Rig Veda A Historical Analysis Shrikant Talageri PDF

THE RIGVEDA
A Historical Analysis
SHRIKANT G. TALAGERI
Contents
Acknowledgements
Bibliography and Bibliographical Index
Preface
SECTION I : THE RIGVEDA
1. The AnukramaNIs
2. The Composers of the Rigveda
3. The Chronology of the Rigveda
4. The Geography of the Rigveda
5. The Historical Identity of the Vedic Aryans
SECTION II : BEYOND THE RIGVEDA
6. The Indo-Iranian Homeland
7. The Indo-European Homeland
SECTION III : APPENDICES
8. Misinterpretations of Rigvedic History
9. Michael Witzel - An Examination of Western Vedic

Scholarship
10. SaramA and the PaNis: A Mythological Theme in the

Rigveda
Prominent River-names in Rigveda
Prominent place-names in Rigveda
Anu-Druhyu Migrations
Back to Home Back to VOI Books Back to Top

Acknowledgements
So far as the first section of this book is

concerned, I have little to acknowledge to anyone
(except, of course, the Vedic RSis themselves,
and the modern scholars responsible for
fundamental books on the Rigveda, such as
Ralph T.H. Griffith and ViSvabandhu, whose
translation and word concordance, respectively,
have been of fundamental help to me), since this
section is almost entirely a product of my study.
However, in respect of the second and third

sections of my book, I must first and foremost
acknowledge my deep gratitude to the eminent
Belgian scholar, Koenraad Elst, not only for his
constant interest and encouragement, but, more
practically, for the various papers and books sent
to me by him (including Erdosy-Witzel-Skjærvø,
Winn, Nichols, Bryant etc.) which were of
invaluable help in these two sections of the book.
This, of course, is apart from the debt owed by

me, as by all true Indians, to this great friend,
sympathiser and benefactor of India, whose
brilliant writings have contributed to, or aided, the
Indian cause.
Also, I am very grateful to two Indian students in

the U.S.A. for various papers and books sent to
me, which (particularly the invaluable Gnoli)
proved to be of great help, and also for the
enthusiasm with which they constantly expressed
their readiness to send me any information or
material required: Dileep Karanth (Gnoli, etc.) and
Sudhir Subrahmanya (Mair, etc.).
And my deepest gratitude is to Shri Sita Ram

Goel for the wonderful and comprehensive index
to this book so painstakingly prepared by him;
and even more so for the fact that, but for him,
neither this book nor its predecessor would ever
have seen the light of day.
Bibliography and Bibliographical Index
[The numbers represent footnote-numbers in this

present volume]
1. ADOSS
A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the

Principal Indo-European Languages by Carl D.
Buck, University of Chicago Press, 1949.
Ch. 7: 52, 130-138, 141-144.
2. AGSL
A Grammar of the Sinhalese Language by Prof.

Wilhelm Geiger, The Royal Asiatic Society,
Ceylon branch, Colombo, 1938.
Ch. 7: 153-155.
3 AHV
The Arctic Home in the Vedas by B.G. Tilak,

Published by The Manager, Kesari, Poona City,
1903.
Ch. 8:70-73, 82-84,1 03-110, 116, 120-122, 131-

155, 259.
4. AIHT
Ancient Indian Historical Tradition by F.E.

Pargiter, Motilal Banarsidas, Delhi-Varanasi-
Patna, 1962.
Ch. 5: 1-2
Ch. 6: 77
Ch. 7: 53-54
Ch. 8:19, 42, 46, 52, 55-56, 172-180, 196-207.
5. AIM
Aryan Invasion: A Myth by NR Waradpande,

Nagpur, 1989. Ch. 8: 254.
6. AL
Archaeology and Language, Vol. I: Theoretical

and Methodological Orientations edited by Roger
Blench and Matthew Spriggs, Routledge, London
and New York, 1997. (Paper by Johanna
Nichols).
Ch. 7: 100-116.
7. BAIAP
The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Peoples of

Eastern Asia, Volume II edited by Victor H. Mair,
The Institute for the Study of Man (in collaboration
with) The University of Pennsylvania Museum
Publications, 1998 (Journal of Indo-European
Studies, Monograph no. twentysix in two
volumes).
Ch. 7: 1-5.
8. BAWS
Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Writings and

Speeches, Volume 7 edited by Vasant Moon,
Education Department, Govt. of Maharashtra
Publications, Mumbai, 1990.
Ch. 8: 130, 181-195, 208-225, 260.
9. BHISHMA
Bhishma’s Study of Indian History and Culture by

S.D. Kulkarni, Shri Bhagwan Vedavyasa Itihasa
Samshodhana Mandira, (BHISHMA) Thane,
Mumbai.
Volume I: Beginnings of Life, Culture and History,

1988. Ch. 8:75-81, 90-102, 111-114, 117-119,
123-127, 129,156-171, 258.
Volume II: The PurANas, 1993.
Ch. 8: 74.
10. CCAIHO
The Culture and Civilization of Ancient India in
Historical Outline by D.D. Kosambi, Vikas
Publishing House Pvt. Ltd, Delhi-Bombay-
Bangalore-Kanpur, 1975 (first printed 1970).
Ch. 1: 2.
Ch. 7: 6.
Ch. 8: 24, 35, 41, 50, 60-62, 68-69.
11. CDHR
The Civilized Demons: The Harappans in Rigveda

by Malati J. Shendge, Abhinav Publications, New
Delhi, 1977.
Ch. 8: 8, 20, 22, 25-33,43-45, 53-54, 63-64.
Ch. 10: 36, 42, 52.
12. CHI
The Cambridge History of Iran, Volume 3(1)

edited by Ehsan Yarshater, Cambridge University
Press, 1983.
Ch. 6: 83, 91-92.
13. CWSV
Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda,

Mayavati Memorial Edition, Advaita Ashrama,
Calcutta. 18th edition, 1991.
Ch. 8: 226-235.
14. EB
The New Encyclopaedia Britannica in 30

volumes, University of Chicago, published by HH
Benton, 15th edition, 1974. Ch. 7: 147-148.
15. ECM
The Encyclopaedia o Classical Mythology by Dr.

A.R.A. van Aken, Prentice-Hall Inc., Eaglewood
Cliffs, New Jersey, 1965.
Ch. 10: 56.
16. EDNCM
Everyman’s Dictionary of Non-Classical

Mythology by Egerton Sykes, J.M. Dent and Son
Ltd, London, E.P. Dulton and Co. Inc., New York,
1952.
Ch. 10: 54, 61.
17. EGSL
An Etymological Glossary of the Sinhalese

Language by. Prof. Wilhelm Geiger, The Royal
Asiatic Society, Ceylon branch, Colombo, 1941.
Ch. 7: 156-157.
18. GDI
Genèse de L’Inde, Bernard Sergent, Bibliothèque

Scientifique Payot, Paris, 1997.
Ch. 9: 1.
19. GORI
The Geography of Rgvedic India by Manohar Lal

Bhargava, lie Upper India Publishing House Ltd.,
Lucknow, 1964. Ch. 4: 4, 7-8.
Ch. 6: 81.
20. GPW
Gods, Priests and Warriors: The BhRgus of the

MahAbhArata by Robert P. Goldman, Columbia
University Press, New York, 1977.
Ch. 6. 1-11.
21. GZ
The Gathas of Zarathushtra and the Other Old

Avestan Texts, Part I: Introduction, Texts and
Translation by Helmut Humbach (in collaboration
with Josef Elfenbein and P.O. Skjærvø), Carl
Winter, Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg (Germany),
1991.
Ch. 6: 98-100.
22. HCIP
The History and Culture of the Indian People, Vol.

I: The Vedic Age edited by R.C. Majumdar,
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Publications, Mumbai,
6th edition 1996.
Ch. 1: 1, 5.
Ch. 3: 1-4.
Ch. 4: 5.
Ch. 7: 42, 56, 58, 127-128.
Ch. 8: 1-3, 17, 21, 34, 115, 256.
23. HHH
Heaven, Heroes and Happiness: The Indo-

European Roots of Western Ideology by Shan M.
M. Winn, University Press of America, Lanham-
New York-London, 1995.
Ch. 7: 7-14, 43-48, 51, 57, 59, 61-65, 76-78, 83,

86-88, 91-93, 95-99, 146, 167-168, 177.
Ch. 10: 24, 62.
24. HINDUTVA
Hindutva by V.D. Savarkar, Veer Savarkar

Prakashan, Mumbai, 5th edition, 1969 (first
published 1923).
Ch. 8: 85-89.
25. HM
The History of Mankind - Cultural and Scientific

Development, Vol. I, Pt II: Prehistory and the
Beginnings of Civilization, Jacquetta Hawkes and
Sir Leonard Woolley, George, Allen and Unwin
Ltd.. London (for UNESCO), 1993.
Preface: 2
26. HOR
Hymns of the Rigveda (complete translation) by

Ralph T.H. Griffith, 1889. (Edition used in this
volume published by Munshiram Manoharlal
Publishers Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, 1987).
Ch. 2: 1.
Ch. 10: 1, 3-12, 15-16, 25-28, 34, 41, 47, 63-64.
27. IASA
The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia:

Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity edited
by George Erdosy (Papers by Michael Witzel and
P. Oktor Skjærvø), Walter de Gruyter, Berlin-New
York, 1995.
Ch. 4: 9-11, 13.
Ch. 6: 12-29, 78-80, 93-96.
Ch. 7: 15-29, 31-41.
Ch. 9: 3-4, 6-100, 102-146, 148-163, 166, 168-

170.
28. IAW
India and the Ancient World: History, Trade and

Culture Before A.D. 650 edited by Gilbert Pollet
(Paper by Michael Witzel), Department
Oriëntalistiek Leuven, 1987.
Ch. 4:12
Ch. 9: 5, 101, 147, 164-165, 167.
29. IE and IE
Indo-European and Indo-Europeans edited by

George Cardona, Henry M. Hoenigswald and
Alfred Senn, (Paper by Isidore Dyen), University
of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1970.
Ch. 7: 125-126.
30. IE and THE IE
Indo-European and The Indo-Europeans by T.

Gamkrelidze and V. Ivanov, Walter de Gruyter,
Berlin, 1995.
Ch. 7: 140.
31. IED
The Indo-European Dialects by Antoine Meillet

(translated by Samuel N. Rosenberg), Alabama
Linguistic and Philological Series No. 15,
University of Alabama Press, 1967 (original book
1908, second edition 1922).
Ch. 7: 60, 66-75, 79-82, 84-85, 89-90, 94, 169-
176, 178, 180.
32. IELS
Indo-European Language and Society by Emile

Benveniste (translated by Elizabeth Palmer),
Faber and Faber Ltd., London, 1973 (first 1969).
Ch. 8: 57-59.
33. II
Indigenous Indians: Agastya to Ambedkar by

Koenraad Elst, Voice of India, New Delhi, 1993.
Preface: 1.
34. IIS
Indo-Iranian Studies: I by J.C. Tavadia, ViSva

Bharati, Santiniketan, 1950.
Ch. 6:97.
35. IVA
India in the Vedic Age: A History of Expansion in

India by Purushottam Lal Bhargava, Upper India
Publishing House Pvt. Ltd, Lucknow, 1971 (first
1956).
Ch. 5: 3
Ch. 7: 55
36. LEM
Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology translated

by Richard Aldington and Delano Ames,
Batchworth Press Ltd., 1959 (from Larousse
Mythologie Générale edited by Felix Guirand,
published in France by Augé, Gillon, Hollia-
Larousse, Moreau, etc., Cie, the Librairie
Larousse)
Ch. 7:49-50.
Ch. 8: 66-67
Ch. 10: 22-23, 29-33, 35, 38-39, 43-44, 46, 48-51,

53, 57-60.
37. MBH
The MahAbhArata, Vol.II (Parvas 2 and 3)

translated and edited by J.A.B. van Buitenen, The
University of Chicago Press, Chicago and
London, 1973.
Ch. 4: 6.
38. ODBL
The Origin and Development of the Bengali

Language, Pt. I by Sunitikumar Chatterjee,
George, Allen and Unwin Ltd, London 1970 (first
by Calcutta University Press, 1926)
Ch. 7: 129, 179, 181.
Ch. 8: 48.
39. OHI
The Oxford History of India by Vincent A. Smith,

edited by Percival Spear, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 3rd edition 1970.
Ch. 8: 4
40. OST
Original Sanskrit Texts on the Origin and History

of the People of India, Vol. H by John Muir,
Trübner and Co., London, 3rd edition, 1874.
Ch. 8: 47.
41. PAO
The Problem of Aryan Origins by K.D. Sethna,

Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi, 1992.
Ch. 8: 267-270.
42. RGE
The Rise of the Greek Epic by Gilbert Murray,

Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2nd edition, 1911.
Ch. 1: 4.
43. RR
Rgveda Repetitions by Maurice Bloomfield,

Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
Massachussetts, (2 volumes), 1916.
Ch. 1: 3.
44. SA
Sri Aurobindo, Volume 10: The Secret of the

Veda, Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, Sri
Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1971.
Ch. 8: 242-251.
45. SBE
Sacred Books of the East, (Volume 23): The Zend

Avesta, Pt. II Sirozahs, Yasts and NyAyis by
James Darmetester, Motilal Banarsidas Delhi-
Varanasi-Patna, 1969 (first published Clarendon
Press, 1883).
Ch. 6: 82
46. SOILSA
Sinhalese and Other Island Languages in South

Asia by M.W.S. de Silva, Gunter Narr Verlag,
Tübingen, 1979.
Ch. 7: 158-166.
47. SOR
The Seers of the Rgveda by V.G. Raburkar,

University of Poona, Pune, 1964.
Ch. 8:5-7, 18, 39-40, 51, 257.
48. SPP
Sino-Platonic Papers Number 7, January 1988,

Indo-European Vocabulary in Old Chinese: A
New Thesis on the Emergence of Chinese
Language and Civilization in the Late Neolithic
Age by Tsung-tung Chang, Department of
Oriental Studies, University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia.
Ch. 7: 117-124.
49. TAP
The Aryan Problem edited by S.B. Deo and

Suryakant Kamath, Bharatiya Itihasa Sankalana
Samiti, Maharashtra, Pune, 1993.
Ch. 8: 252-253, 255, 261-266.
50. TLP
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

(translated by Katherine Woods), Piccolo Books
in association with Heinemann, Pan Books,
London, 1974 (first 1945).
Ch. 7: 182.
51. VAOC
Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization by

NS. Rajaram and David Frawley, Voice of India,
New Delhi, 1997 (first published by World
Heritage Press, Canada, 1997).
Ch. 9: 2.
52. VI
Vedic Index of Names and Subjects by A.A.

Macdonell and A.B. Keith, Motilal Banarsidas and
Co., (reprint), Varanasi, 1958.
Ch. 3: 7.
53. VM
The Vedic Mythology by A.A Macdonell,
Indological Book House, (reprint) Varanasi, 1963.
Ch. 3: 5-6.
Ch. 4: 14-19.
Ch. 7: 30.
Ch. 8: 49.
Ch. 10: 2, 14, 17-21, 37, 40, 45, 55, 65.
54. VMT
Vedic Mythological Tracts by RN Dandekar

(Selected Writings, Volume I), Ajanta
Publications, Delhi, 1979.
Ch. 8: 9-16, 23, 36-38, 65.
55. VPHG
The Vedic People: Their History and Geography

by Rajesh Kochhar, Orient Longman, New Delhi,
1999.
Ch. 4: 1-3.
56. YAJ
The Yajurveda (translated by) Devi Chand,

Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd., New
Delhi, 4th edition, 1988.
Ch. 8: 236-241.
57. ZCR
Zarathushtra and his Contemporaries in the

Rigveda by Shapurji Kavasji Hodiwala, published
by himself, Bombay (Mumbai), 1913.
Ch. 6:84-88.
58. ZTH
Zoroaster’s Time and Homeland: A Study on the

Origins of Mazdeism and Related Problems by
Gherardo Gnoli, Instituto Universitario Orientale,
Seminario di Studi Asiatici, (Series Minor VII),
Naples, 1980.
Ch. 6: 30-76, 89-90.
59. Various Journals and Newspapers

Ch. 7: 139, 145, 149, 150-152
Ch. 8: 128
BOOKS NOT MENTIONED IN FOOTNOTES
1. Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia: Evidence

Interpretation and Ideology, edited by Johannes
Bronkhort and Madhav M. Deshpande, Harvard
Oriental Series, Opera Minor, Vol. 3, Cambridge,
1999; Distributed by South Asia Books, Columbia,
Missouri, U.S.A.
(The book is in print at the time of printing this

present volume, and the quotations from the
rough draft of this paper are given between the
quotations in footnotes 138 and 139 in Chapter
7).
2. A Vedic Word-Concordance Section I SamhitA

(in 6 volumes), Vishva Bandhu, The Shantakuti
Vedic Series, Vishveshvaranand Vedic Research
Institute, Hoshiarpur, Vol. I (1942), Vol. II (1955),
Vol. III (1956), Vol. IV (1959), Vol. V (1962), Vol.
VI (1963).
(These volumes are indispensable in any Vedic

research).
3. The Bible, Revised Standard Version, with

illustrations by Horace Knowles, The British and
Foreign Bible Society, 2nd edition, 1971.
Back to Contents Page Back to VOI Books

Back to Home
Top
PREFACE
In our earlier book, we had taken up the subject

of the Aryan invasion theory in all its aspects, and
conclusively established that India was the
original homeland of the Indo-European family of
languages.
However, this second book has become

imperative for various reasons:
1. The literary evidence for our conclusion in our

earlier book was based primarily on Puranic
sources. According to many critics, the PurANas,
whose extant versions are very much posterior to
the extant Rigveda, are not valid sources for
evidence pertaining to the Vedic period: the
Rigveda is the only valid source for the period.
The above criticism is not wholly invalid. The

Rigveda is certainly the source of last resort: i.e.
information in other texts (like the PurANas, or
even the other Vedic texts) can be rejected if it
distinctly contradicts information in the Rigveda.
As we shall see, some of the data (such as the
names, relations, and even the chronological
order within the dynasty, of kings or groups of
kings) assumed by us in our earlier book on the
basis of the PurANas, or on the basis of second-
hand information (culled, for example, from P.L.
Bhargava’s book) undergoes a thorough revision
in this book when we examine in detail the actual
data within the Rigveda. The vast canvas
covered by the PurANas is of course to be
replaced by the smaller one covered by the
Rigveda.
But, far from contradicting or disproving the theory

put forward by us in our earlier book, this detailed
analysis of the Rigveda emphatically confirms our
theory.
In fact, while confirming our theory that India was

the original homeland of the Indo-European family
of languages, our analysis takes us even further
ahead in respect of two basic points: the habitat
of the Vedic Aryans, and their historical identity.
As per our theory, the Vedic Aryans had migrated

from cast to west. In our earlier book, we had
assumed (based on second-hand information)
that the Vedic Aryans, during the period of the
Rigveda, were inhabitants of the Punjab area
identified by scholars as the Saptasindhu.
However, the actual data in the Rigveda shows
that they were in fact inhabitants of the area to
the east of the Punjab, traditionally known as
AryAvarta. The Punjab was only the western
peripheral area of their activity.
Again, as per our theory, the Vedic Aryans were

the PUrus of traditional history. While confirming
this, the actual data in the Rigveda narrows down
the identity of the particular Vedic Aryans of the
Rigvedic period to a section from among the
PUrus - the Bharatas.
This book is, therefore, an answer to criticism: it

shows that a detailed analysis of the Rigveda, far
from weakening our theory, only makes it
invincible.
2. The Rigveda is the oldest and most important

source-material for Indian, Indo-Aryan, and even
Indo-European history.
This source-material has, however, been totally

and hopelessly misinterpreted by the scholars.
The Rigveda is not a text newly discovered lying

on an uninhabited island. It is a text which has
been part of a hoary and widespread living
tradition thousands of years old. The entire text
was kept alive over this long period, almost
without a change of a tone or a syllable, in oral
form recited and memorised from generation to
generation. A text which has remained alive in
this manner, as part of a living tradition, cannot be
analysed without reference to what that tradition
has to say about it.
However, modern scholars have chosen to
interpret the Rigveda in its historical context solely
on the basis of an extraneous linguistic theory,
bolstered by stray words hunted out of the
Rigveda and interpreted out of context, and totally
without reference to certain indispensable and
unassailable traditional information contained in
certain basic texts.
Most fundamental among such texts are the

AnukramaNIs or Indices, which provide us with
details such as the names and family affiliations
of the composers of the hymns. Other texts, such
as the PurANas, provide us with general
information about the different families of RSis
and the dynasties of kings who lived and ruled in
ancient India.
This book is, therefore, an attempt to take

