakhigarhi, had no Central Asian DNA.

Some people are trying hard on the internet to suggest that this is not an "Aryan" chariot because it does not have spoked wheels, but that (inspite of the distinct two-wheeled nature of the vehicle, its distinct chariot shape, and the fact that the earliest chariots before the invention of spoked wheels had highly developed flat wheels) it is a pre-Aryan "cart" - something none of then had postulated or dreamt of before this discovery came as a slap in their faces. Moreover, spoked wheels are found only in the New Books of the Rigveda (Books 1,5,8-10) and completely missing in the Old Books (2-4,6-7) during which period Rigvedic geography is basically restricted to Haryana and the Ganga area of western U.P.! Further, even as per the AIT, the "Aryans" couldn't have entered India with spoked wheeled chariots, since even the Iranian languages and the Mitanni do not have common words with the Rigveda for "spokes". So there is nothing to back their last-ditch attempt to brand the Sanauli chariot as "pre-Aryan".

And even if the Rakhigarhi DNA (and a hypotheically assumed Sanauli DNA) had shown Central Asian DNA - which it does not - it would still only mean that people from Central Asia migrated into India in the third millennium BCE as well, as in later millenniums, but not that they brought the Aryan/Indo-European languages. The history of the languages cannot be traced through DNA or gentic studies, but only through the three fields of textual evidence, archaeology, and linguistic evidence. The following two points alone prove the OIT and disprove the AIT:

1. The only recorded evidence of "Indo-Aryan" languages in the world before the Ashokan inscriptions is in the West Asian records and inscriptions referring to the Mitanni kings of Syria and Iraq whose kingdom lasted from 1500-1250 BCE, and whose presence is recorded in West Asia from 1750 BCE. The common names and special words found among the Mitanni are new ones found only in the New Books of the Rigveda and are completely missing in the Old Books, which shows that the ancestors of the Mitanni separated from the Vedic people during the period of composition of the New Books. This takes the history of the Old Books of the Rigveda far back into the early third millennium BCE. And the geography of the Old Books is in Haryana and western U.P, with no evidence of any acquaintance with western areas, no trace of non-Indo-European people anywhere in the area, and withh all the rivers and local animals having purely Vedic Sanskrit names.

2. The dasarajna battle described in the Old Books (in Book 7 of the Rigveda) describes the battle between the Puru (Vedic Aryan Bharata) king Sudas from Haryana and a coalition of ten Anu tribes (of the Punjab to his west). The names and epithets of the ten tribes are immediately identifiable with the ancient names of the Albanians, Greeks, Armenians, and every known ancient Iranian tribe. The Rigveda actually describes their defeat in the battle and their subsequent movement westwards. According to linguistic analysis, of the twelve known branches of Indo-European languages, the five branches which remained in the Original Homeland after the departure of the other seven branches were the Albanian, Greek, Armenian, Iranian and Indo-Aryan branches!