Rigvedic study, in its historical context, back onto
the tracks by basing its analysis on the basic
materials: i.e. on the hymns and their authors.
3. The Rigveda is not only a historical source-

material. It is also the oldest and hoariest
religious text of the oldest living religion in the
world today: Hinduism.
The politics surrounding the whole question of the

Aryan invasion theory in India has been
discussed in our earlier book (Voice of India
edition).
This politics has been taken to the international

level by vested political interests, with the backing
of powerful international church lobbies, which are
trying to get the United Nations to declare the
tribal population of India (who, within India, are
already labelled with a politically loaded word,
AdivAsI) as the “Original Inhabitants of India” on
par with the Native Americans, the Maoris and the
Australian Aborigines in their respective
1
countries.
This is on the basis of the Aryan invasion theory

according to which “Aryans” invaded India in the
early second millennium BC, and conquered it
from the “natives”. This theory is based purely on
an eighteenth century linguistic proposition, and
has no basis either in archaeology, or in literature,
or in the racial-ethnic composition of India.
What concerns us more, so far as this present

volume is concerned, is the attempt to brand
Hindu religious texts, on the basis of this theory,
as “invader” texts: a UNESCO publication
characterises the Rigveda as “the epic of the
destruction of one of the great cultures of the
2
ancient world.”
The purpose of this present volume is to present

a detailed historical analysis of the Rigveda. But
before turning to the Rigveda, it will be instructive
to throw a glance at another religious text, the
Bible - a text which very definitely and
emphatically is the epic of the destruction of one
of the great cultures of the ancient world.
The Bible, in its earlier parts, narrates the

historical saga of the ancient Jews who marched
from Egypt to Palestine, and, on the strength of
“God” having “promised” them this land-in a
dream to an ancestor, completely destroyed the
local civilizations, wiped out or enslaved the local
populations, and established their own nation on
the conquered land.
The Bible gives details of the specific instructions

given by “God” to the Jews in respect of both
lands “promised” to them as well as lands not
“promised” to them. It also notes his warning that
Jews failing to comply with his instructions would
face the brunt of his divine wrath.
As detailed in this Epic of Destruction, the Jews

conquered and destroyed Palestine. On the
basis of this same Epic, or Manual of Destruction,
latter-day Christianity and Islam (whose “Gods”
promised them not just Palestine but the whole
world) conquered and destroyed ancient cultures
all over the world.
A glance at some of the relevant quotations from
this Epic of Destruction proves instructive:
“And the Lord said to Moses in the plains of Moab

by the Jordan at Jericho: ‘Say to the people of
Israel, when you pass over the Jordan into the
land of Canaan, then you shall drive out all the
inhabitants of the land from before you, and
destroy all their molten images, and demolish all
their high places; and you shall take possession
of the land and settle in it, for I have given the
land to you to possess it’……” (Numbers 33.50-
53).
“‘But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the

land from before you, then those of them whom
you let remain shall be as pricks in your eyes and
thorns in your sides, and they shall trouble you in
the land where you dwell. And I will do to you as I
thought to do to them’…” (Numbers 34.55-56).
“And when the Lord your God brings you into the
land which he swore to your fathers, to Abraham,
to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you great and
goodly cities which you did not build, and houses
full of all good things which you did not fill, and
cisterns hewn out which you did not hew, and
vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant,
and when you eat and are full…” (Deuteronomy
6.10-11).
“When the Lord your God brings you into the land
which you are entering to take possession of it,
and clear away many nations before you, the
Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the
Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the
Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier
than yourselves, and when the Lord gives them
over to you, and you defeat them, then you must
utterly destroy them, you shall make no covenant
with them, and show no mercy to
them.” (Deuteronomy 7.1-2).
“When you draw near to a city to fight against it,

offer terms of peace to it. And if its answer to you
is peace, and it opens to you then all the people
who are found in it shall do forced labour for you
and shall serve you. But if it makes no peace with
you but makes war against you, then you shall
besiege it; and when the Lord your God gives it
into your hand you shall put all its males to the
sword, but the women and the little ones, the
cattle and everything else in the city, all its spoil,
you shall take as booty for yourselves; and you
shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the
Lord your God has given you. Thus you shall do
to all the cities which are very far from you, which
are not cities of the nations here. But in the cities
of these peoples that the Lord your God gives you
for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing
that breathes but shall utterly destroy them, the
Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the
Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as your
Lord the God has commanded” (Deuteronomy
20.10-17).
“And the Lord our God gave him over to us, and
we defeated him and his sons and all his people.
And we captured all his cities at that time, and
utterly destroyed every city, men, women and
children; we left none remaining; only the cattle
we took as spoil for ourselves, with the booty of
the cities which we captured” (Deuteronomy 2.33-
35).
“And we took all his cities at that time - there was

not a city which we did not take from them - sixty
cities, the whole region of Argob, the kingdom of
Og in Bachan. All these were cities fortified with
high walls, gates and bars, besides very many
unwalled villages. And we utterly destroyed them,
as we did to Sihon the king of Heshbon,
destroying every city, men, women and children.
But all the cattle and the spoil of the cities we took
as our booty” (Deuteronomy 3.4-7).
The invasionist interpretation of the Rigveda is

clearly an attempt to foist this ethos of the Bible
onto the Rigveda.
This book is, therefore, an attempt to counter the

false picture of the Rigveda which has been given
currency all over the world.
All said and done, this book is an expedition into

the mists of time. According to Swami
Vivekananda: “It is out of the past that the future
has to be moulded; it is the past that becomes the
future. Therefore the more the Indians study their
past, the more glorious will be their future, and
whoever tries to bring the past to the door of
everyone is a benefactor of the nation.”
This book is also a tribute to all those scholars

who have served, and are still serving, as
benefactors of the nation, foremost among them
being the Voice of India family of scholars who
will ever remain the intellectual focal point for
exercises in rejuvenation of the innermost spirit of
India.
The System of Rigvedic References
A. The method of refering to hymns and verses in

the Rigveda, adopted in this book, is as follows:
1. The full stop (.) separates the MaNDala

number (in Roman) from the hymn number and
the verse number.
2(a). The semi-colon (;) separates the MaNDala

from each other when only MaNDala and hymns
are being referred to.
(b). It also separates sections of hymns within a
MaNDala from each other when verses are also
being referred to.
3(a). The comma (,) separates the hymns from

each other when only MaNDala and hymns are
being referred to.
(b). It also separates sections of verses from each
other when verses are also being referred to.
Thus:
I.2 = MaNDala I, hymn 2.

I.2, 4 = MaNDala I, hymns 2 and 4.
I.2-4 = MaNDala I, hymns 2 to 4.
I.2.1 = MaNDala I, hymn 2, verse 1.
I.2.1,3 = MaNDala I, hymn 2, verses 1 and 3.
I.2.1-3 = MaNDala I, hymn 2, verses 1 to 3.
I.2, 4-6; II.3-5,7 = MaNDala I, hymns 2, and 4 to

6; MaNDala II hymns 3 to 5, and 7.
I.2.1-3; 4.1,5; 5.6 = MaNDala I, hymn 2, verses 1

to 3; hymn 4, verses 1 and 5; hymn 5, verse 6.
I.2.1-3, 5-7 = MaNDala 1, hymn 2, verses 1 to 3

and 5 to 7.
I.2.1-3; 5-7 = MaNDala 1, hymn 2, verses 1 to 3;

hymns 5 to 7.
B. Translations quoted in this book will be as per

Griffith, except where specifically stated
otherwise.
However, readers cross-checking with Griffith’s

book will run into certain difficulties in respect of
Man ala VIII.
MaNDala VIII contains 103 hymns. Of these,

eleven hymns, known as the VAlakhilya hymns,
are known to be late additions into the MaNDala.
However, they are placed in the middle of the
MaNDala in any traditional text (and in most
Western translations including that of Max
Müller). But Griffith places them at the end of the
MaNDala, and he also changes the traditional
numbering of the hymns that follow.
We will be following the traditional numbering,

even while we quote Griffith’s translation. Thus,
when we quote Griffith’s translation of VIII.62.3,
this will appear in Griffith’s book as VIII.51.3.
The following ready-reckoner will help in locating

the hymns in Griffith’s translation of MaNDala VIII:
Traditional Griffith Traditinal Griffith Traditional Griffith
1-48 1-48 68 57 88 77
49 VAlakhilya 1 69 58 89 78
50 VAlakhilya 2 70 59 90 79
51 VAlakhilya 3 71 60 91 80
52 VAlakhilya 4 72 61 92 81
53 VAlakhilya 5 73 62 93 82
54 VAlakhilya 6 74 63 94 83
55 VAlakhilya 7 75 64 95 84
56 VAlakhilya 8 76 65 96 85
57 VAlakhilya 9 77 66 97 86
VAlakhilya
58 78 67 98 87
10
VAlakhilya
59 79 68 99 88
11
60 49 80 69 100 89
61 50 81 70 101 90
62 51 82 71 102 91
63 52 83 72 103 92
64 53 84 73 key
65 54 85 74 1-48 1-48
VAlakhilya 1-
66 55 86 75 49-59
11
49-92
67 56 87 76 60-103 (i.e. Minus
11)
Footnotes:
1II, pp. 164-261.
2HM, p.389.

Back to Home
Top
Chapter 1
The AnukramaNIs
The AnukramaNIs or Indices of the Rigveda

provide us with the most basic information about
each of the 1028 hymns of the Rigveda:
a. The RSi or composer of each hymn or verse.
b. The DevatA or deity of each hymn or verse.
c. The Chhanda or metre of each hymn or verse.
For the purpose of our historical analysis of the

Rigveda, we will be concerned only with the index
which deals with the most undeniably historical
aspect of the Rigveda: the index of RSis which
provides us with details about the living and
breathing historical personalities who composed
the hymns.
The Rigveda consists of 10 MaNDala or Books,

which contain 1028 sUktas or hymns, consisting
of 10552 mantras or verses as follows:
MaNDala N No. of Hymns No. of verses
I 191 2006
II 43 429
III 62 617
IV 58 589
V 87 727
VI 75 765
VII 104 841
VIII 103 1716
IX 114 1108
X 191 1754
Total 1028 10552

The AnukramaNIs give us details, regarding these
hymns, which are so basic and indispensable that
it is inconceivable that any serious scholar could
consider it possible to analyse the hymns without
taking the AnukramaNIs as the very basis for his
analysis.
But, ironically, not only are the AnukramaNIs

generally ignored by the scholars, but this
ignorance of, and indifference to, the details
contained in the AnukramaNIs is even flaunted by
them.
Consider the following statements by eminent

scholars who consider themselves qualified to
make pronouncements on Rigvedic history:
B.K. Ghosh: “The first MaNDala falls naturally into

two parts: the first fifty hymns have the KaNvas as
1
authors like the eighth MaNDala…”.
Actual fact: I.1-11, 24-30 (eighteen hymns) are by

ViSvAmitras.
I.31-35 (five hymns) are by ANgirases
I.12-23, 36-50 (twenty-seven hymns) are by

KaNvas
DD Kosambi: “The principal Vedic god is Agni, the

god of fire; more hymns are dedicated to him than
2
to any other. Next in importance comes Indra.”
Actual fact: The ratio between the number of

hymns and verses to the two gods, by any count,
is Indra: Agni = 3:2.
The flippant attitude of these scholars towards

factual details, when it comes to Rigvedic studies,
is underlined by the nature of Kosambi’s error: he
misinterprets the fact that hymns to Agni are
generally placed before hymns to Indra, to mean
that there are more hymns to Agni than to Indra!
Maurice Bloomfield, in his invaluable work on
Rigvedic Repetitions (i.e. verses, verse-sections
or phrases, which occur more than once in the
Rigveda) claims that these repetitions prove the
falsity or dubiousness of the information
contained in the AnukramaNIs:
Under the title “Untrustworthiness of AnukramaNI-

statements Shown by the Repetitions”, Bloomfield
remarks that “the statements of the
SarvAnukramaNI .... betray the dubiousness of
their authority in no particular more than in
relation to the repetitions .... the AnukramaNI
finds it in its heart to assign, with unruffled
insouciance, one and the same verse to two or
more authors, or to ascribe it to two or more
divinities, according as it occurs in one book or
another, in one connexion or another. The AprI
stanzas 3.4.8-11 = 7.2.8-11 are ascribed in the
third book to ViSvAmitra GAthina, in the seventh
3
book to VasiSTha MaitrAvaruNI.”
However:
1. The repetitions do not disprove the authenticity

of the AnukramaNIs:
a. The repetitions in the Rigveda

are representative of a regular
phenomenon in Classical and
liturgical literature throughout the
world. Consider for example what
Gilbert Murray says about similar
repetitions in Greek literature:
“descriptive phrases…… are caught
up ready made from a store of such
things: perpetual epithets, front
halves of lines, back halves of lines,
whole lines, if need be, and long
formulae. The stores of the poets
were full and brimming. A bard
need only put in his hand and
choose out a well-sounding
phrase. Even the similes are ready-
4
made.” Quoting this, B.K. Ghosh
notes: “All this may be maintained,
mutatis mutandis, also of Rigvedic
5
poetry.”
In the case of the Rigveda it is significant that

every single repetition pertains to a literary or
liturgical phrase. In fact, the more literary or
liturgical the reference, the more the likelihood of
repetitions: the longest repetition of three
consecutive verses is in the liturgical AprI-sUktas
of the ViSvAmitras and VasiSThas: III.4.8-11 =
VII.2.8-11.
Not a single repetition pertains to any historical

reference: even when the same historical
reference is found in four different verses, the
phrasing is different: I.53.10; II.14.7; VI.18.13;
VIII. 53.2.
Therefore, regardless of the number of verses or

verse-sections common to any two hymns
ascribed to two different RSis, the hymns in
question have to be regarded as compositions of
the two RSis to whom they are ascribed: that one
RSi has borrowed from the composition of the
other is no criterion in judging the correctness of
the AnukramaNIs.
b. The AprI-sUktas of the

ViSvAmitras and VasiSThas
contain the longest repetitions, of
three verses, in common: III.4.8-11
= VII. 2.8-11. Bloomfield points to
these particular repetitions as
evidence in support of his
contention that the repetitions
disprove the correctness of the
AnukramaNIs. But, ironically, it is
these very repetitions which
disprove the correctness of his
contention.
The composers of the Rigveda were members of

ten priestly families, and each family had its own
AprI-sUkta composed by a member of the family.
In later times, during the performance of any
sacrifice, at the point where an AprI-sUkta was to
be recited, the conducting RSi was required to
recite the AprI-sUkta of his own family.
The AprI-sUkta of the ViSvAmitras was therefore

undoubtedly composed by a ViSvAmitra, and that
of the VasiSThas by a VasiSTha. If these two
hymns contain repetitions in common, it
constitutes the ultimate proof that repetitions in
common are no evidence of two hymns not
having been composed by two different RSis.
2. There is no logical reason to doubt the

authenticity of the authorship ascriptions in the
AnukramaNIs, which are corroborated by:
a. The very existence of the AnukramaNIs as a

part and parcel of the Rigvedic text from the most
ancient times.
b. The very division of the Rigveda into MaNDala,

many of which are family MaNDala.
c. The uniformity of style in hymns ascribed to

single RSis or families (eg. Parucchepa).
d. The common refrains occuring in the

concluding verses of hymns ascribed to certain
RSis or families (eg. Kutsa).
e. The common contexts in hymns ascribed to

certain RSis or families (eg. the repeated
references to SudAs in hymns by VasiSThas).
f. Specific statements within the hymns, where

the composers refer to themselves by name.
g. Most important of all, the perfectly logical way

in which an analysis of the historical references in
the hymns, as we shall demonstrate in this book,
produces a pattern of historical correspondences
and inter-relationships which fits in perfectly with
the ascriptions in the AnukramaNIs.
With this, we may now turn to the actual details

given in the AnukramaNIs regarding the names of
the composers of the different hymns in the
Rigveda:
MaNDala I (191 hymns)
Madhucchandas VaiSvAmitra
1-10
JetA MAdhucchandas
11
MedhAtithi KANva
12-23
SunahSepa AjIgarti later DevarAta
24-30
VaiSvAmitra
31-35
HiraNyastUpa ANgiras
36-43
KaNva Ghaura
44-50
PraskaNva KANva
51-57
Savya ANgiras
58-64
NodhAs Gautama
65-73
ParASara sAktya
74-93
Gotama RAhUgaNa
94-98
Kutsa ANgiras
99
KaSyapa MArIca
100
RjrASva VArSAgira
101-115
Kutsa ANgiras
116-126
KakSIvAn Dairghatamas
127-139
Parucchepa DaivodAsI
140-164
DIrghatamas Aucathya
165-191
Agastya MaitrAvaruNI
MaNDala II (43 hymns)
GRtsamada Saunahotra, later GRtsamada

Saunaka
1-3
SomAhuti BhArgava
4-7
8-26
Saunaka
27-29
KUrma GArtsamada
30-43
Saunaka
MaNDala III (62 hymns)

ViSvAmitra GAthina
1-12
RSabha VaiSvAmitra
13-14
UtkIla KAtya
15-16
Kata VaiSvAmitra
17-18
GAthin KauSika.
19-22
VaiSvAmitra GAthina
23-35
VaiSvAmitra GAthina, Ghora ANgiras
36
VaiSvAmitra GAthina
37
VaiSvAmitra GAthina, Prajapati
38
VaiSvAmitra/VAcya
39-53
VaiSvAmitra GAthina
54-56
PrajApati VaiSvAmitra /VAcya
57-61
VaiSvAmitra GAthina
62
VaiSvAmitra GAthina, Jamadagni BhArgava
MaNDala IV (58 hymns)
1-42 VAmadeva Gautama

43-44 PurumILha Sauhotra, AjamILha Sauhotra
45-58 VAmadeva Gautama
MaNDala V (87 hymns)
1
2 Budha/ GaviSThira Atreya
3-6 KumAra/VRSa JAna Atreya
7-8 VasuSruta Atreya
9-10 ISa Atreya
11-14 Gaya Atreya
15 Sutambhara Atreya
16-17 DharuNa ANgiras
18 PUru Atreya
19 Dvita Atreya
20 Vavri Atreya
21 Prayasvanta Atreya
22 Sasa Atreya
23 ViSvasAman Atreya
24 Dyumna ViSvacarSaNI Atreya
Bandhu, Subandhu, Srutabandhu,
25-26 Viprabandhu (GaupAyanas)
27 VasUyava Atreya
28 Atri Bhauma
29 ViSvavArA AtreyI
30 GaurivIti SAktya
Babhru Atreya
31 Avasyu Atreya
32 GAtu Atreya
33-34 SamvaraNa PrAjApatya
35-36 PrabhUvasu ANgiras
37-43 Atri Bhauma
44 AvatsAra KASyapa, various Atreyas
45 SadApRNa Atreya
46 PratikSatra Atreya
47 Pratiratha Atreya
48 PratibhAnu Atreya
49 Pratiprabha Atreya
50-51 Svasti Atreya
52-61 SyAvASva Atreya
62 Srutavida Atreya
63-64 ArcanAnas Atreya
65-66 RAtahavya Atreya
67-68 Yajata Atreya
69-70 Urucakri Atreya
71-72 BAhuvRkta Atreya
73-74 Paura Atreya
75 Avasyu Atreya
76-77 Atri Bhauma
78 Saptavadhri Atreya
79-80 SatyaSravas Atreya
83-86 Atri Bhauma
87 EvayAmarut Atreya
MaNDala VI (75 hymns)
1-30 BharadvAja BArhaspatya

31-32 Suhotra BharadvAja
33-34 Sunahotra BharadvAja
35-36 Nara BharadvAja
44-46 Samyu BArhaspatya
47 Garga BharadvAja
48 Samyu BArhaspatya
49-52 RjiSvan BhAradvAja
75 PAyu BharadvAja
MaNDala VII (104 hymns)

1-31 VasiSTha MaitrAvaruNI
32 VasiSTha MaitrAvaruNI Sakti VAsiSTha
101-102 VasiSTha MaitrAvaruNI, Kumara Agneya
MaNDala VIII (103 hymns)
1
PragAtha KANva, MedhAtithi KANva,
2 MedhyAtithi KANva
3 MedhAtithi KANva, Priyamedha ANgiras
4 MedhyAtithi KANva
5 DevAtithi KANva
6 BrahmAtithi KANva
7 Vatsa KANva
8 Punarvatsa KANva
9 Sadhvamsa KANva
10 SaSakarNa KANva
11 PragAtha KANva
12 Vatsa KANva
13 Parvata KANva
14-15 NArada KANva
16-18 GoSUktin KANva, ASvasUktin KANva
19-22 IrimbiTha KANva
23-25 Sobhari KANva
26 ViSvamanas VaiyaSva
27-31 ViSvamanas VaiyaSva, VyaSva ANgiras
32 Manu Vaivasvata or KaSyapa MArIca
33 MedhAtithi KANva
34 MedhyAtithi KANva
35-38 NIpAtithi KANva
42 NAbhAka KANva
43-44 NAbhAka KANva, ArcanAnas Atreya
45 VirUpa ANgiras
46 TriSoka KANva
47 VaSa ASvya
48 Trita Aptya
49 PragAtha KANva
50 PraskaNva KANva
51 PuSTigu KANva
52 SruSTigu KANva
53 Ayu KANva
54 Medhya KANva
55 MAtariSvan KANva
56 KRSa KANva
57-58 PRSadhra KANva
59 Medhya KANva
60-61 SuparNa KANva
62-65 Bharga PrAgAtha
66 PrAgAtha KANva
67 Kali PrAgAtha
68-69 Matsya SAmmada or MAnya MaitrAvaruNI
70 riyamedha ANgiras
71 Puruhanman ANgiras
72 SudIti PurumILha
73-74 Haryata PrAgAtha
75 Gopavana Atreya
76-78 VirUpa ANgiras
79 Kurusuti KANva
80 KRtnu BhArgava
81-83 Ekadyu NaudhAsa
84 usIdin KANva
85 USanA KAvya,
86 KRSna ANgiras
87 KRSna ANgiras, ViSvaka KArSNI
KRSna ANgiras, DyumnIka VAsiSTha,
88 Priyamedha ANgiras
89-90 NodhAs Gautama
91 NRmedha ANgiras, Purumedha ANgiras
92-93 ApAlA AtreyI
94 SukakSa ANgiras
95-96 Vindu ANgiras, PUtadakSa ANgiras
97 TiraScI ANgiras
98-99 Rebha KASyapa
100 NRmedha ANgiras
101 Nema BhArgava
102 Jamadagni BhArgava
103 Prayoga BhArgava, Agni BArhaspatya
Sobhari KANva
MaNDala IX (114 hymns)

Madhucchandas VaiSvAmitra
MedhAtithi KANva
1
SunahSepa AjIgarti
2
3
Asita KASyapa, Devala KASyapa
4
DRLhacyuta Agastya
5-24
IdhmavAha DArLhacyuta
25
NRmedha ANgiras
26
Priyamedha ANgiras
27
NRmedha ANgiras
28
Bindu ANgiras
29
Gotama RAhUgaNa
30
SyAvASva Atreya
31
Trita Aptya
32
PrabhUvasu ANgiras
33-34
RahUgaNa ANgiras
35-36
BRhanmati ANgiras
37-38
MedhAtithi KANva
39-40
AyAsya ANgiras
41-43
Kavi BhArgava
44-46
Ucathya ANgiras
47-49
AvatsAra KASyapa
50-52
AmahIyu ANgiras
53-60
Jamadagni BhArgava
61
Nidhruvi KASyapa
62
KaSyapa MArIca
63
Jamadagni BhArgava
64
Sata VaikhAnasa
65
SaptaRSis, Pavitra ANgiras
66
VatsaprI BhAlandana
67
68
ReNu VaiSvAmitra
69
RSabha VaiSvAmitra
70
Harimanta ANgiras
71
Pavitra ANgiras
72
KakSIvAn Dairghatamas
73
avi BhArgava
74
asu BhAradvAja
75-79
Pavitra ANgiras
80-82
PrajApati VAcya
83
Vena BhArgava
84
Atri Bhauma, GRtsamada Saunaka,
85
AkRSTa MASA, Sikata NivAvarI, PRSni
86
Aja
USanA KAvya
87-89
VasiSTha MaitrAvaruNI
90
KaSyapa MArIca
91-92
NodhAs Gautama
93
KaNva Ghaura
94
PraskaNva KANva
95
Pratardana DaivodAsI
96
VasiSTha MaitrAvarunI, Indrapramati
97
VAsiSTha, VRSagaNa VAsiSTha, Manyu
VAsiSTha, Upamanyu VAsiSTha,
VyAghrapAda VAsiSTha, Sakti VAsiSTha,
KarNaSrut VAsiSTha, MRLIka VAsiSTha,
Vsukra VAsiSTha, ParASara SAktya,
Kutsa ANgiras.
AmbarISa VArSAgira, RjiSvan ANgiras
98 RebhAsUnu KASyapas
99-100 AndhIgu SyAvASvI, YayAtI NAhuSa,
101 NahuSa
MAnava, Manu SamvaraNa, PrajApati
VaiSvAmitra.
102 Trita Aptya
103 Dvita Aptya
104-105 Parvata KANva, NArada KANva
106 Agni CakSuSa, CakSu MAnava, Manu
107 Apsava
108 SaptaRSis
GaurIvIti SAktya, Sakti VAsiSTha, Uru
109 ANgiras,
110 RjiSvan BhAradvAja
111 Agni DhISNya AiSvaraya
112 TryaruNa TraivRSNa, Trasadasyu
113-114 Paurukutsa
AnAnata PArucchepi
SiSu ANgiras
KaSyapa MArIca
MaNDala X (191 hymns)

1-7
8 Trita Aptya
9 TriSirAs TvASTra
10 TriSirAs TvASTra, SindhudvIpa AmbarISa
11-12 Yama Vaivasvata, YamI VaivasvatI
13 HavirdhAna ANgi
14 VivasvAn Aditya
15 Yama Vaivasvata
16 Sankha YAmAyana
17 Damana YAmAyana
18 DevaSravas YAmAyana
19 Sankusuka YAmAyana
Matitha YAmAyana, or BhRgu, or Cyavana
20-26 BhArgava
27-29 Vimada Aindra, VasukRt VAsukra
30-34 Vasukra Aindra
35-36 KavaSa AilUSa
37 LuSa DhAnaka
38 AbhitApa Saurya
39-40 Indra MuSkavAn
41 GhoSA KAkSIvatI
42-44 Suhastya GhauSeya
45-46 KRSNa Angiras
47 VatsaprI BhAlandana
48-50 Saptagu ANgiras
51-53 Indra VaikuNTha
54-56 Agni Saucika
57-60 BRhaduktha VAmadevya
Bandhu, Subandhu, Srutabandhu,
61-62 Viprabandhu (GaupAyanas)
63-64 NAbhAnediSTha MAnava
65-66 Gaya PlAta
67-68 VasukarNa VAsukra
69-70 AyAsya ANgiras
71-72 Sumitra VAdhryaSva
73-74 BRhaspati ANgiras
75 GaurivIti SAktya
76 SindhukSit Praiyamedha
77-78 JaratkarNa Sarpa AirAvata
79-80 SyUmaraSmi BhArgava
81-82 Agni SaucIka or Sapti VAjambhara
83-84 ViSvakarmA Bhauvana
85 Manyu TApasa
86 SUryA SAvitrI
87 VRSAkapi Aindra, Indra, IndrANI
88 PAyu BhAradvAja
89 MUrdhanvAn VAmadevya
90 ReNu VaiSvAmitra
91 NArAyaNa
92 AruNa Vaitahavya
93 SAryAta MAnava
94 TAnva PArthya
95 Arbuda KAdraveya Sarpa
96 PurUravas AiLa, UrvaSI
97 Baru ANgiras, Sarvahari Aindra
98 BhiSag AtharvaNa
99 DevApi ArSTiSeNa
100 Vamra VaikhAnasa
101 Duvasyu VAndana
102 Budha Saumya
103 Mudgala BhArmyaSva
104 Apratiratha Aindra
105 ASTaka VaiSvAmitra
106 Sumitra Kautsa, Durmitra Kautsa
107 BhUtAMSa KASyapa
108 Divya ANgiras, DakSiNA PrAjApatya
109 SaramA, PaNis
110 JuhU BrahmajAyA
111 RAma JAmadagnya, Jamadagni BhArgava
112 ASTAdaMSTra VairUpa
113 Nabhahprabhedana VairUpa
114 Sataprabhedana VairUpa
115 Sadhri VairUpa
116 Upastuta VArSTihavya
117 Agniyuta Sthaura
118 BhikSu ANgiras
119 UrukSaya ANgiras
120 Laba Aindra
121 BRhaddiva AtharvaNa
122 HiraNyagarbha PrAjApatya
123 CitramahA VAsiSTha
124 Vena BhArgava
125 Agni, VaruNa, Soma
126 VAk AmbhRNI
127 AMhomuk VAmadevya
128 KuSika Saubhara, RAtrI BhAradvAjI
129 Vihavya ANgiras
130 PrajApati ParameSThin
131 Yajña PrAjApatya
132 SukIrti KAkSIvata
133 SakapUta NArmedha
134 SudAs Paijavana
135 MAndhAtA YauvanASva
136 KumAra YAmAyana
JUti, VAtajUti, ViprajUti, VRSAnaka,
137 Karikrata, EtaSa, RSyaSRnga
138 (VAtaraSanas)
139 SaptaRSis
140 ANga Aurava
141 ViSvavAsu Devagandharva
142 Agni, PAvaka
Agni TRpasa
143 SArNga, JaritR, DroNa, SArisRkva,
144 Stambhamitra
145 Atri SAnkhya
146 Urdhvasadman YAmAyana
147 IndrANI
148 DevamunI Airammada
149 Suvedas SairISI
150 PRthu Vainya
151 Arcan HairaNyastUpa
152 MRLIka VAsiSTha
153 SraddhA KAmAyanI
154 SAsa BhAradvAja
155 IndramAtara DevajAmaya
156 YamI VaivasvatI
157 SirimbiTha BhAradvAja
158 Ketu Agneya
159 Bhuvana Aptya, SAdhana Aptya
160 CakSu Saurya
161 SacI PaulomI
162 PUraNa VaiSvAmitra
163 YakSmanASana PrAjApatya
164 RakSohA BrAhma
165 VivRhA KASyapa
166 Pracetas ANgiras
167 Kapota NairRta
168 RSabha VairAja SAkvara
169 ViSvAmitra, Jamadagni
170 Anila VAtAyana
171 Sabara KAkSIvata
172 VibhrAt Saurya
173 ITa BhArgava
174 SaMvarta ANgiras
175 Dhruva ANgiras
176 AbhIvarta ANgiras
177 UrdhvagrAvA Arbuda
178 SUnu Arbhava
179 PataNga PrAjApatya
AriSTanemi TArkSya
180 Sibi AuSInara, Pratardana KASirAja,
181 Vasumanas RauhidaSva
Jaya Aindra
182 Pratha VAsiSTha, Sapratha BhAradvAja,
183 Gharma Saurya
184 TapurmUrdhan BArhaspatya
185 PrajAvAn PrAjApatya
186 ViSNu PrAjApatya
187 SatyadhRti VAruNi
188 Ula VAtAyana
189 Vatsa Agneya
190 Syena Agneya
191 SArparAjñI
AghamarSaNa MAdhucchandas
SaMvanana ANgiras
There are obviously corruptions in the

AnukramaNIs in the form of ascriptions to
fictitious composers. This is particularly the case
in MaNDala X, where a large number of hymns
are ascribed to composers whose names, or
patronyms/epithets, or both, are fictitious.
However, in the first eight MaNDala, except in the

case of one single hymn (VIII.47), it is very easy
to identify the actual composer (by which we
mean the RSi who actually composed the hymn,
or his eponymous ancestor to whose name the
hymn is to be credited as per the system followed
in the particular MaNDala) of a hymn ascribed to
a fictitious composer.
Hence, in our listing of the composers of the first

eight MaNDalas, we have replaced the fictitious
names in the AnukramaNIs with the names of the
actual composers, whose identity is clear from
those same AnukramaNIs.
In all these cases, the actual composer is the RSi
of the hymn or the RSi of the MaNDala. The
hymns in question are:
(1) Hymns where the entire hymn, or verses

therein, are ascribed solely (in III.23 and IV.42) or
alternatively (in the others) to RSis or kings who
are referred to within the hymns by the actual
composer:
Actual
Hymn Fictitious Composers
Composer
AmbarISa, Sahadeva, BhayamAna,
I.100 RjrASva
SurAdhas
I.105 Trita Aptya Kutsa
I.126 BhAvayavya, RomaSA KakSIvAn
III.23 DevaSravas, DevavAta ViSvAmitra
IV.42 Trasadasyu Paurukutsa VAmadeva
V.27 Trasadasyu, TryaruNa, ASvamedha Atri
VI.15 VItahavya BharadvAja
VIII.1 AsaNga, SaSvatI MedhAtithi
VIII.34 Vasurocis NIpAtithi
(2) Dialogue hymns, in some of which verses are

ascribed to Gods and even rivers:
Actual
Composer
I.165 Indra, Maruts, (epon.) Agastya Agastya
I.170 Indra, (epon.) Agastya Agastya
(epon.) Agastya, LopAmudrA, a
I.179 Agastya
pupil
III.33 (epon.) ViSvAmitra, Rivers ViSvAmitra
IV.18 (epon.) VAmadeva, Indra, Aditi ViSvAmitra
(3) Hymns which are ascribed alternatively to the

actual composers and to their remote ancestors:
Actual
Composer
ViSvAmitra
III.31 KuSika AiSIrathI
GAthina
KaSyapa
VIII.27-31 Manu Vaivasvata
MArIca
SudIti
VIII.71 PurumILha ANgiras
PurumILha
Footnotes:
1
HCIP, p.232.
2
CCAIHO, p.78.
3
RR, Volume. II, p.634.
4
RGE, p.258.
5
HCIP, p.353.

Back to Home
Chapter 2
The Composers of the Rigveda
The composers of the Rigveda are divided into

ten families. These ten families are identified on
the basis of the fact that each family has its own
AprI-sUkta.
An AprI-sUkta is a particular type of ritual hymn

“consisting of invocations to a series of deified
objects, and said to be introductory to the animal
1
sacrifice”.
The ten AprI-sUktas, and the ten families of

composers to whom they belong, are:
1. I.13 KaNvas (Kevala-ANgirases)

2. I.142 ANgirases
3. I.188 Agastyas
4. II.3 GRtsamadas (Kevala-BhRgus)
5. III.4 ViSvAmitras
6. V.5 Atris
7. VII.2 VasiSThas
8. IX.5 KaSyapas
9. X.70 Bharatas
10. X.110 BhRgus
In addition to hymns and verses composed by

members of these ten families, we also have the
two following categories of hymns and verses:
11. Those composed jointly by members of

different families.
12. Those composed by RSis whose family

identity is unknown or unidentifiable.
The family-wise distribution of the hymns in each

MaNDala is as follows:
MaNDala I (191 hymns, 2006 verses)

1 KANVAS (27 hymns, 321 verses): 12-23, 36-50
2. ANGIRASES (96 hymns, 1047 verses): 31-35,
51-64,
74-98, 100-126, 140-164
3. AGASTYAS (27 hymns, 239 verses): 165-191
5. VISVAMITRAS (18 hymns, 207 verses): 1-11,
24-30
7. VASISTHAS (9 hymns, 91 verses): 65-73
8. KASYAPAS (1 hymn, 1 verse): 99
9. BHARATAS (13 hymns, 100 verses): 127-139
MaNDala II (43 hymns, 429 verses)
4. GRTSAMADAS (39 hymns, 398 verses): 1-3,

8-43
10. BHRGUS (4 hymns, 31 verses): 4-7
MaNDala III (62 hymns, 617 verses)

37-61
11. JOINT (2 hymns, 29 verses): 36, 62
2. ANgirases (1 verse): 36.10
5. ViSvAmitras (25 verses): 36.1-9, 11; 62.1-
15
11. Joint ViSvAmitras and BhRgus (3 verses):
62.16-18
MaNDala IV (58 hymns, 589 verses)
2. ANGIRASES (58 hymns, 589 verses): 1-58
MaNDala V (87 hymns, 727 verses)
2. ANGIRASES (3 hymns, 19 verses): 15, 35-36

3. AGASTYAS (1 hymn, 4 verses): 24
5. VISVAMITRAS ( 2 hymns, 19 verses): 33-34
6. ATRIS (79 hymns, 655 verses): 1-14, 16-23,
25-28,
30-32, 37-43, 45-87
7. VASISTHAS (1 hymn, 15 verses): 29
11. JOINT (1 hymn, 15 verses): 44
6. Atris (1 verse) 44.13
8. KaSyapas (11 verses): 44.1-9, 14-15
11. Joint Atris and KaSyapas (3 verses):
44.10-12
MaNDala VI (75 hymns, 765 verses)
2. ANGIRASES (75 hymns, 765 verses): 1-75
MaNDala VII (104 hymns, 841 verses)
7. VASISTHAS (102 hymns, 832 verses): 1-100,

103-104
11. JOINT (2 hymns, 9 verses): 101-102
11. Joint ANgirases and VasiSThas
(2 hymns, 9 verses): 101-102
MaNDala VIII (103 hymns, 1716 verses)
1. KANVAS (55 hymns, 933 verses): 1, 3-22, 32-

34, 39-41,
45, 48-66, 72, 76-78, 81-83, 103
2. ANGIRASES (25 hymns, 460 verses): 23-26,
43-44, 46,
68-71, 75, 80, 85-86, 88-90, 92-96, 98-99
3 AGASTYAS (1 hymn, 21 verses): 67
6. ATRIS (7 hymns, 88 verses): 35-38, 73-74, 91
8. KASYAPAS (6 hymns, 74 verses): 27-31, 97
10. BHRGUS (4 hymns, 46 verses): 79, 84, 100-
101
11. JOINT (4 hymns, 76 verses): 2, 42, 87, 102
1. KaNvas (2 verses): 2.41-42
11. Joint KaNvas and Angirases (40 verses):
2.1-40
Joint KaNvas and Atris (1 hymn, 6 verses):
42
Joint ANgirases and VasiSThas
(1 hymn, 6 verses): 87
Joint ANgirases and BhRgus
MaNDala IX (114 hymns, 1108 verses)
1. KANVAS (8 hymns, 50 verses): 2, 41-43, 94-

95,
104-105
2. ANGIRASES (30 hymns, 217 verses): 4,27-
31, 35-40,
44-46, 50-52, 61, 69, 72-74, 80-83, 93, 98,
112
5. VISVAMITRAS (5 hymns, 44 verses): 1, 3, 70-
71, 84
6. ATRIS (2 hymns, 16 verses): 32, 68
7. VASISTHAS (1 hymn, 6 verses): 90
8. KASYAPAS (36 hymns, 300 verses): 5-24, 53-
60,
63-64, 91-92, 99-100, 113-114
9. BHARATAS (2 hymns, 27 verses): 96, 111
10. BHRGUS (14 hymns, 136 verses): 47-49, 62,
65,
75-79, 85, 87-89
11. JOINT (6 hymns, 196 verses): 67, 86, 97,
101,
107-108
2. ANgirases (32 verses): 67.1-3, 7-9;
97.
45-48; 107.1, 3; 108.4-13
4. GRtsamadas (3 verses): 86.46-48
5. ViSvAmitras (8 verses): 67.13-15; 101.
13-16; 107.5
6. Atris (12 verses): 67.10-12; 86.41-45;
101.1-3; 107.4
7. VasiSThas (54 verses): 67. 19-21;
97.1-44;
107.7; 108.1-3, 14-16
8. KaSyapas (4 verses): 67.4-6; 107.2
10. BhRgus (4 verses): 67.16-18; 107.6
11. Joint ANgirases and VasiSThas
(11 verses): 67.22-32
Joint SaptaRSis (19 verses): 107.
8-26
12. UNKNOWN (8 hymns, 104 verses):
33-34, 66, 102-103, 106, 109-110
MaNDala X (191 hymns, 1754 verses)
1. KANVAS (1 hymn, 9 verses): 115

2. ANGIRASES (58 hymns, 485 verses); 11-12,
37,
39-44, 47-56, 67-68, 71-72, 75, 79-80, 87-88,
100,
105, 111-114, 117-118, 126, 128, 131-132,
134,
138, 149, 152, 155-156, 158, 164, 169-170,
172-174, 178, 182, 187-188, 191.
104,
121, 129-130, 160-161, 177, 183-184, 190
6. ATRIS (8 hymns, 112 verses): 45-46, 61-64,
101, 143
7. VASISTHAS (26 hymns, 276 verses): 20-29,
38, 65-66,
73-74, 83-84, 86, 95, 99, 103, 119, 122, 147,
150, 180
8. KASYAPAS (3 hymns, 24 verses): 106, 136,
163
9. BHARATAS (4 hymns, 42 verses): 69-70,
102, 133
10. BHRGUS (24 hymns, 255 verses): 10, 13-19,
77-78,
91-93, 97-98, 110, 120, 123, 135, 144, 148,
154,
165, 171
11. JOINT (7 hymns, 49 verses): 96, 107, 127,
137, 167,
179, 181
2. ANgirases (4 verses): 137.1,3; 181. 2-3
5. ViSvAmitras (1 verse): 137.5
6. Atris (1 verse): 137.4
7. VasiSThas (2 verses): 137.7; 181.1
8. KaSyapas (1 verse): 137.2
9. Bharatas (1 verse): 179.2
10. BhRgus (1 verse): 137.6
11. Joint KaNvas and ANgirases
Joint ANgirases and ViSvAmitras
Joint ANgirases and VasiSThas
Joint ViSvAmitras and BhRgus
12. Unknown (2 verses): 179.1,3
12. UNKNOWN (44 hymns, 371 verses): 1-9, 30-
36,
76, 81-82, 85, 94, 108-109, 116, 124-125,
139-142,
145-146, 151, 153, 157, 159, 162, 166, 168,
175-176,
185-186, 189
Clarifications regarding MaNDala X
MaNDala X is a very late MaNDala, and stands

out from the other nine MaNDalas in many
respects. One of these is the general ambiguity
in the ascriptions of the hymns to their
composers. In respect of 44 hymns, and 2 other
verses, it is virtually impossible even to identify
the family of the composer.
In respect of many other hymns and verses,

where we have identified the family affiliations of
the composers, the following clarifications are in
order:
Family 1: KANVAS (1 hymn)
1. Upastuta VArSTihavya (1 hymn): X.115
a. This RSi practically identifies himself as a

KANva
in verse 5 of the hymn.
b. Outside this hymn, three out of four

references to
Upastuta are by KaNvas (I.36.10, 17;
VIII.5.25; 103. 8),
and in the fourth reference, Upastuta is
named
along-with Kali (another KANva RSi,
composer
of VIII.66).
Family 2: ANGIRASES (19 hymns)
1. Indra VaikuNTha (3 hymns): X.48-50

Saptagu ANgiras, the composer of X.47, is clearly
the composer of these three hymns, which
constitute a continuation of the theme in hymn
47. Hymn 47 is addressed to Indra as Indra
VaikuNTha, and these three hymns, in the
manner of a dialogue-hymn, constitute Indra’s
“reply” to Saptagu.
2. AGNEYAS (8 hymns): X.51-53, 79-80, 156,

187-188
Agni SaucIka/Sapti VAjambhara: X.51-53, 79,-
80
Ketu Agneya: X.156
Vatsa Agneya: X.187
Syena Agneya: X.188
a. Agni SaucIka is identifiable with the

BharadvAja
RSi Agni BArhaspatya (joint composer of
VIII. 102).
b. SUcI is a BharadvAja gotra.
c. The word VAjambhara is found in only two
verses
outside this hymn, both by ANgirases:
I. 60. 6; IV.1.4.
d. VAja-m-bhara is clearly an inverted form of
Bhara-d-VAja.
e. The only gotras with Agni are BharadvAja
and
KaSyapa gotras.
3. SAURYAS (4 hymns): X.37, 158, 170, 181

(joint)
AbhitApa Saurya: X.37
CakSu Saurya: X.158
VibhrAT Saurya: X.170
Gharma Saurya:X.181 (joint)
a. The only gotras with SUrya are BharadvAja
and ViSvAmitra gotras.
b. The only other hymns to SUrya are by g
BharadvAja
(I.115) and a KaNva (I. 50).
c. The joint hymn b y Gharma Saurya is with a
BharadvAja and a VasiSTha.
d. A word meaning asura-slayer, asurahan/
asuraghna,
occuring in X.170. 2, is found elsewhere only
in
hymns by a BharadvAja (VI. 22. 4) and a
VasiSTha
(VII.13.1).
e. The three above hymns by Saurya RSis
have
repetitions in common only with hymns by
ANgirases and by GRtsamada (a
descendant
of BharadvAja):
X.37.4: X.127.2 (RAtrI BhdradvAjI)
JyotiSA bAdhase tamo.
X.37.10: II.23.15 (GRtsamada
Saunahotra)
DraviNam dhehi citram.
X.158.5: I.82.3 (Gotama RAhUgaNa)
SusandRSam tvA vayam.
X.170.4: VIII.98.3 (NRmedha ANgiras)
VibhrAjanjyotiSA svaragaccho rocanam
divah.
4. AURAVAS (3 hymns): X.11-12, 138

ANga Aurava: X.138
HavirdhAna ANgi: X.11-12
The patronymics of these RSis show them to be

descendants of Uru ANgiras (joint composer of
IX.108).
5. AriStanemi TArkSya (1 hymn): X.178.

a. The only other hymns to horses are by
ANgirases
(I.162-163; IV. 38-40) and a VasiSTha (VII.
44).
b. The word TArkSya, outside this hymn, is
found only
in one verse by an ANgiras, Gotama
RAhUgaNa
(1.89.6).
c. The only hymns which have repetitions in
common
with X.178 are by VAmadeva Gautama:
X.178.2: IV.23.10
PRthvI bahule gabhIre
X.178.3: IV.38.10
SavasA pañca kRSTIh sUrya iva
jyotiSApastatAna.
Family 5: VISVAMITRAS (9 hymns)
1. PRAJAPATYAS (9 hymns): 90, 107 (joint),

121,
129-130, 161, 177, 183-184
NArAyaNa: X.90
DakSiNA PrAjApatya: X.107 (joint)
HiraNyagarbha PrAjApatya: X.121
PrajApati ParameSThin: X.129
Yajña PrAjApatya: X.130
YakSmanASana PrAjApatya: X.161
PataNga PrAjApatya: X.177
PrajAvAn PrAjApatya: X.183
ViSNu PrAjApatya: X.184
a. PrajApati ParameSThin, clearly the patriarch
of
this group of RSis, is identifiable with PrajApati
VaiSvAmitra (composer of III.54-56).
b. The only hymn which has a repetition in
common
with X.129 (by PrajApati ParameSThin) is
III.54
(by PrajApati VaiSvAmitra):
X. 129.6: III.54.5
Ko addhA veda ka iha pra vocat.
c. All the above hymns deal with the subject of
creation. The only other hymn dealing with
this
subject is X.190, composed by AghamarSaNa
VaiSvAmitra; and the only other verse to which
the
AnukramaNIs assign the same subject is
I.24.1,
composed by SunahSepa AjIgarti
(VaiSvAmitra).
d. ViSvAmitra is traditionally associated with
creation.
The epics relate the story of TriSanku, in which
ViSvAmitra sets out to teach the Gods a lesson
by
creating a parallel universe. He finally desists
only
when the Gods plead with him and accede to
his
demand. But, even today, “duplicate” objects
in
nature are called ViSvAmitra-sRSTi or
ViSvAmitra’s
creations.
e. NArAyaNa is a ViSvAmitra gotra; and the hymn
by
NArAyaNa a, who is not given any patronymic,
is
placed immediately after a hymn by a
ViSvAmitra:
Renu VaiSvAmitra (X.89).
Family 7: VASISTHAS (23 hymns)
1. Suvedas SairISI (1 hymn): X. 147

SairISI is a VasiSTha gotra.
2. Vamra VaikhAnasa (1 hymn): X.99

a. The word SiSnadeva (X.99.3) is found only
once
outside this hymn in VII.21.5, composed by
VasiSTha MaitrAvaruNI.
The word SiSnA by itself occurs only thrice
in
the Rigveda, once in a hymn by a
VasiSTha,
Vasukra Aindra (X.27.19), and once in a
hymn
by a VasiSTha associate, Kutsa ANgiras
(1.105.8). The third occurence, in X.33.3, is
in a
hymn by a RSi whose family cannot be
identified.
b. The only hymn which has a repetition in
common
with this hymn is X.20, composed by a
VasiSTha,
Vimada Aindra:
X.99.12: X.20.10
ISamUrjam sukSitim viSvamAbhAh.
3. Manyu TApasa (2 hymns): X.83-84
a. Manyu TApasa is identifiable with Manyu
VAsiSTha (joint composer of IX.97).
b. TApasa, an epithet signifying heat or
passion, has
an added symbolic significance in this case:
Tapa
is a VasiSTha gotra.
c. The word Manyu is translated, by Griffith, as
a
name in only one other hymn, X.73.10,
composed
by GaurivIti SAktya, a VasiSTha.
4. PurUravas AiLa and UrvaSI (1 hymn): X.95.

a. Verse 17 of the hymn clearly declares:
“I, VasiSTha, call UrvaSI to meet me.” The
name
VasiSTha is translated by Griffith as “her
best love”.
b. Outside this hymn, the word UrvaSI occurs
only
twice throughout the Rigveda: once in a
hymn
by an Atri (V.41.19), where it is an epithet for
a
deified river; and once in a hymn by a
VasiSTha
(VII.33.11) where UrvaSI is referred to as
the
mother of VasiSTha.
5. AINDRAS (18 hymns): X.20-29, 38, 65-66, 86,

96
(joint), 103, 119, 180
Vimada Aindra and VasukRta VAsukra: X.20-
26
Vasukra Aindra: X.27-29
Indra MuSkavAn: X.38
VasukarNa VAsukra: X.65-66
VRSAkapi Aindra: X.86
Sarvahari Aindra: X.96 (joint)
Apratiratha Aindra: X.103
Laba Aindra:X. 119
Jaya Aindra: X.180
a. The only hymns, other than X.38, in which
Indra
is named as composer, are hymns in which
the
God Indra is depicted as speaking in the
first
person. But X.38 does not depict Indra
speaking
in the first person, and it is clear that Indra
here
is the name of the composer, who is the
patriarch
of the Aindra group of RSis in MaNDala X.
b. Indra is a VasiSTha gotra.
c. Indra MuSkavAn is identifiable with
Indrapramati
VAsiSTha (joint composer of IX.97).
d. The word muSka (X.38.5), which gives the
RSi
his epithet MuSkavAn, is found only once
outside
this hymn, in X. 102.4, composed by a
Bharata.
The Bharatas are very closely associated
with the
ANgirases and VasiSThas.
e. X.38.5 refers to the RSi Kutsa. The Kutsas
are
very close associates of the VasiSThas: the
only
reference to Kutsas by non-Kutsas are in
hymns
by VasiSTha (VII.25.5; X.29.2); the only
references
to VasiSTha by a non-VasiSTha is in a hymn
by
a Kutsa (I.112.9); and the only hymn in
which a
Kutsa figures as a joint composer is IX.97,
which
is jointly attributed to eleven VasiSTha RSis
(including Indrapramati) and a Kutsa.
f. Vasukra Aindra is identifiable with Vasukri
VasiSTha (joint composer of IX.97).
g. VasukarNa VAsukra calls himself a
VasiSTha
(in X.65.15), and, in verse 12 of the same
hymn,
he refers to Vimada (Aindra).
h. Jaya is a VasiSTha gotra
i. All the four other hymns (including the joint
hymn)
have repetitions in common with VasiSThas
or
their associates:
X.86.5: VII.104.7 (VasiSTha
MaitrAvaruNI)
X.103.4: VII.32.11 (VasiSTha
MaitrAvaruNI)
X. 119.13: X. 150.1 (MRLIka
VAsiSTha): III.9.6.
(ViSvAmitra GAthina).
X.96.13: I.104.9 (Kutsa ANgiras)
X.96.2: I.9.10 (Madhucchandas
VaiSvAmitra):
X.133.1 (SudAs Paijavana).
Apart from these, the four hymns have only two

other repetitions (one of which is in common with
a ViSvAmitra).
Family 10: BHRGUS (11 hymns)
1. YAMAYANAS (11 hymns): X.10, 13-19, 135,

144, 154
Yama Vaivasvata and YamI VaivasvatI: X.10
VivasvAn Aditya: X.13
Yama Vaivasvata: X.14
Sankha YAmAyana: X.15
Damana YAmAyana: X.16
DevaSravas YAmAyana: X. 17
Sankhasuka YAmAyana: X.18
Mathita YAmAyana: X.19
KumAra YAmAyana: X.135
UrdhvakRSana YAmAyana: X.144
YamI VaivasvatI: X.154
a. YAmAyana or YAmyAyaNa is a BhRgu
gotra.
b. Mathita is also a BhRgu gotra.
c. The alternative names given in the
AnukramaNIs
for the composer of X.19, Mathita
YAmAyana,
are BhRgu or Cyavana BhArgava.
d. Yama is mentioned alongwith ancient,
mythical
BhRgu RSis, AtharvaNa and USanA KAvya
in I.83.5.
e. Hymn X.14.5 states: “Our fathers are
ANgirases,
Navagvas, AtharvaNas, BhRgus.” BhRgu
hymns
in MaNDalas IX and X often identify with
both
ANgirases and BhRgus (see, for example,
IX. 62.9, and the comment on it in Griffith’s
footnotes).
f. All the above hymns deal with the topics of
funerals and death. Tradition ascribes the
initiation of funeral rites and ceremonies to
Jamadagni BhArgava.
The family identities of the other composers of

MaNDala X are either obvious from their
patronymics, or known from the gotra lists, or else
unidentifiable.
All this information is summarized in the two

following tables:
TABLE A. FAMILY-WISE NUMBER OF HYMNS

AND VERSES
TABLE B. FAMILY-WISE HYMNS AND VERSES
Footnotes:
1
HOR, fn. I.13.
Back to Home
Chapter 3
The Chronology of the Rigveda
The first step in any historical analysis of the

Rigveda is the establishment of the internal
chronology of the text.
The Rigveda consists of ten MaNDalas or Books.

And, excepting likely interpolations, these
MaNDalas represent different epochs of history.
The arrangement of these MaNDalas in their
chronological order is the first step towards an
understanding of Rigvedic history. Regarding the
chronology of these MaNDalas, only two facts are
generally recognised:
1. The six Family MaNDalas II-VII form the oldest

core of the Rigveda.
2. The two serially last MaNDalas of the Rigveda,

IX and X, are also the chronologically last
MaNDalas in that order.
In this chapter, we will establish a more precise

chronological arrangement of the MaNDalas
based on a detailed analysis of evidence within
the text.
However, the precise position of the last two

MaNDalas does not require much analysis:
1. MaNDala X is undoubtedly the chronologically

last MaNDala of the Rigveda.
As B.K. Ghosh puts it: “On the whole ... the

language of the first nine MaNDalas must be
regarded as homogeneous, inspite of traces of
previous dialectal differences... With the tenth
MaNDala it is a different story. The language
1
here has definitely changed.”
He proceeds to elaborate on this point: “The

language of the tenth MaNDala represents a
distinctly later stage of the Rigvedic language.
Hiatus, which is frequent in the earlier Rigveda, is
already in process of elimination here. Stressed i
u cannot in sandhi be changed into y w in the
earlier parts, but in the tenth MaNDala they can.
The ending -Asas in nominative plural is half as
frequent as -As in the Rgveda taken as a whole,
but its number of occurences is disproportionately
small in the tenth MaNDala. Absolutives in -tvAya
occur only here. The stem rai- is inflected in one
way in the first nine MaNDalas, and in another in
the tenth; and in the inflexion of dyau-, too, the
distribution of strong and weak forms is much
more regular in the earlier MaNDalas. The
Prakritic verbal kuru- appears only in the tenth
MaNDala for the earlier kRiNu-. Many words
appear for the first time in the tenth MaNDala…
The old locative form pRitsu, adjectives like
girvaNas and vicarSaNi, and the substantive vIti
do not occur at all in the tenth MaNDala, though
in the earlier MaNDalas they are quite
common. The particle sIm which is unknown in
the Atharvaveda, occurs fifty times in the first nine
MaNDalas, but only once in the tenth. Words like
ajya, kAla, lohita, vijaya, etc. occur for the first
time in the tenth MaNDala, as also the root
2
labh-.”
In fact, strikingly different as the language of the

tenth MaNDala is from that of the other nine, it
would in the natural course of events have been
even more so: “The difference in language
between the earlier MaNDalas and the tenth
would have appeared in its true proportions if the
texts concerned had been written down at the
time they were composed and handed down to us
in that written form. The fact, however, is that the
text tradition of the Rigveda was stabilized at a
comparatively late date, and fixed in writing at a
much later epoch. The result has been not unlike
what would have happened if the works of
Chaucer and Shakespeare were put in writing and
printed for the first time in the twentieth century…
(this) to some extent also screens the differences
that mark off the languages of the earlier
3
MaNDalas from that of the tenth.”
So much for the tenth MaNDala.
2. The chronological position of MaNDala IX is

equally beyond doubt: it is definitely much earlier
than MaNDala X, but equally definitely later than
the other eight MaNDalas.
MaNDala IX was meant to be a kind of appendix

in which hymns to Soma, ascribed to RSis
belonging to all the ten families, were brought
together.
An examination of the MaNDala shows that it was

compiled at a point, of time when a Rigveda of
eight MaNDalas was already in existence as one
unit with the eight MaNDalas arranged in their
present order: it is significant that the first four
RSis of both MaNDala I as well as MaNDala IX
are, in the same order, Madhucchandas (with his
son JetA in MaNDala I), MedhAtithi, SunahSepa
and HiraNyastUpa.
Hence, while we will touch occasionally upon

MaNDalas IX and X, our analysis will concentrate
mainly on MaNDalas I-VIII.
The main criteria which will help us in establishing

the chronological order of the MaNDalas are:
1. The interrelationships among the composers of

the hymns.
2. The internal references to composers in other
MaNDalas.
3. The internal references to kings and RSis in the
hymns. We will examine the whole subject under
the following heads:
I. Interrelationships among Composers.

II. Family Structure and the System of
Ascriptions.
III. References to Composers.
IV. References to Kings and RSis
V. The Structure and Formation of the Rigveda.
Appendix: Misinterpreted Words in the Rigveda.
I
INTERRELATIONSHIPS AMONG COMPOSERS
The interrelationships among the composers of

the hymns provide us with a very clear and
precise picture.
We will examine the subject as follows:

A. The Family MaNDalas II-VII.
B. MaNDala I.
C. MaNDala VIII.
D. MaNDala I Detail.
E. MaNDala IX.
F. MaNDala X.
I.A. The Family MaNDalas II-VII.
We get the following direct relationships among

the composers of the Family MaNDalas:
Click Here
Prime facie, we get the following equations:
1. The family MaNDalas can be divided into Early

Family MaNDalas (VI, III, VII) and Later Family
MaNDalas (IV, II, V)
The Later Family MaNDalas have full hymns

composed by direct descendants of RSis from the
Early Family MaNDalas.
2. MaNDala VI is the oldest of the Early Family

MaNDalas, since descendants of its RSis are
composers in two of the Later Family MaNDalas:
IV and II.
3. MaNDala V is the latest of the Later Family

MaNDalas, since it has hymns by descendants of
RSis from two of the Early Family MaNDalas: III
and VII.
4. MaNDala VII is the latest of the Early Family

MaNDalas since (unlike MaNDalas VI and III
which do not have a single hymn composed by
any descendant of any RSi from any other
MaNDala) there are two joint hymns (VII.101-102)
which are jointly composed by VasiSTha and
KumAra Agneya (a member of the Agneya group
of BharadvAja RSis), a descendant of BharadvAja
of MaNDala VI.
5. MaNDala IV is older than MaNDala II because:
a. It has only two hymns composed by

descendants of RSis from MaNDala VI, while the
whole of MaNDala II except for four hymns is
composed by descendants of RSis from MaNDala
VI.
b. MaNDala II goes one generation further down

than MaNDala IV.
6. MaNDala V, as we saw, has hymns by

descendants of RSis from two of the Early Family
MaNDalas: III and VII.
In addition, it also has a hymn by descendants of

a RSi who (although not himself a composer) is
contemporaneous with MaNDala VII: hymn V.24
is composed by the GaupAyanas who are
descendants of Agastya, the brother of VasiSTha
of MaNDala VII.
Conclusion: We get the following chronological

order:
Click Here
I.B. MaNDala I.
We get the following relationships between the
composers of MaNDala I and the Family
MaNDalas:
1. MaNDala I has full hymns composed by direct

descendants of RSis from the Early Family
MaNDalas. 54 of the hymns in MaNDala I fall into
this category:
Click Here
2. In addition, it also has full hymns composed by

descendants of RSis who (although not
themselves composers) are contemporaneous
with the Early Family MaNDalas. 61 of the hymns
in MaNDala I fall into this category:
Click Here
3. MaNDala I does not have a single hymn, full or

joint, composed by any ancestor of any RSi from
the Early Family MaNDalas.
4. On the other hand, MaNDala I has full hymns

composed by ancestors of RSis from the Later
Family MaNDalas. 21 of the hymns in MaNDala I
fall into this category:
Click Here
5. The above hymns, it must be noted, include full

hymns by contemporaries of RSis from the Later
Family MaNDalas, who are also, at the same
time, descendants of RSis from the Early Family
MaNDalas or from MaNDala I itself:
Click Here
6. MaNDala I does not have a single hymn, full or
joint, composed by any descendant of any RSi
from the Later Family MaNDalas.
Conclusion: MaNDala I is later than the Early

Family MaNDalas, but both earlier than as well as
contemporary to the Later Family MaNDalas:
Hence, we get the following chronological order:
Click Here
I.C. MaNDala VIII
We get the following relationships between the

composers of MaNDala VIII and those of the
other seven MaNDalas:
1. There are only two direct relationships between

the composers of MaNDala VIII, and the
composers of the Early Family MaNDalas (VI, III,
VII) and the two older of the Later Family
MaNDalas (IV, II):
Click Here
All other relationships, if any, are through

composers from MaNDalas I and V.
2. On the other hand, not only are there close

relationships between the composers of MaNDala
VIII, and the composers from MaNDalas I and V,
but there are also many composers in common:
Click Here
Click Here
Conclusion: we get the following chronological
order:
Click Here
Note: The BhRgu hymns in MaNDala VIII

constitute a SPECIAL CATEGORY of hymns
which stand out from the rest. These five hymns
(VIII.79,84,100-102) are ascribed to ancient
BhRgu RSis of the oldest period. Unlike in the
case of MaNDala X, ascriptions in MaNDala VIII
have to be taken seriously; and therefore the
ascription of the above hymns to ancient BhRgu
RSis is to be treated, in general, as valid (in
general, in the sense that while hymns ascribed
to, say, USanA KAvya, who is already a mythical
figure even in the oldest MaNDalas, may not have
been composed by him, they must at least have
been composed by some ancient BhRgu RSi).
The historical reasons for the non-inclusion of

these hymns in the Family MaNDalas, or even in
MaNDala I, and for their late introduction into the
Rigveda in MaNDala VIII, will be discussed in our
chapter on the Indo-Iranian Homeland.
I.D. MaNDala I Detail.
MaNDala I consists of fifteen upa-maNDalas. On

the basis of the interrelationships between the
composers, we can classify these upa-maNDalas
into four groups:
1. Early upa-maNDalas:
The upa-maNDalas which can be definitely

designated as early upa-maNDalas are those
which are ascribed to direct descendants of
composers from the Early Family MaNDalas:
Madhucchandas upa-maNDala: I.1-11.

SunahSepa upa-maNDala: I.24-30.
ParASara upa-maNDala: I.65-73.
2. Middle upa-maNDalas:
The upa-maNDalas which can be designated as

middle upa-maNDalas are those ascribed to
ancestors or contemporaries of composers from
the earliest of the Later Family MaNDalas:
NodhAs upa-maNDala: I.58-64.

Gotama upa-maNDala: I.74-93.
3. Late upa-maNDalas:
The upa-maNDalas which can be designated as

late upa-maNDalas are those ascribed to
ancestors or contemporaries of composers from
MaNDala VIII:
MedhAtithi upa-maNDala: I.12-23.

KaNva upa-maNDala: I.36-43.
PraskaNva upa-maNDala: I.44-50.
4. General upa-maNDalas:
Those upa-maNDalas which cannot be definitely

designated as either early or late upa-maNDalas
on the basis of inter-relationships must be
designated as general upa-maNDalas. These
include:
a. Those ascribed to independent RSis not

directly connected with specific groups of
composers in other MaNDalas:
HiraNyastUpa upa-maNDala: I.31-35.

Savya upa-maNDala: I.51-57.
KakSIvAn upa-maNDala: I.116-126.
DIrghatamas upa-maNDala: I.140-164.
b. Those ascribed to descendants of persons

(kings or RSis) contemporaneous with the
composers of the Early Family MaNDalas, but not
themselves composers of hymns either in the
Early Family MaNDalas or in MaNDala I:
Kutsa upa-maNDala: I.94-115.

Parucchepa upa-maNDala: I.127-139.
Agastya upa-maNDala: I.165-191.
The Kutsa and Agastya upa-maNDalas are

ascribed to the eponymous RSis Kutsa and
Agastya themselves, but they are obviously late
upa-maNDalas composed by their remote
descendants. Among other things, the only
references to these eponymous RSis within the
hymns prove this:
The composers in the Kutsa upa-maNDala refer

to the RSi Kutsa as a mythical figure from the
past: I.106.6;112.9.
The composers in the Agastya upa-maNDala

repeatedly describe themselves as descendants
of MAna (Agastya): I. 165.14,15; 166.15; 167.11;
169.10; 169.8; 177.5; 182.8; 184.4, 5; 189.8.
I.E. MaNDala IX
As we saw, the chronological position of MaNDala

IX after the eight earlier MaNDalas is beyond
doubt.
But MaNDala IX ascribes many hymns to RSis

from the earlier MaNDalas. According to some
scholars, this indicates that while MaNDala IX
came into existence as a separate MaNDala after
the first eight MaNDalas, many of the individual
hymns to Soma were already in existence, and
were originally included in the other MaNDalas.
Later they were “combed out of the other
4
MaNDalas” and compiled into a separate
MaNDala dedicated solely to Soma hymns.
This would appear to imply that the period of

MaNDala IX (like that of MaNDala I) should be
stretched out alongside the Periods of all the
other MaNDalas.
However, the contention that the hymns in
MaNDala IX could be “combed out of” the other
MaNDalas is not quite correct. Any “combing out”
would be relevant only in the case of the five
older MaNDalas (VI, III, VII, IV, II); since the other
three MaNDalas (I, V and VIII) were finalised just
before MaNDala IX, and Soma hymns which
should have been included in these MaNDalas
could just as well have been left out of the
MaNDalas even before their finalisation, as the
idea of a separate Soma MaNDala may already
have fructified by then.
And an examination of MaNDala IX shows that it

is a late MaNDala. MaNDala IX has 114 hymns.
If we exclude the fourteen BhRgu hymns, which
we will refer to again in our chapter on the
Geography of the Rigveda, the following is the
chronological distribution of the hymns:
1. Forty-nine of the hymns are ascribed to RSis

belonging to the period of MaNDala IX (i.e. new
RSis not found in earlier MaNDalas) or the period
of MaNDala X (i.e. R is with strange names and of
unknown family identity):
MaNDala IX: IX.5-26, 39-40, 44-46, 61, 63,

68,
70, 72-73, 80-83, 99-100, 111-112.
MaNDala X: IX.33-34, 66, 102-103, 106,
109-110.
2. Forty hymns are ascribed to RSis belonging to

the last layer of MaNDalas to be finalised before
MaNDala IX (i.e. MaNDalas V, VIII and I):
MaNDala V: IX.32, 35-36, 53-60.

MaNDala VIII: IX.27-30. 41-43, 95, 104-
105.
MaNDala I: IX.1-4, 31, 37-38, 50-52, 64, 69,
74,
91-94, 113-114.
3. Only eleven hymns can even be alleged to

have been composed by RSis belonging to the
five earlier Family MaNDalas (VI, III, VII, IV and
II), if one takes the ascriptions at face value.
But, in the case of at least nine of these hymns, it

is clear, on the basis of evidence within the
AnukramaNIs themselves, that these ascriptions
are fictitious, and that the hymns are not
composed by the early RSis belonging to these
five Family MaNDalas, but by late RSis belonging
to the period of MaNDalas IX and X.
These nine hymns are: IX. 67, 84, 86, 96-98, 101,
107-108.
An examination of the ascriptions in these nine

hymns establishes their lateness:
a. IX.67 and IX.107 are artificial

hymns ascribed to the SaptaRsi or
Seven RSis: BharadvAja,
ViSvAmitra, Jamadagni, VasiSTha,
Gotama, KaSyapa and Atri.
(Incidentally, no other hymn is
ascribed to BharadvAja or
ViSvAmitra, and of the two other
hymns ascribed to VasiSTha, one
ascription is clearly fictitious.)
It is clear that these RSis belonged

to different periods and could not
have been joint composers in any
hymn. The hymns are clearly
composed by their descendants, or
perhaps even by some single RSis
in their many names. In the case of
IX.67, Pavitra ANgiras (a RSi who
clearly belongs to the period of
MaNDala IX itself, being a new RSi
and also the composer of IX. 73
and 83) is named as a joint
composer with the SaptaRSi, and
he is probably the composer even
of the entire hymn.
b. IX.84 and IX.101 are ascribed to

PrajApati VAcya (VaiSvAmitra), but
this is clearly not the PrajApati
VAcya (VaiSvAmitra) of MaNDala
III. He is clearly a RSi belonging to
the late period, identifiable as one
of the PrAjApatya group of RSis
whose hymns appear only in the
late MaNDalas (V.33-34, X.90, 107,
121, 129-130, 161, 177, 183-184).
In IX.101, this PrajApati is a joint

composer with AndhIgu SyAvASvI
(who is clearly a late RSi belonging
to the period of MaNDala IX, itself,
being a descendant of SyAvASvI
Atreya of MaNDalas V and VIII) and
with various RSis of unknown family
identity (a circumstance which
places them in the late period of
MaNDalas IX-X).
c. IX.86. is ascribed jointly to Atri

and GRtsamada, and not only do
these RSis belong to different
periods, but they are joint
composers with various RSis with
strange names and of unknown
family identity, which places the
provenance of this hymn in the late
period of MaNDalas ix-x.
d. IX.96 is ascribed to Pratardana

DaivodAsI, but this RSi is clearly
the same late Bharata RSi
(descendant of the actual
Pratardana) who is also a
composer in the late MaNDala X (i.
e. X. 179.2).
e. IX.97 is ascribed jointly to

VasiSTha, Kutsa, and various
descendants of VasiSTha. This
hymn clearly belongs to the late
period, since three of its composers
are also composers in MaNDala X:
MRLIka (X. 150), Manyu (X.83-84)
and Vasukra . (. X.27-29).
f. IX.98 and IX.108 are ascribed to

RjiSvan ANgiras or BhAradvAja.
But this is clearly not the RjiSvan of
MaNDala VI:
In the case of IX.98, the name

RjiSvan is clearly a confusion for
the name RjrASva VArSAgira, since
the hymn is jointly ascribed to
RjiSvan and AmbarISa VArSAgira
(of 1.100).
In the case of IX. 108, this RjiSvan

is joint composer with GaurivIti
SAktya (composer of V.29),
RNañcaya (patron of the composer
of V.30), and various RSis of
unknown family identity (whose
provenance is clearly in the late
period of MaNDalas IX-X).
In short, these nine hymns are clearly composed

by RSis belonging to the late period of MaNDalas
I-V-VIII-IX-X, and not the period of the five earlier
Family MaNDalas.
4. Ultimately, the only two hymns which can be

ascribed to RSis belonging to the five earlier
Family MaNDalas, and only for want of clear
contrary evidence, are:
IX.71 (ascribed to RSabha VaiSvAmitra of

MaNDala III)
IX.90 (ascribed to VasiSTha MaitrAvaruNI of

MaNDala VII)
It is therefore clear that MaNDala IX is a late

MaNDala, and that there was not much of
“combing out” of hymns to Soma from earlier
MaNDalas in the process of its compilation.
The chronological position of MaNDala IX after

the eight earlier MaNDalas is therefore certain.
I.F. MaNDala X
MaNDala X, as we saw, was composed after the

other nine MaNDalas, and compiled so long after
them that its language alone, in spite of attempts
at standardisation, is sufficient to establish its late
position.
The ascription of hymns in this MaNDala is so

chaotic that in most of the hymns the names, or
the patronymics/epithets, or both, of the
composers, are fictitious; to the extent that, in 44
hymns out of 191, and in parts of one more, the
family identity of the composers is a total mystery.
In many other hymns, the family identity, but not

the actual identity of the composers, is clear or
can be deduced: the hymns are ascribed to
remote ancestors, or even to mythical ancestors
not known to have composed any hymns in
earlier MaNDalas.
Chronologically, the hymns in MaNDala X fall in

three categories:
a. Hymns composed in the final period of the

Rigveda, long after the period of the other nine
MaNDalas.
b. Hymns composed in the period of MaNDala IX,

after the eight earlier MaNDalas were finalised, by
composers whose Soma hymns find a place in
MaNDala IX.
c. Hymns composed in the late period of

MaNDala VIII, which somehow missed inclusion
in that MaNDala.
The hymns of the second and third category were

kept aside, and later included, in changed
linguistic form, in MaNDala X.
To round off our examination of the

interrelationships among the composers, we may
note the following instances of composers in
MaNDala X who are descendants of RSis from
the latest MaNDala VIII and IX:
Click Here
In conclusion, we can classify the periods of the

MaNDalas into the following major periods:
1. The Early Period: The period of MaNDalas VI,

III, VII and the early upa-maNDalas of MaNDala
1.
2. The Middle Period: The period of MaNDalas IV

and II and the middle upa-maNDalas of MaNDala
I; as also the earlier part of the general upa-
maNDalas of MaNDala I.
3. The Late Period:

a. The period of MaNDalas V and VIII and the
late
upa-maNDalas of MaNDala I; as also the
later
part of the general upa-maNDalas of
MaNDala I.
b. The period of MaNDala IX.
4. The Final Period: The period of MaNDala X.
II
FAMILY STRUCTURE
AND THE SYSTEM OF ASCRIPTIONS
The MaNDalas of the Rigveda, as we have seen,

can be arranged in a definite chronological order
on the basis of the interrelationships among the
composers of the hymns. This chronological order
is confirmed by a consideration of
A. The Family Structure of the MaNDalas.
B. The System of Ascriptions.
II. A. The Family Structure of the MaNDalas
If the MaNDalas of the Rigveda are arranged in

order of gradation in family structure (i.e. from the
purest family structure to the least pure one), the
arrangement tallies perfectly with our
chronological order:
Firstly, the Family MaNDalas:
1. The BharadvAja MaNDala (VI) has

BharadvAjas as composers in every single hymn
and verse. Non-BharadvAjas are totally absent in
this MaNDala.
2. The ViSvAmitra MaNDala (III) has ViSvAmitras

as composers in every single hymn; but non-
ViSvAmitras are present as junior partners with
the ViSvAmitras in two hymns (1 out of 11 verses
in hymn 36; and 3 out of 18 verses in hymn 62).
3. The VasiSTha MaNDala (VII) has VasiSThas

as composers in every single hymn; but non-
VasiSThas are present as equal partners with the
VasiSThas in two hymns (101-102)
4. The VAmadeva MaNDala (IV) has non-

VAmadevas as sole composers in two hymns (43-
44).
These non-VAmadevas, however, belong to the

same ANgiras family as the VAmadevas, and
share the same AprI-sUkta.
5. The GRtsamada MaNDala (II) has non-

GRtsamadas as sole composers in four hymns (4-
7).
These non-GRtsamadas belong to a family

related to the GRtsamadas (being BhRgus while
the GRtsamadas are Kevala-BhRgus) but having
different AprI-sUktas.
6. The Atri MaNDala (V) has non-Atris as sole

composers in seven hymns (15, 24, 29, 33-36).
These non-Atris belong to four different families

not related to the Atris, and having different AprI-
sUktas.
Then, the non-family MaNDalas:
1. MaNDala I is a collection of small family upa-

maNDalas.
2. MaNDala VIII is not a Family MaNDala; but one

family, the KaNvas, still dominate the MaNDala by
a slight edge, with 55 hymns out of 103.
There is, for the first time, a hymn (47) by a RSi of

unknown family identity.
3. MaNDala IX is definitely not a family MaNDala,

having hymns or verses composed by every
single one of the ten families. The dominant
family, the KaSyapas, are the composers of only
36 hymns out of 114.
There are now eight full hymns (33-34, 66, 102-

103, 106, 109-110) and parts of two others (86.1-
40; 101.4-12) by RSis of unknown family identity.
4. MaNDala X, the latest MaNDala by any

standard, is not associated with any particular
family.
There are 44 hymns by RSis of unknown family

identity.
Clearly, the older the MaNDala, the purer its

family structure.
II.B The System of Ascriptions
There are basically two systems of ascription of

compositions of the hymns, followed in the ten
MaNDalas of the Rigveda:
1. In the older system, the hymns composed by

an eponymous RSi as well as those composed by
his descendants, are ascribed solely to the
eponymous RSi himself
It is only when a particular descendant is

important enough, or independent enough, that
hymns composed by him (and, consequently, by
his descendants) are ascribed to him.
This system is followed in the first five Family

MaNDalas (VI, III, VII, IV, II) and also in MaNDala
I.
2. In the newer system, the ascription of hymns is

more individualistic, and hymns are generally
ascribed to the names of individual composers,
except in cases where the composer himself
chooses to have hymns composed by him
ascribed to an ancestor.
This system is followed in MaNDalas V, VIII, IX

and X.
The dichotomy between the two systems will be

clear from the following table:
Click Here
What is significant is that MaNDala V alone,

among the Family MaNDalas, falls in the same
class as the non-family MaNDalas, thereby
confirming that it is a late MaNDala and the last of
the Family MaNDalas.
Likewise, MaNDala I falls in the same class as the

other (than MaNDala V) Family MaNDalas,
thereby confirming that it is, for the most part,
earlier than MaNDala V.
III
REFERENCES TO COMPOSERS
On the basis of one fundamental criterion (the

inter-relationships among the composers) we
have obtained a very clear and unambiguous
picture of the chronological order of the
MaNDalas.
Now we will examine this chronological order of

the MaNDalas on the basis of a second
fundamental criterion: the references to
composers within the hymns.
The logic is simple: if a hymn in MaNDala B refers

to a composer from MaNDala A as a figure from
the past, this indicates that MaNDala A is older
than MaNDala B.
This naturally does not include the following

references, which are of zero-value for this
purpose:
1. References to a RSi by his descendants.
2. References to ancient ANgiras and BhRgu

RSis (eg. BRhaspati, Atharvana, USanA) who are
mythical figures in the whole of the Rigveda, but
to whom hymns are ascribed in MaNDalas X or
IX, or even VIII.
3. References to Kings from the ancient period

(eg. Pratardana, SudAs) to whom hymns are
ascribed in MaNDala X or IX.
We will examine the references as follows:
A. The Early MaNDalas and upa-maNDalas.

B. The Middle MaNDalas and upa-maNDalas.
C. The Late MaNDalas and upa-maNDalas.
D. MaNDala IX.
III. A. The Early MaNDalas and upa-maNDalas
The following is the situation in the MaNDalas and

upa-maNDalas which we have classified as
belonging to the Early Period:
1. The two oldest MaNDalas VI and III do not

refer to a single composer from any other
MaNDala.
2. The third oldest MaNDala VII refers to one

composer from the older MaNDala III: Jamadagni
(VII.96.3)
MaNDala VII is also unique in its reference to

three contemporary RSis to whom upa-maNDalas
are ascribed in MaNDala I:
Agastya (VII.33.10,13)
Kutsa (VII.25.5)
ParASara (VII.18.21)
However, all these references make it very clear

that these RSis are contemporaries of VasiSTha
and not figures from the past:
a. Agastya is VasiSTha’s brother.

b. The Kutsas are junior associates of the
VasiSThas.
c. ParASara is VasiSTha’s grandson.
The upa-maNDalas ascribed to Agastya and

Kutsa, as we have already seen, consist of hymns
composed by their descendants, while ParASara
is himself a descendant of VasiSTha.
Therefore, the references to these RSis in

MaNDala VII not only do not show that MaNDala I
is older that MaNDala VII, they in fact confirm that
MaNDala VII is older than MaNDala I.
3. The early upa-maNDalas of MaNDala I (i.e. the

Madhucchandas, SunahSepa and ParASara upa-
maNDalas) do not refer to any composer from
any other MaNDala.
Thus the three oldest MaNDalas and the three

early upa-maNDalas are completely devoid of
references to composers from the periods of any
of the other MaNDalas, thereby firmly establishing
their early position and their chronological
isolation from the other MaNDalas.
III. B. The Middle MaNDalas and upa-

maNDalas
The Middle MaNDalas, and upa-maNDalas, as

per our chronology, follow the Early MaNDalas
and upa-maNDalas, and are contemporaneous
with the early parts of the general upa-maNDalas
of MaNDala I.
The following is the situation in these MaNDalas

and upa-maNDalas belonging to the Middle
Period:
1.MaNDala IV refers to one composer from the

older MaNDala VI: RjiSvan (IV.16.13).
It also refers to two composers from the early part

of the general upa-maNDalas of MaNDala I:
MAmateya (DIrghatamas) (IV.4.13)
KakSIyAn (IV.26.1)
This is matched by a cross-reference in the

DIrghatamas upa-maNDala by way of a reference
to a composer from MaNDala IV: PurumILha
(I.151.2)
There is no reference in MaNDala IV to any

composer from any MaNDala which follows it as
per our chronology.
2.MaNDala II does not refer to any composer

from any other MaNDala, earlier or later. And, for
that matter, no other composer from any other
MaNDala refers to the GRtsamadas of MaNDala
II.
3.The middle upa-maNDalas of MaNDala I (i.e.

the Gotama and NodhAs upa-maNDalas) refer to
one composer from the older MaNDala VI:
BharadvAja (I.59.7).
There is no reference in any of these MaNDalas

or upa-maNDalas to any composer from the Late
MaNDalas and upa-maNDalas.
III. C. The Late MaNDalas and upa-maNDalas
In sharp contrast to the meagre references in

earlier MaNDalas to composers from other
MaNDalas, we find an abundance of such
references in the Late MaNDalas and upa-
maNDalas (i.e. MaNDalas V and VIII, and the
general and the late upa-maNDalas of MaNDala
I):
1. These MaNDalas and upa-maNDalas refer to

the following composers from earlier MaNDalas
and upa-maNDalas:
BharadvAja (I.116.8) from MaNDala VI.

RjiSvan (I.51.5; 53.8;101.1;V.29.11;VIII. 49.10;
50.10)
from MaNDala VI.
VasiSTha (I.112.9) from MaNDala VII.
Agastya (I.117.11; VIII.5.26) from the period of
MaNDala VII.
SunahSepa (V.2.7) from the early upa-
maNDalas.
PurumILha (I.151.2;183.5;VIII.71.14) from
MaNDala IV.
2. MaNDala V refers to one composer from the

late upa-maNDalas: KaNva (V. 41. 4).
This is matched by cross-references in the

general and late upa-maNDalas to a composer
from MaNDala V: Atri (I.45.3; 51.3; 139.9; 183.5).
3. MaNDala VIII refers to the following composers
from MaNDala V:
Babhru (VIII.22.10)
Paura (VIII.3.12)
Saptavadhri (VIII.73.9)
4. MaNDala VIII refers to the following composers

from the general upa-maNDalas:
DIrghatamas (VIII.9.10)
KakSIvAn (VIII.9.10)
This is matched by a number of cross-references

in MaNDala I to composers from MaNDala VIII:
Priyamedha (I.45.3; 139.9)

VyaSva (I.112.15)
TriSoka (1.112.12)
Kali (I.112.15)
Rebha (I.112.5; 116.24; 117.4; 118.6; 119.6)
ViSvaka (I.116.23; 117.7)
KRSNa (I.116.23; 117.7)
VaSa (I.112.10; 116.21)
5. The general and late upa-maNDalas refer to

composers from other upa-maNDalas:
a. The Savya upa-maNDala refers to KakSIvAn

(I.51.13)
b. The Agastya upa-maNDala refers to Gotama
(I.183.5)
c. The MedhAtithi upa-maNDala refers to
KakSIvAn
(I.18.1)
d. The Parucchepa upa-maNDala refers to
KaNva
(I.139.9)
e. The Kutsa upa-maNDala refers to KakSIvAn
(I.112.11) and KaNva (I.112.5).
f. The KakSIvAn upa-maNDala refers to
RjrASva
(I.116.16; 117.17, 18), Gotama (I.116.9) and
KaNva (I.117.8; 118.7).
6. Finally, the late MaNDalas and upa-maNDalas
even refer to the following composers from
MaNDala X:
BRhaduktha (V.19.5)
SyUmarASmI (I.112.16: VIII.52.2)
Vamra (I.51.9; 112.15)
Vandana (I.112.5; 116.11; 117.5; 118.6; 119.6)
Vimada (I.51.3; 112.19; 116.1; 117.20;
VIII.9.15)
Upastuta (I.36.17; 112.15; VIII.5.25)
GhoSA (I.117.7: 120.5; 122.5)
It appears incredible, on the face of it, that

composers from the very Late MaNDala X should
be named in earlier MaNDalas. However, it fits in
with our chronology: as we have seen, the hymns
in MaNDala X include hymns composed in the
Late Period of MaNDala VIII which somehow
missed inclusion in that MaNDala. They could not
be include in the next MaNDala IX since that
MaNDala contained only hymns to Soma. These
hymns were therefore kept aside, and, not being
canonised by inclusion in the text, they suffered
linguistic changes, and were subsequently
included in MaNDala X in a language common to
that MaNDala.
However, these RSis, belonging as they did to the

period of MaNDala VIII, happened to be named in
incidental references in late hymns in the Late
MaNDalas and upa-maNDalas.
Incidentally, BRhaduktha, named in V.19.5, has

the patronymic VAmadevya, indicating that he is a
descendant of VAmadeva of MaNDala IV, thus
again confirming our chronology.
III. D. MaNDala IX
MaNDala IX is a ritual MaNDala devoted to Soma

hymns, and references to RSis, strictly speaking,
have no place in it.
Nevertheless, we do find references to the
following composers:
Jamadagni (IX.97.51) from the period of the

Early
MaNDala III.
KakSIvAn (IX.74.8) from the general MaNDala
I.
VyaSva (IX.65.7) from the Late MaNDala VIII.
These references clearly prove the late

provenance of MaNDala IX.
The final picture that emerges from our analysis

of the references to composers is exactly the
same as the chronological picture obtained from
our analysis of the interrelationships among the
composers.
In respect of MaNDala I, it is now clear that the

early upa-maNDalas are definitely very early; and
the late parts of the general and late upa-
maNDalas coincide with the closing period of
MaNDala VIII:
Click Here
IV
REFERENCES TO KINGS AND RSIS
It is not only composers who are referred to within

the hymns: there are also references to Kings and
RSis (other than composers); and an examination
of these references can help in throwing more
light on the chronology of the MaNDalas.
We will examine these references as follows:
A. The Bharata Dynasty.

B. Minor Kings and RSis.
C. The TRkSi Dynasty-
IV.A. The Bharata Dynasty
The Bharata Dynasty is the predominant dynasty

in the Rigveda. Eleven Kings of this dynasty are
referred to in the Rigveda:
1. Bharata: VI.16.4;
2. DevavAta: III.23.2, 3;
IV.15.4;
VI.27.7;
VII. 18.22.
3. SRnjaya: IV.15.4;
VI.27.7; 47.25.
4. VadhryaSva: VI. 61.1;
X. 69.1, 2, 4, 5, 9-12;
5. DivodAsa: I. 112.14; 116.18; 119. 4; 130.7, 10;
II. 19.6.
IV. 26.3; 30.20;
VI. 16. 5, 19; 26.5; 31.4; 43.1; 47.22, 23; 61.1;
VII. 18.25;
VIII. 103.2;
IX. 61.2.
6. Pratardana: VI.26.8;
VII.33.14.
7. Pijavana: VII.18.22-23, 25.
8. a. DevaSravas: III.23.2, 3.
b. SudAs: I.47.6; 63.7; 112.19;
III.53.9, 11;
V.53.2;
VII. 18.5, 9, 15, 17, 22, 23, 25; 19.3, 6; 20.2;
25.3; 32.10; 33.3; 53.3; 60.8, 9; 64.3; 83.1,
4, 6-8.
9. Sahadeva: I. 100.17;
IV. 15.7-10.
10. Somaka: IV. 15.9.
The names of these Kings are given above in

order of their relative positions in the dynastic list
(not necessarily in succeeding generations, since
it is possible that there are many intervening
generations of Kings who are not named in the
Rigveda).
Their relative positions are based on information

within the hymns:
1. Bharata is the eponymous ancestor of this

dynasty.
2. DevavAta is referred to as an ancestor of

SRnjaya (IV. 15.4; VI.27.7), DevaSravas (III.23.2,
3) and SudAs (VII.18.22).
3. SRnjaya is referred to as a descendant of

DevavAta (IV. 15.4; VI.27.7), and ancestor of
DivodAsa (VI.47.25).
4. VadhryaSva is referred to as the father of

DivodAsa (VI.61.1).
5. DivodAsa is referred to as a descendant of

SRnjaya (VI.47.25), a son of VadhryaSva
(VI.61.1) and an ancestor of SudAs (VII.18.25).
6. Pratardana is referred to as a descendant of

DivodAsa (AnukramaNIs of IX.96), the father of
an unnamed King (VI.26.8), and ancestor of
SudAs (VII.33.14).
7. Pijavana is referred to as an ancestor of SudAs

(VII.18.22, 23, 25).
8 a. DevaSravas is referred to as a descendant

of
DevavAta (III.23.2, 3).
b. SudAs is referred to as a descendant of
DivodAsa
(VII.18.25), Pratardana (VII.33.14) and
Pijavana
(VII.18.22, 23, 25).
9. Sahadeva is referred to as the father of

Somaka (IV.15.7-10).
10. Somaka is referred to as the son of Sahadeva

(IV.15.7-10). (SRnjaya and DevavAta are referred
to in verse 4 of the hymn.)
As we can see, the relative positions of all these
Kings are clear from the references. It is only in
the case of DevaSravas (about whom the only
information we have is that he is a descendant of
DevavAta) that a word of clarification becomes
necessary:
Hymn 23 refers to two Kings, DevavAta and

DevaSravas; and (as in the case of IV.42; V.27;
VI.15) these Kings, who are referred to in the
hymn are named as the composers of the hymn
in the AnukramaNIs. Most scholars, ancient and
modem, assume from this that while DevavAta
and DevaSravas may or may not be composers
of the hymn, they are at least contemporaries and
possibly brothers.
It is, however, very clear from the hymn that they

are neither composers nor contemporaries: the
composer is ViSvAmitra, while DevaSravas is the
King who is being addressed by the composer,
and DevavAta is a King from the remote past, an
ancestor of DevaSravas, who is being invoked
and whom DevaSravas is being asked to
remember and emulate.
While this makes it clear that DevaSravas is a

descendant of DevavAta, his exact position in the
dynastic list is not immediately clear. However,
the fact that MaNDala III is contemporaneous with
the period of SudAs gives us the following
options:
a. DevaSravas is a contemporary clansman

(brother/cousin/ uncle) of SudAs.
b. DevaSravas is another name for SudAs
himself.
The two main heroes of the dynasty are DivodAsa

and SudAs:
DivodAsa is referred to as a contemporary only in

MaNDala VI (VI.16.5; 31.4; 47.22, 23). In all
other references to him, he is a figure from the
past.
SudAs is referred to as a contemporary only in
MaNDalas III and VII (III.53.9, 11; VII. 18.22, 23;
25.3; 53.3; 60.8, 9; 64.3). In all other references
to him, he is a figure from the past.
Between them, DivodAsa and SudAs are referred

to in every single MaNDala of the Rigveda except
in MaNDala X.
From this, we get a clear chronological picture:
MaNDala VI - DivodAsa
MaNDala III - SudAs
MaNDala VII - SudAs
All other MaNDalas - post-SudAs
(MaNDala III is placed before MaNDala VII

because the hymns make it clear, and almost
every single authority, ancient and modem, is
unanimous, that ViSvAmitra was the earlier priest
of SudAs and VasiSTha the later one.)
Further: Sahadeva, a descendant of SudAs (as

per all traditional information) is referred to as a
contemporary in hymn I.100; while his son
Somaka is referred to as a contemporary in IV.15.
Hymn I.100 is ascribed to RjrASva and the

VArSAgiras; but the hymn is clearly composed by
a Kutsa RSi, as it is included in the Kutsa upa-
maNDalas. In general, the hymns in this upa-
maNDalas are late ones, and include, in its ASvin-
hymns, some of the latest hymns in MaNDala I.
But this particular hymn, I.100, appears to be the
oldest hymn in this upa-maNDala, and perhaps
constituted the nucleus around which Kutsas of a
later period formed their upa-maNDalas.
The chronological picture we get for the Bharatas,

consequently, is as follows:
Click Here
The above order tallies exactly with the order of
the earliest MaNDalas in our chronology.
Incidentally, the earliest historically relevant King
of this dynasty in the Rigveda, DevavAta, is
referred to only in the four MaNDalas (VI, III, VII,
IV), which clearly represent the heyday of the
Bharata dynasty.
IV.B. Minor Kings and RSis
A great number of minor Kings and RSis are

named in references throughout the Rigveda.
However, most of them are irrelevant to our

chronological analysis, since they do not provide
any information which could be useful in
arranging the MaNDalas in their chronological
order.
Such include:
a. Those who are mythical or ancestral figures in

all the MaNDalas which refer to them.
b. Those who are not referred to in more than one

MaNDala- (unless they can be logically and
chronologically connected with other Kings or
RSis in other MaNDalas).
c. Those who are referred to only in two

MaNDalas, and one of these two is MaNDala X.
References which are relevant to our analysis are

references to Kings and RSis who are
contemporary in one or more MaNDalas, and
figures from the past in others.
Unfortunately, unlike the Bharata Kings, none of

the minor Kings and RSis fulfil this criterion.
Hence, rather than using these references to

clarify our already established chronological
picture, we can, in effect, use our already
established chronological picture to clarify the
chronological position of these Kings and RSis.
Thus:
a. In one case, we can conclude that, of the two

following Kings (each of whom is referred to
as a contemporary in the respective reference)
the first is probably an ancestor of the second:
AbhyAvartin CAyamAna: VI.27.5, 8.
Kavi CAyamAna: VII.18.8
b. We can conclude that the following Kings or
RSis (none of whom is referred to as a
contemporary in any reference) probably
belong
to the early period:
DabhIti: I. 112.23;
II. 13.9; 15.4, 9;
IV. 30.21;
VI. 20.13; 26.6;
VII. 19.4;
X. 113.9.
SaryAtA/SAryAta:I. 51.12; 112.17;
III. 51.7.
DaSadyu: I. 33.14;
VI. 26.4.
TUrvayANa: I. 53.10; 174.3;
VI. 18.13;
X. 61.2.
c. We can, likewise, conclude that the following
kings (who are also not referred to as
contemporaries) probably belong to the middle
period:
Vayya: I. 54.6; 112.6;
II. 3.6; 13.12;
IV. 19.6;
V. 79.1-3;
IX. 68.8.
TurvIti: I. 36.18; 54.6; 61.11; 112.23;
II. 13.12;
IV. 19.6.
However, the references to some minor Kings do

help to confirm our chronological order in respect
of our classification of certain MaNDalas (V, VIII
and the general and late upa-maNDalas of
MaNDala I) as late ones:
a. These Kings are referred to as contemporaries

(being, in fact, patrons of the composers) in
most of the references.
b. They are not referred to in any of the earlier
MaNDalas.
c. They are referred to in more than one of these
Late MaNDalas.
These Kings are:

a. ASvamedha: V. 27.4-6 (patron).
VIII. 68.15-17 (patron).
b. Narya/NArya: I. 54.6; 112.9;
VIII. 24.29 (patron).
c. Dhvasra/Dhvasanti and PuruSanti: I. 112.23;
IX. 58.3 (patron).
(The composer of IX.58 is AvatsAra KASyapa,

who is also the composer of V.44.1-9, 14-15.)
d. RuSama: V. 30.12-15 (patron).
VIII. 3.12; 4.2; 51.9.
e. Srutaratha: I. 122.7;
V.36.6.
f. PRthuSravas: I. 116.21;
VIII. 46.24 (patron).
g. Svitrya: I. 33.14-15;
V. 19.3 (patron).
h. Adhrigu: I. 112.20;
VIII. 12.2; 22.10.
IV. C. The TRkSi Dynasty
Three Kings of the TRkSi dynasty (apparently

corresponding to the IkSvAku dynasty of the
PurANas) are referred to in the Rigveda.
We are taking up the references to these Kings

last of all because these references alone among
all the references to Kings and RSis in the
Rigveda, appear to fail to fit into our chronology of
the Rigveda.
These Kings are:

a. MandhAtA: I. 112.13;
VIII. 39.8; 40.12.
b. Purukutsa: I. 63.7; 112.7; 174.2;
VI. 20.10.
c. Trasadasyu: I.112.14;
IV. 38.1; 42.8;
V. 27.3;
VIII. 8.21; 19.32; 36.7; 37.7; 49.10;
X. 33.4; 150.5.
Trasadasyu Paurukutsa: IV. 42.9;
V. 33.8;
VII. 19.3;
VIII. 19.36.
d. TrAsadasyava: VIII. 22.7.
Trasadasyu is clearly the most important of these

Kings, and he and Purukutsa belong to the same
period (since the reference in IV.42.8-9 makes it
clear that Purukutsa is the actual father, and not
some remote ancestor, of Trasadasyu).
And equally clearly, this period is the late period:
a. Trasadasyu’s name occurs the greatest

number of times in MaNDala VIII (as DivodAsa’s
name does in MaNDala VI, and SudAs’ in
MaNDala VII).
b. Trasadasyu’s son (referred to only as

TrAsadasyava) also clearly belongs to the period
of MaNDala VIII.
c. Trasadasyu is referred to as a patron, and

therefore a contemporary, only in MaNDalas V
and VIII (V.27.3; 33.8; VIII.19.32, 36).
And yet, we find four references to Purukutsa and

Trasadasyu in the older MaNDalas (VI.20.10;
VII.19.3; IV.38.1; 42.8-9), and one in the middle
upa-maNDalas (I.63.7).
This raises a piquant question: is there something

wrong with our chronology of the Rigveda, or is
there something incongruous about these five
references in the older MaNDalas?
There is clearly nothing wrong with our

chronology of the Rigveda:
1. Our chronology is based on detailed analyses

of totally independent factors, each of which gives
us exactly the same clear and integrated picture
of the chronological order of the MaNDalas. This
picture cannot be invalidated or questioned on the
basis of five references to one pair of kings.
2. And, in fact, an examination of the

contemporary references to Trasadasyu confirms
rather than contradicts our chronology:
Trasadasyu is referred to as a patron and

contemporary by only three RSis:
Atri Bhauma (V.27.3)
SamvaraNa PrAjApatya (V.33.8)
Sobhari KANva (VIII.19.32)
Using ViSvAmitra and MaNDala III as a base, we

get the following chronological equations:
a. SudAs is many generations prior to

Trasadasyu, since SudAs is contemporaneous
with ViSvAmitra, while Trasadasyu is
contemporaneous with ViSvAmitra’s remote
descendent SamvaraNa.
b. SudAs is many generations prior to

Trasadasyu, since SudAs is contemporaneous
with ViSvAmitra, whose junior associate is Ghora
ANgiras, while Trasadasyu is contemporaneous
with Ghora’s remote descendant Sobhari.
c. MaNDala III is much older than MaNDala V,

since ViSvAmitra is the RSi of MaNDala III, while
his remote descendant SamvaraNa is a RSi in
MaNDala V.
d. MaNDala III is much older than MaNDala VIII,

since Ghora is a junior associate of ViSvAmitra
(the RSi of MaNDala III), while his remote
descendants are RSis in MaNDala VIII.
e. MaNDala VII, which is also contemporaneous

with SudAs, is also therefore much older than
MaNDalas V and VIII.
Thus, the very fact that SamvaraNa PrAjApatya is

one of the RSis contemporaneous with
Trasadasyu is proof of the validity of our
chronology.
But this brings us to the second part of the

question: is there something incongruous about
the five references to Purukutsa and Trasadasyu
in the older MaNDalas?
And the only answer can be: these five

references must be, have to be, interpolations or
late additions into the older MaNDalas.
If so, this is a unique and special circumstance in

the Rigveda. There are other actual or alleged
cases of interpolations in the Rigveda (all
interpolations made during different stages of
compilation of the Rigveda before the ten-
MaNDala Rigveda was finalized), but all of them
are incidental ones pertaining to ritual hymns or
verses. But these, if they are interpolations, are
deliberate interpolations of a political nature, since
only one father-and-son pair of Kings forms the
subject of the interpolated references. And only
some unique circumstance could have been
responsible for this.
The nature of this unique circumstance can only

be elucidated by an examination of the nature of
the references themselves.
And, on examination, we get the following picture:

the five references in the older MaNDalas and
upa-maNDalas are laudatory and even adulatory
references to Purukutsa and Trasadasyu.
Purukutsa and Trasadasyu, although they were
not even Vedic Aryans (as we shall see in our
chapter on the identity of the Vedic Aryans) are
accorded the highest praise in the Rigveda; and
this high praise is on account of the fact that they
were responsible for the victory, perhaps the very
survival as a nation, of the PUrus (who were the
Vedic Aryans) in a vital struggle between the
PUrus. and their enemies which must have taken
place during the period of the Late MaNDalas.
As a result, the extremely grateful RSis belonging

to the families intimately connected with the
Bharatas (namely, the ANgirases of both the
BharadvAja and Gotama groups, and the
VasiSThas) recorded their tribute to Purukutsa
and Trasadasyu in the form of verses.
The case of Purukutsa and Trasadasyu was

clearly such a special one in the eyes of these
RSis that in their case, and only in their case in
the whole of the Rigveda, they made a point of
breaking with orthodox tradition and interpolating
these verses in their praise into the older
MaNDalas and upa-maNDalas connected with
their families.
The praise is equally special: in IV.42.8-9,

Trasadasyu is twice referred to as a “demi-god”,
ardhadeva, a phrase which is not found again in
the Rigveda; and. even the circumstance of his
birth is glorified. The seven RSis are described
as performing sacrifices, and Purukutsa’s wife as
giving oblations to Indra and VaruNa, before the
Gods are pleased to reward them with the birth of
Trasadasyu, “the demi-god, the slayer of the
foeman”.
IV.38.1, likewise, thanks Mitra and VaruNa for the

services which Trasadasyu, “the winner of our
fields and plough-lands, and the strong smiter
who subdued the Dasyus”, rendered to the
PUrus.
VI.20.10 refers to the PUrus lauding Indra for the

help rendered by him to Purukutsa (read: the help
rendered by Purukutsa to the PUrus) in a war
against the DAsa tribes.
1.63.7 refers to Indra rendering military aid to the
PUrus, by way of Purukutsa and by way of
SudAs.
VII.19.3 refers to Indra helping the PUrus “in

winning land and slaying foemen”, once by way of
Trasadasyu Paurukutsa and once by way of
SudAs.
These five interpolated references in the older

MaNDalas stand out sharply from the other
references in eleven hymns in the later
MaNDalas: those references do not even once
refer to the PUrus in connection with Purukutsa
and Trasadasyu; and the only praise of these
kings is found in the dAnastutis (V.33; VIII.19).
That the five references to Purukutsa and

Trasadasyu in the older MaNDalas and upa-
maNDalas are interpolations is, therefore, proved
by:
1. Their violation of our chronology; and even of

their own implied chronology.
2. Their special nature which makes them stand

out sharply from the other references to these
kings in later MaNDalas.
3. The fact that in the case of at least two of these

five references, even the Western scholars have
noted that they are interpolations or late additions
(which is a very high ratio, considering that such
interpolations are not necessarily detectable):
In respect of IV.42.8-9, Griffith tells us that

“Grassmann banishes stanzas 8, 9 and 10 to the
appendix as late additions to the hymn”.
In respect of VII.19, the entire hymn appears to

be a late addition into MaNDala VII. This Man ala
is contemporaneous with the period of SudAs;
and in his footnote to VII. 19.8, Griffith notes that
the King referred to in the verse is “probably a
descendant of SudAs, who must have lived long
before the composition of this hymn, as the favour
bestowed on him is referred to as old in stanza 6”.
So much for these references, which, alone in the

whole of the Rigveda, appear to stand out against
our chronology of the MaNDalas.
But, before concluding this section, we must also

take note of the references to MandhAtA: the only
references to him in the Rigveda are in late
MaNDalas.
On the face of it, this would appear to fit in with

the general picture: Purukutsa, Trasadasyu and
TrAsadasyava belong to the period of the late
MaNDalas, and their ancestor MandhAtA also
belongs to the same period.
However, this runs in the face of the traditional

picture of MandhAtA: all tradition outside the
Rigveda is unanimous in identifying him as a very
early historical king.
Of course, when information outside the Rigveda

is in contradiction to information in the Rigveda,
the former is to be rejected. But is it really in
contradiction in this case?
An examination shows that although the three

references in the Rigveda occur in late
MaNDalas, they are unanimous (with each other
and with traditional information outside the
Rigveda) in identifying MandhAtA as a King from
the remote past:
a. Not one of the three references treats

MandhAtA as a contemporary person.
b. In fact, VIII.39.8 refers to him as one of the

earliest performers of the sacrifice, yajñeSu
pUrvyam.
Likewise, VIII.40.12 refers to MandhAtA together

with the ancient ANgirases as “our ancestors”.
c. The general period of MandhAtA also appears
to be indicated in two of the references:
VIII.40.12, as we saw, classifies MandhAtA with

the ancient ANgirases.
I.112.13 is more specific: it names MandhAtA in

the same verse as BharadvAja. (The other
reference to BharadvAja in this particular set of
ASvin hymns, in I.116.18, likewise refers to
BharadvAja and DivodAsa in the same verse.)
The inference is clear: MandhAtA belongs to the

earliest period of MaNDala VI and beyond.
The whole situation reeks of irony: the TRkSi

Kings Purukutsa and Trasadasyu belong to the
period of the late MaNDalas, but references
(albeit interpolations) to them are found in the
oldest MaNDalas; whereas their ancestor
MandhAtA, who belongs to the oldest period,
even preceding MaNDala VI, is referred to only in
the latest MaNDalas.
As there is logic behind the first circumstance,

there is logic behind the second one as well:
1. MandhAtA is not referred to in the oldest

MaNDalas because his period preceded the
period of these MaNDalas; and he was a non-
PUru King while these MaNDalas are specifically
Bharata (PUru) MaNDalas.
2. He is referred to in the later MaNDalas

because:
a. The composer who refers to him in VIII.39.8

and VIII.40.12 is NAbhAka KANva. According to
tradition, NAbhAka is a King from the IkSvAku
(TRkSi) dynasty who joined the KaNva family of
RSis. He is, therefore, a descendant of
MandhAtA, whom, indeed, he refers to as his
ancestor.
b. Hymn I.112 (like I.116) is a historiographical

hymn, which refers to many historical characters.
These historiographical hymns, incidentally and
inadvertently, provide us with many historical
clues. The reference to MandhAtA is an example
of this.
In conclusion, the references to Kings and RSis in

the Rigveda fully confirm and corroborate our
chronology.
V
THE STRUCTURE AND FORMATION
OF THE RIGVEDA
The structure and formation of the Rigveda can

be summarised from various angles:
A. The Order of the MaNDalas.
B. The Formation of the Rigveda.
C. The Chronology of the RSis.
D. The Chronology of the MaNDalas.
V.A. The Order of the MaNDalas
The chronological order of the MaNDalas, as we

saw, is: VI, III, VII, IV, II, V, VIII, IX, X, with the
chronological period of MaNDala I spread out
over the periods of at least four other MaNDalas
(IV, II, V, VIII).
Needless to say, the chronological order of the

ten MaNDalas appears to bear no relationship to
the serial order in which the MaNDalas are
arranged.
But the matter becomes clearer when we

examine the case of the Family MaNDalas
separately from the case of the non-family
MaNDalas.
There is a general consensus among the scholars

that the six Family MaNDalas, II-VII, formed the
original core of the Rigveda, and the four non-
family MaNDalas, I and VIII-X, were added to the
corpus later.
The serial order of the non-family MaNDalas
tallies with their chronological order. The only two
problems are:
1. Why is MaNDala I placed before, rather than

after, the corpus of the Family MaNDalas?
2. The Family MaNDalas are not arranged in

chronological order; so what is the criterion
adopted in their arrangement?
These questions have remained unanswered.

But actually the answers are clear from the
evidence:
1. MaNDala I, unlike the other non-family

MaNDalas, is not unambiguously later than the
Family MaNDalas in terms of composition and
compilation: many upa-maNDalas s in this
MaNDala are contemporaneous with the Later
Family MaNDalas, and some even precede them.
It is in recognition of this fact that the compilers of

the Rigveda placed it before the Family
MaNDalas.
2. The Family MaNDalas were formulated into a

text before the addition of the non-family
MaNDalas, and the criterion for their arrangement
was not chronology, but size: MaNDala II is the
smallest of the Family MaNDalas with 429 verses,
while MaNDala VII is the biggest with 841 verses.
The number of verses in the six Family MaNDalas

is, respectively: 429, 617, 589, 727, 765, 841.
Clearly, there is a lacuna here: MaNDala III (617

verses) has more verses than MaNDala IV (589
verses).
The only logical explanation for this is that

MaNDala III originally, at the time of fixing of the
arrangement of the Family MaNDalas, had fewer
verses than MaNDala IV; but many verses were
added to it at a later point of time, which upset the
equation.
Surprisingly, this is not just a matter of logic: the

fact is directly confirmed in the Aitareya
BrAhmaNa the BrAhmaNa text which is
connected with the Rigveda.
According to the Aitareya BrAhmaNa (VI.18), six

hymns (III.21, 30, 34, 36, 38-39) were “seen” (i.e.
composed) by ViSvAmitra at a later point of time
to compensate certain other hymns which were
“seen” by ViSvAmitra but were misappropriated
by VAmadeva.
That is: after the text of the Family MaNDalas was

fixed, a dispute arose with the ViSvAmitras
claiming that some of the hymns included in the
VAmadeva MaNDala were actually composed by
ViSvAmitras. The dispute was resolved by
including some new hymns into MaNDala III, by
way of compensation, in lieu of the disputed
hymns.
If these six hymns (III.21, 30, 34, 36, 38-39),

which have a total of 68 verses, are excluded
from the verse count of MaNDala III, we get, more
or less, the original verse count of the six Family
MaNDalas: 429, 549, 589, 737, 765, 841.
V.B The Formation of the Rigveda
The process of formation of the Rigveda took

place in four stages.
1. The Six-MaNDala Rigveda: The Family

MaNDalas.
2. The Eight-MaNDala Rigveda: MaNDalas I-VIII.

a. Major interpolations: III.21, 30, 34, 36, 38-39.
b. Minor interpolations: References to TRkSi

Kings in older MaNDalas.
c. Introductions: Old BhRgu hymns included in the
Rigveda in MaNDala VIII.
3. The Nine-MaNDala Rigveda: MaNDalas I-IX.
Major interpolations: The VAlakhilya hymns VIII.

49-59.
4. The Ten MaNDala Rigveda: MaNDalas 1-X.

a. Minor interpolations: (not specifiable here)
b. Minor adjustments: Splitting and combining of

hymns to produce symmetrical numbers (191
hymns each in MaNDalas I and X) or
astronomically or ritually significant numbers and
sequences (see papers by Subhash C. Kak, Prof.
of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, U.S.A.).
The completion of the fourth stage saw the full

canonization of the Rigveda, and the text was
frozen into a form which it has maintained to this
day.
V.C. The Chronology of the RSis
The chronological positions of some major RSis

are summarized in the following chart. Asterisks
indicate the first RSi from whom the family
originated (chart on next page).
The chart is self-explanatory. However, the

following points must be clarified, particularly in
respect of the eponymous RSis of the general
upa-maNDalas s, whose period stretches across
the periods of four MaNDalas (IV, II, V, VIII):
a. Agastya and Kutsa are contemporaries of

VasiSTha, but the upa-maNDalas which bear
their names were composed by their
descendants, and therefore figure as general upa-
maNDalas which come later in time.
b. KaSyapa is later than VAmadeva, but he is

also earlier than Atri (his descendant AvatsAra
KASyapa being a senior RSi in V.44), and he
must therefore be placed in the period of
MaNDala I between the middle and late upa-
maNDalas.
c. Parucchepa’s upa-maNDala has been

classified as a general upa-maNDalas on the
ground that there is no direct relationship
between Parucchepa and the actual composers
of either the Early, Middle or Late MaNDalas.
However, it is clear that the beginnings of the
Parucchepa upa-maNDala lie in the late rather
than the middle period: unlike in the case of other
MaNDalas and upa-maNDalas, the Parucchepa
upa-maNDala appears to be composed by a
single composer rather than by a group of
composers comprising many generations (the
uniformity of style and content of the hymns
certainly gives this impression), and this
composer already names Atri, KaNva, and
Priyamedha as senior RSis (I.139.9).
V.D. The Chronology of the MaNDalas
Click Here
We are concerned, in this chapter and this book,

with the internal chronology of the Rigveda rather
than with its absolute chronology: that is, we are
concerned with the chronological sequence of the
different parts of the Rigveda, and not with the
exact century BC to which a particular part
belongs.
However, the absolute chronology of the text is

ultimately bound to be a vital factor in our
understanding of Vedic history; and, while we
leave the subject for the present to other
scholars, it will be pertinent to note here that our
analysis of the internal chronology of the Rigveda
does shed some light on an aspect which is
important to any study of absolute chronology:
namely, the duration of the period of composition
of the Rigveda.
It is clear that the Rigveda was not composed in
one sitting, or in a series of sittings, by a
conference of RSis: the text is clearly the result of
many centuries of composition. The question is:
just how many centuries?
The Western scholars measure the periods of the

various MaNDalas in terms of decades, while
some Indian scholars go to the other extreme and
measure them in terms of millenniums and
decamillenniums.
Amore rational, but still conservative, estimate

would be as follows:
1. There should be, at a very conservative

estimate, a minimum of at least six centuries
between the completion of the first nine
MaNDalas of the Rigveda and the completion of
the tenth.
2. The period of the Late MaNDalas and upa-

maNDalas (V, VIII, IX, and the corresponding
parts of MaNDala I) should together comprise a
minimum of three to four centuries.
3. The period of the Middle MaNDalas and upa-

maNDalas (IV, II, and the corresponding parts of
MaNDala I) and the gap which must have
separated them from the period of the Late
MaNDalas, should likewise comprise a minimum
of another three to four centuries.
4. The period of MaNDalas III and VII and the

early upa-maNDalas of MaNDala I, beginning
around the period of SudAs, should comprise at
least two centuries.
5. The period of MaNDala VI, from its beginnings

in the remote past and covering its period of
composition right upto the time of SudAs, must
again cover a menimum of at least six centuries.
Thus, by a conservative estimate, the total period

of composition of the Rigveda must have covered
a period of at least two millenniums.
Incidentally, on all the charts shown by us so far,

we have depicted all the MaNDalas on a uniform
scale. A more realistic depiction would be as
follows:
Click Here
APPENDIX
MISINTERPRETED WORDS IN THE RIGVEDA
There are some words in the Rigveda which have

been misinterpreted as names of Kings or RSis
(often because some of these words were also
the names or epithets of RSis in later parts of the
text), thereby causing confusion in Rigvedic
interpretation.
The exact nature of these words has, therefore, to

be clarified. These words are:
A. Atri.
B. Kutsa.
C. AuSija.
D. TRkSi.
E. Atithigva.
Appendix A. Atri
Atri is the name of a RSi, the eponymous founder

of the Atri family of MaNDala V. His name is
referred to in the following hymns (not counting
references, to him, or to themselves, by the Atris):
I.45.3; 51.3; 139.9; 183.5;

V.15.5;
VIII.5.25;
X.150.5
However, the word Atri existed before the period

of this RSi, as a name or epithet of the Sun,
which was the original meaning of this word. The
RSi of this name came later.
We will be concerned here only with the

references to this mythical Atri, the Sun. These
references are found in 15 hymns:
I. 112.7, 16; 116.8; 117.3; 118.7; 119.6; 180.4;

II. 8.5;
V. 40.6-9; 78.4;
VI. 50.10;
VII. 68.5; 71.5;
X. 39.9; 80.3; 143.1, 3.
The word in the above references is confused by

scholars with the name of the RSi Atri. However,
it is clear that there is a mythical Atri in the
Rigveda distinct from the historical Atri, and, for
that matter, a mythical Kutsa distinct from the
historical Kutsa: Macdonell, in his Vedic
Mythology, classifies Atri and Kutsa alongwith
5
“Mythical Priests and Heroes” like Manu, BhRgu,
AtharvaNa, Dadhyanc, ANgiras, Navagvas,
DaSagvas and USanA, whom he distinguishes
from “several other ancient seers of a historical or
semi-historical character... such (as) Gotama,
ViSvAmitra, VAmadeva, BharadvAja and
6
VasiSTha”.
That this mythical Atri is distinct from the historical

Atri, and the myth existed long before the birth of
this historical RSis confirmed by an examination
of the references: we find that these references
undergo a complete transformation in MaNDala
V, affected by RSis of the Atri family in a
deliberate attempt to try and appropriate the myth
for themselves by identifying the mythical Atri with
the eponymous Atri, their ancestor.
This, on the one hand, shows up an interesting

aspect of the family psychology of the RSis, and,
on the other, confirms our chronological order of
the MaNDalas.
The references fall into three categories:

1. References in older MaNDalas (VI, VII, II)
where Atri is a name of the Sun.
2. References in MaNDala V where Atri the Sun is

deliberately transformed into Atri the RSi, as part
of two new myths.
3. References in later MaNDalas (I, X) where the

RSi Atri is fully identified with the mythical Atri in a
transformed myth.
To elaborate:
1. VI.50.10 and VII.71.5 refer to the ASvins

rescuing Atri from “great darkness”. As Griffith
points out in his footnote to VII.71.5: “The
reappearance, heralded by the ASvins or Gods of
Twilight, of the departed Sun, appears to be
symbolised in all these legends.”
VII.68.5 also refers to the same natural

phenomenon, the gradual appearance of the Sun
at dawn, in a different way: it credits the ASvins
with making Atri (the Sun) increasingly bright and
glorious with food and nourishment from their rich
store.
II.8.5 does not refer to the ASvins. It uses the

word Atri as an epithet for Agni (who is literally the
earthly representative of the Sun). The epithet is
clearly a repetition of a simile in the previous
verse, II.8.4, where also Agni is likened to the
Sun (BhAnu).
2. Two references by the Atris bifurcate the

original myth into two distinct myths, both
connected up with their eponymous ancestor.
In the original myth, the ASvins rescue Atri, the

Sun, from “great darkness”.
In the two transformed myths:

a. The ASvins rescue Atri, the RSi, from a pit or
cavern:
V.78.4.
b. Atri, the RSi, rescues the Sun from “great

darkness”:
V.40.6-9.
In V.78.4, Atri, lying in a deep pit or cavern, calls

out to the ASvins for help, and is rescued by them
from his distress.
In V.40.6-9, the Sun has been pierced “through

and through with darkness” by a demon called
SvarbhAnu (literally “sky-sun”), and all creatures
stand bewildered and frightened by the sight.
Atri, however, by his Brahmanic powers,
“discovered SUrya concealed in gloom”, and, with
the same powers, “established the eye of SUrya
in the heavens”. The hymn smugly concludes:
“The Atris found the Sun again... This none
besides had power to do.”
3. All the eleven references (in nine hymns) in the

later MaNDalas (i.e. in late upa-maNDalas of
MaNDala I, and in MaNDala X) reflect one of the
two transformed versions of the myth:
They refer to the RSi Atri being rescued (X.143.1,

3) from a fiery, burning pit (I.112.7, 16; 116.8; 11
8.7; 119.6; 180.4; X.39.9; 80.3), or simply a pit
(I.117.3), by the ASvins.
The “fiery, burning pit” of the transformed myth is

clearly incompatible with the “great darkness” of
the original nature-myth.
Appendix B. Kutsa
Kutsa is the name of a RSi, the eponymous

ancestor of the Kutsa RSis of MaNDala I. His
name is referred to in the following hymns:
VII.25.5;
X.29.2; 38.5.
However, the word Kutsa existed before the
period of this RSi, as a name or epithet of Vajra,
the thunderbolt, which was the original meaning
of this word. The RSi of this name came later.
We will, again, be concerned here only with the

references to this mythical Kutsa, the
thunderbolt. These references are found in 24
hymns:
I. 33.14; 51.6; 63.3; 106.6; 112.9, 23; 121.9;

174.5; 175.4;
II. 19.6;
IV. 16.10-12; 26.1; 30.4;
V. 29.9, 10; 31.8;
VI. 20.5; 26.3; 31.3;
VII. 19.2;
VIII. 1.11; 24.25;
X. 40.6; 49.3, 4; 99.9; 138.1.
The word in the above references is confused by

the scholars with the name of the RSi Kutsa.
It is true that, in this case, there is more of an

excuse for this confusion: while the mythical Atri
is not a very personalized or anthropomorphised
figure in the early references (before the Atris play
their sleight of hand), the mythical Kutsa is a
highly anthropomorphised form of the thunderbolt
from the very beginning.
However, the confusion has been only in the

minds of the interpreters of the hymns. The
composers were under no delusions about the
identity of this mythical Kutsa, and the evidence
identifying this Kutsa with the thunderbolt is
overwhelming:
1. The NaighaNTuka (2.20) gives Kutsa as one of

the synonyms of Vajra (the thunderbolt).
2. Kutsa is given the epithet Arjuneya in four of

the above hymns (I.112.23; IV.26.1; VII. 19.2;
VIII.1.11). This is wrongly interpreted as a
patronymic of the RSi Kutsa. Actually, this is an
epithet signifying the white flash of the
thunderbolt.
In another verse, III.44.5 (which does not refer to

Kutsa), arjunam, “the Bright”, is given as a
synonym of vajram.
3. All the references to the mythical Kutsa (except

the two by the Kutsas themselves: I.106.6; 112.9,
23) refer directly or indirectly to a celestial battle
between Indra, the thunder-god, and SuSNa, the
demon of drought whose other epithet is kuyava,
“bad grain”. (Two of the verses, IV.26.1 and
X.40.6, only mention Kutsa, and do not refer to
this battle, but other factors show that it is the
mythical Kutsa who is being referred to.)
The place of Kutsa in these references can be

understood only on the basis of his identity as the
personified form of Indra’s thunderbolt:
a. In three references, Indra kills the demon with

Kutsa (kutsena) as with a weapon: IV.16.11;
V.29.9; VI.31.3.
b. In most of the references, however, Indra is

represented as doing the deed of killing the
demon for Kutsa, or in aid of Kutsa. There is,
however, a coherent mythological explanation for
the conversion of Kutsa from the instrument of the
deed to its beneficiary:
Six of the above references refer to the chariot-

wheel of the Sun: I.174.5; 175.4; IV.16.12; 30.4;
V.29.9; VI.31.3. In his footnote to I.175.4, Griffith
explains that “Indra is said to have taken the
wheel of the chariot of the Sun, and to have cast
it like a quoit against the demon of drought”. This
was done, as per IV.30.4, “for... Kutsa, as he
battled” (against the demon of drought).
In another hymn (which does not refer to Kutsa),

there is again a reference to this use of the
chariot-wheel of the Sun. Here, in his footnote to
I.130.9, Griffith provides the myth in greater detail,
albeit in a later evolved form: “He tore the Sun’s
wheel off: according to SAyaNa, BrahmA had
promised the Asuras or fiends that Indra’s
thunderbolt should never destroy them. Indra,
accordingly cast at them the wheel of the Sun’s
chariot and slew them therewith.” In short: as the
thunderbolt (Kutsa) was proving to be ineffectual
as it battled against the demon of drought, Indra
despatched the chariot-wheel of the Sun to its aid.
c. In two of the references, Kutsa is even referred

to as the charioteer of Indra: II.19.6; VI.20.5.
The connotation of Indra’s “chariot” is clear in the

Rigveda: Indra’s chariot is the thunderbolt on
which he streaks across the sky. The BhRgus
are credited in the Rigveda with the manufacture
of Indra’s thunderbolt: in IV. 16.20, they are
described as the manufacturers of Indra’s chariot.
The sense of Kutsa being Indra’s charioteer is

therefore clear: the thunderbolt is Indra’s chariot,
and the anthropomorphised form of the
thunderbolt is Indra’s charioteer.
4. The identity between the mythical Kutsa and

Indra’s thunderbolt should have been clear to the
scholars:
Griffith, for example, describes Kutsa in his

various footnotes as “the particular friend of
Indra” (I.33.14); “a favourite of Indra” (I.112.23);
“favourite of Indra” (II.19.6); “the favoured friend
of Indra” (IV.16.10); “the special friend of
Indra” (VI.31.3); “Indra’s favourite
companion” (X.29.2).
But, wherever there is a reference to Indra’s

“friend” within the hymns themselves, and no
names are mentioned, Griffith, in his footnotes,
has no doubt as to the identity of this friend: “Thy
friend: probably the vajra or thunderbolt, which is
Indra’s inseparable associate and ally” (1.10.9);
“With thy friend: the thunderbolt” (1.53.7); “His
friend: his constant companion, the
thunderbolt” (X.50.2).
Griffith’s conclusion is based on a direct

statement in VI.21.7: “With thy own ancient friend
and companion, the thunderbolt...”
In the circumstance, it is strange that no scholar

has seen fit to think twice before deciding that the
Kutsa, who is Indra’s favourite friend and
companion, could be a human RSi.
5. The only other name in the Rigveda identified

by Griffith in his footnotes as that of a friend of
Indra, in a similar manner, is that of USanA
KAvya: “the especial friend of Indra” (I.51.10;
IV.16.2); “Indra’s special friend” (V.29.9); “a
favoured friend and companion of Indra” (X.22.6);
“Indra’s friend” (X.49.3).
What is significant is that USanA is referred to five

times in the same verse as Kutsa (VI.26.1;
V.29.9; 31.8; X.49.3; 99.9) and five times in the
same hymn (Kutsa: I.51.6; 121.9; IV. 16. 10-12;
VI.20.5; X.40.6; USanA: I.51.10-11; 121.12;
IV.16.2; VI.20.11; X.40.7).
When we consider that there are 1028 hymns and

10552 verses in the Rigveda, and that the
mythical Kutsa and USanA are referred to in only
29 verses and 19 verses respectively, the number
of hymns and verses they share in common is too
significant to be coincidental. Clearly, Kutsa and
USanA share a close and special relationship.
And what is this close and special relationship?

The Rigveda is very clear at least about the
nature of the close and special relationship
between Indra and USanA: USanA KAvya is
mythically credited with being the (BhRgu) person
who manufactured the Vajra or thunderbolt, and
gave it to Indra for his weapon (I.51.10; 121.12;
V.34.2).
The nature of the close and special relationship

between USanA, Indra and Kutsa is therefore
clear: they are, respectively, the manufacturer,
wielder, and personification of the thunderbolt.
6. Curiously, in a clear case of imitation of the

Atris, we find here also a blatant attempt by the
Kutsas to transform the myth so as to connect it
up with their eponymous ancestor.
But while the transformation by the Atris is

effected by bifurcating the original Atri myth into
two different myths, the transformation by the
Kutsas is effected by taking the original Kutsa
myth, and the more successful of the two
transformed Atri myths, grafting them together,
and then bifurcating them into two different myths:
In the original Kutsa myth, Indra aids the mythical

Kutsa in a celestial battle.
In the transformed Atri myth, the ASvins rescue

the RSi Atri from a pit.
In the two transformed Kutsa myths:
a. Indra rescues the RSi Kutsa from a pit: I.106.6

(which is also the only hymn which emphatically
calls Kutsa a “RSi”).
b. The ASvins aid the RSi Kutsa (in a battle? But

this is not specified. Note: this is the only hymn in
which Indra is replaced by the ASvins): I.112.9,
23.
This transformation of the original myth by the

Kutsas is too clumsy, and too late in the day, to
influence other references in the Rigveda, unlike
the transformation of the Atri myth by the Atris,
where the transformed myth becomes the basis
for all subsequent references.
And the objective behind this transformation is far

more modest than the objective of the Atris: while
the Atris seek to glorify their eponymous ancestor
by usurping the original deed of the ASvins and
crediting their ancestor with supernatural powers,
the Kutsas seem content merely with identifying
their eponymous ancestor with the mythical Kutsa
of earlier references.
But the transformation serves to underline the fact

that the original mythical Kutsa originally had
nothing to do with the RSi Kutsa.
Besides the RSi Kutsa and the mythical Kutsa,

there is a third Kutsa in the Rigveda who is
referred to in four hymns: I.53.10; II.14.7;
VI.18.13; X.83.5.
We will examine these references in the course of

our examination of the word Atithigva.
Appendix C. AuSija
AuSija is an epithet of the RSi KakSIvAn, who is

called KakSIvAn AuSija Dairghatamas in the
AnukramaNIs, and whose descendants are
considered as forming a third major branch of the
ANgiras family (after the BharadvAjas and
Gotamas), the AuSijas.
In the Rigveda, however, this is neither the

exclusive nor the original meaning of the word. In
its original meaning, AuSija is a name of the Sun.
The word is referred to in the following hymns:

I.18.1; 112.11; 119.9; 122.4, 5;
IV.21.6, 7;
V.41.5;
VI.4.6;
X.99.11;
The references may be examined in three groups:
1. The Family MaNDalas:
a. VI.4.6: Agni is compared with the Sun. Agni

spreads over both the worlds with splendour “like
SUrya with his fulgent rays”, and dispels the
darkness “like AuSija with clear flame swiftly
flying”.
b. IV.21.6-8 (the word AuSija is not repeated in

verse 8): Indra unbars the spaces of the
mountains (i.e. the rain-clouds) and lets loose “his
floods, the water-torrents” which are lying hidden
in “AuSija’s abode” (analogous to “VivasvAn’s
dwelling” in I.53.1; III.34.7; 51.3; X.75.1;
aspecially X.75.1 which also refers to the Waters.)
c. V.41.5: Atri is the priest of AuSija.
The meaning of AuSija is very clear from the

above references. In the case of VI.4.6, SAyaNa
recognizes AuSija as a name of the Sun.
However, Griffith disagrees and feels instead that
AuSija in VI.4.6 is “some contemporary priest who
is regarded as bringing back the daylight by
prayer and sacrifice”. In the case of V.41.5, all
scholars, from SAyaNa to Griffith, are in
agreement that Atri is “the ministrant priest of
KakSIvAn, the son of USij”. According to these
scholars, then, AuSija is a RSi (KakSIvAn) who
dispels darkness with a clear flame flying in the
sky, whose abode is the place (i.e. the sky) where
rain-clouds store their water-torrents, and who
has another RSi, Atri, as his priest! The absurdity
of the above ideas is self-evident. Clearly, it is
the Sun being referred to in all the above
references: V.40, as we have already seen,
makes it very clear that the Atris consider
themselves to be special priests of the Sun.
2. MaNDala I
All the references to AuSija in MaNDala I are in

the general and late upa-maNDalas. Here, it is
clear, the word is an epithet of KakSIvAn: it is
used in that sense in I.18.1; 119.9; 122.4, 5.
In I.112.11, it is used as an epithet of

DIrghaSravas, who is referred to as a merchant.
However, KakSIvAn is also referred to in the
same verse, and it is natural to assume that the
epithet applies to both of them.
3. MaNDala X
On the basis of the references in MaNDala 1, the

scholars erroneously assume that AuSija is a
patronymic of KakSIvAn, rather than an epithet.
Hence they presume the existence of an ancestor
named USij.
The single occurence of this word in MaNDala X

disproves this presumption: in X.99.11, AuSija is
an epithet of RjiSvan, who belongs to the
BharadvAja branch of the ANgiras family.
Even Griffith realizes that the explanation of

AuSija as a patronymic does not fit the case here:
“AuSija: son of USij. But as this patronymic does
not properly belong to RjiSvan, the word here
may perhaps mean ‘vehement’ ‘eagerly
desirous’.”
What the scholars do not realize is that the

explanation of AuSija as a patronymic does not fit
the case anywhere: AuSija is the Sun in the
Family MaNDalas, and an epithet in later
MaNDalas: an epithet of KakSIvAn in MaNDala I
and RjiSvan in (the single use of the word in)
MaNDala X.
Appendix D. TRkSi
TRkSi is the name of a tribe: the tribe to which

Purukutsa and Trasadasyu belong, and hence
equivalent to the IkSvAkus of traditional history.
The word occurs only twice in the Rigveda:
VI.46.8;
VIII.22.7.
This name is wrongly interpreted as the name of a

King on the basis of VIII.22.7, which is translated
as: “Come to us, Lords of ample wealth, by paths
of everlasting Law; Whereby to high dominion ye
with mighty strength raised TRkSi, Trasadasyu’s
son.”
However, VI.46.8 makes it very clear that TRkSi

is the name of a tribe and not a person. The
following is a translation of VI.46.7-8: “All strength
and valour that is found, Indra, in tribes of
NahuSas, and all the splendid fame that the Five
tribes enjoy, bring all manly powers, at once. Or,
Maghavan, what vigorous strength in TRkSi lay,
in Druhyus or in PUru’s folk, fully bestow on us
that, in the conquering fray, we may subdue our
foes in fight.”
On TRkSi, Griffith comments: “TRkSi: a King so

named, says SAyaNa.” However, it is clear that it
is only tribes who are being referred to : the idea
that the name of one King could be included in a
list of tribes is based purely on the interpretation
of VIII.22.7.
However, the interpretation of VIII.22.7 is wrong

the phrase “TRkSim… TrAsadasyavam” is to be
translated, not as “TRkSi, Trasadasyu’s son”, but
as “the TrkSi, Trasadasyu’s son”. The name of
the son is not specified, and he is referred to only
by his patronymic, as in the case of so many
other references in the Rigveda: eg. PrAtardanI
(V1.26.8, son of Pratardana), SAryAta (I.51.12;
III.51.3, son of SaryAta) and so on.
Appendix E. Atithigva
The word Atithigva is found in thirteen hymns in

the Rigveda:
I. 51.6; 53.8, 10; 112.14; 130.7;

II. 14.7;
IV. 26.3;
VI. 18.13; 26.3; 47.22;
VII. 19.8;
VIII. 53.2; 68.16, 17;
X. 48.8.
There is no general misinterpretation as such of

this word. However, a clarification of the different
meanings of the word will be in order here:
1. Atithigva is an epithet of DivodAsa in five

hymns: I.112.14; 130.7; IV.26.3; VI.26.3
(DivodAsa 26.5); 47.22.
This is also likely to be the case in one more

hymn: I.51.6, which refers to Sambara (who is
associated in numerous other references,
including in four of the above ones, with
DivodAsa).
2. But in four hymns, Atithigva is an epithet of a

descendant of SudAs (while DivodAsa is an
ancestor of SudAs: VII.18.25): I.53.8; VII.19.8:
VIII.68.16, 17; X.48.8.
Hymn VII.19 is a late hymn interpolated into

MaNDala VII, as we have seen in our earlier
discussion on the TRkSi interpolations, and it
pertains to the late period of MaNDala VIII. This
hymn refers to SudAs as an ancient figure from
the past, while it refers to the second Atithigva in
the eighth verse as a contemporary figure.
Griffith notes that this Atithigva is “probably a
descendant of SudAs who must have lived long
before the composition of this hymn”.
In VIII.68.16, 17, as well, this Atithigva is a near

contemporary figure: his son Indrota is the patron
of the RSi of this hymn.
I.53.8 and X.48.8 refer to the victory of this

Atithigva over Karanja and ParNaya, who are not
referred to elsewhere in the Rigveda.
The fact that Atithigva represents three different

entities in the Rigveda is accepted by many
scholars. Keith and Macdonell, in their Vedic
7
Index of Names and Subjects, note that “Roth
distinguishes three Atithigvas - the Atithigva
DivodAsa, the enemy of ParNaya and Karanja,
and the enemy of TUrvayANa”. Keith and
Macdonell themselves appear to disagree: “But
the various passages can be reconciled.”
However, actually, their own interpretation must
also show three Atithigvas, since, even within the
favourable references to Atithigva, they admit that
while the word refers “in nearly all cases to the
same king, otherwise called DivodAsa”,
nevertheless “a different Atithigva appears to be
referred to in a DAnastuti (‘Praise of Gifts’) where
his son Indrota is mentioned”.
3. Finally, there is the third Atithigva who is

referred to in four hymns: I.53.10; II.14.7;
VI.18.13; VIII.53.2.
This Atithigva is clearly not the hero of the

references. All the four references relate to the
defeat of Kutsa, Ayu and Atithigva at the hands of
(according to I.53.10 and VI.18.13) TUrvayANa.
These references, if taken at face value, are

absolutely incompatible with all other information
in the Rigveda: all the other references to both
Atithigva and Kutsa are favourable ones, while
these references are clearly hostile ones in their
exultation at their defeat. What is more, 1.53.8
exults in Atithigva’s victory over Karanja and
ParNaya, while two verses later, I.53.10 exults in
Atithigva’s defeat at the hands of TUrvayANa.
Clearly, two different Atithigvas are being referred
to.
And this second Atithigva is compulsorily to be

taken in combination with a Kutsa (obviously a
different one from the RSi Kutsa as well as the
mythical Kutsa, the thunderbolt) and an Ayu
(otherwise the name of an ancestral figure)
These references present an insoluble problem

for all scholars engaged in a historical study of the
Rigveda. SAyaNa, for example, tries to twist the
meaning of the references in order to bring them
in line with other references: Griffith notes, in his
footnote to VI.18.13, that “SAyaNa represents the
exploit as having been achieved for Kutsa, Ayu
and Atithigva, but this is not the meaning of the
words of the text”.
SAyana’s attempt to twist the meaning of the
references is partly based on his knowledge of
the identity of TUrvayANa: as Griffith notes,
“according to SAyaNa, tUrvayANa, ‘quickly going’,
is an epithet of DivodAsa”. But Atithigva is also
an epithet of DivodAsa. Hence SAyaNa finds
what he probably considers to be an internal
contradiction within the references; and the only
way he can resolve this contradiction is by
assuming, against the actual meaning of the
words of the text, that Kutsa, Ayu and Atithigva
must be the heroes of the references.
We have the following rational (if speculative)

solution to offer towards the elucidation of these
seemingly senseless references:
a. Atithigva, as we have seen, is the epithet of an

ancestor of SudAs (i.e. DivodAsa), as well as of a
descendant. A natural inference is that Atithigva
was a common epithet of Kings of the Bharata
dynasty.
b. The word Kutsa (apart from its identity as a

synonym of the thunderbolt) is found in the
Rigveda in the names of two persons: the King
Purukutsa and the RSi Kutsa. Purukutsa is a
King of the TRkSi (IkSvAku) dynasty; and the RSi
Kutsa, as per tradition (outside the Rigveda), was
also the son of an IkSvaku king. On the analogy
of Atithigva, Kutsa may then have been a
common epithet of Kings of the TRkSi dynasty.
c. There are many references in the Rigveda

where tribes are named in combinations purely in
a figurative sense, often with special reference to
their geographical locations, in order to indicate
generality or universality.
Thus, VIII. 10.5: “Whether ye Lords of ample

wealth (ASvins) now linger in the east or west,
with Druhyu, or with Anu, Yadu, TurvaSa, I call
you hither, come to me.”
Or I.108.8: “If with the Yadus, TurvaSas ye

sojourn, with Druhyus, Anus, PUrus, Indra-Agni!
Even from thence, ye mighty Lords, come hither,
and drink libations of the flowing Soma.”
However, the reference relevant to us is VI.46.7-

8, which we have already seen earlier: “All
strength and valour that is found, Indra, in tribes
of NahuSas, and all the splendid fame that the
Five tribes enjoy, bring all manly powers at once.
Or, Maghavan, what vigorous strength in TRkSi
lay, in Druhyus or in PUru’s folk, fully bestow on
us, that, in the conquering fray, we may subdue
our foes in fight.”
The above is Griffith’s translation. The meaning

is: “Indra give us the strength and power of the
tribes of NahuSas: the five tribes (Yadus,
TurvaSas, Druhyus, Anus, PUrus). Give us the
strength and power of all the tribes: the TRkSis (in
the east), the Druhyus (in the west) and the
PUrus (in the centre), that we may be invincible in
battle.”
Here, clearly the TRkSis in the east, the Druhyus

in the west, and the PUrus in the centre, when
named together, signify “all the tribes”.
The same symbolism is probably expressed in the

naming together of Kutsa, Ayu and Atithigva. The
three names probably represent the common
epithets of the Kings of the TRkSis, the Druhyus
and the PUrus (i.e. Bharatas); and when taken in
combination, they mean “all the tribes”.
Therefore, what the four references mean is:

“Indra is the Lord of all peoples and lands”; or, in
two of them: “Indra made TUrvayANa (DivodAsa)
the sovereign of all the tribes.”.
In conclusion: we have conducted a full

examination and analysis of the Rigveda from all
the relevant angles, namely:
1. The interrelationships among the

composers.
2. The references to composers within the
hymns.
3. The references to Kings and RSis.
4. The family structure of the MaNDalas.
5. The system of ascription of hymns in the
MaNDalas.
The chronological picture that we obtain, jointly

and severally, in other words unanimously, from
all these angles is that the chronological order of
the MaNDalas is: VI, III, VII, IV, II, V, VIII, IX, X
(The upa-maNDalas of MaNDala I covering the
periods of MaNDalas IV, II, V, VIII).
Footnotes:
1HCIP, p.340.
2ibid., p.343.
3ibid., p.340-341.
4HCIP, p.233.
5VM, pp. 138-147.
6ibid., p.147.
7VI, Vol. 1, p. 15.

Back to Home
Chapter 4
The Geography of the Rigveda
The internal chronology of the Rigveda being

firmly established, the next step in our historical
analysis of the Rigveda is the establishment of
the geography of the text.
The geography of the Rigveda has been the most

misrepresented aspect of the text in the hands of
the scholars: the geographical information in the
Rigveda, to put it in a nutshell, more or less
pertains to the area from Uttar Pradesh in the
east to Afghanistan in the west, the easternmost
river mentioned in the text being the GaNgA, and
the westernmost being the western tributaries of
the Indus.
This geographical information is treated in a

simplistic manner by the scholars, and the result
is a completely distorted picture of Rigvedic
geography:
1. Firstly, taking the, Rigveda as one monolithic

unit, the information is interpreted to mean that
the area of the Rigveda extended from western
Uttar Pradesh to Afghanistan.
It is further assumed that the habitat of the Vedic

Aryans, during the period of composition of the
Rigveda, was the central part of this area: the
Saptasindhu or Punjab, the Land of the Five
Rivers bounded on the east by the SarasvatI and
on the west by the Indus. Their eastern horizon
was western Uttar Pradesh and their western
horizon was Afghanistan.
The consensus on this point is so general that

even in our own earlier book dealing with the
Aryan invasion theory, where we have not yet
analysed the Rigveda in detail, we have
automatically assumed the Punjab to be the
habitat of the Vedic Aryans during the period of
the Rigveda.
However, as we shall see in the course of our

analysis, the habitat of the Vedic Aryans during
the period was considerably to the east of the
Punjab.
2. Secondly, after taking the Punjab to be the

habitat of the Rigvedic Aryans, the matter is not
left at that. A further slant is introduced into the
interpretation of the geographical data in the
Rigveda: it is automatically assumed, on the basis
of an extraneous theory based on a
misinterpretation of linguistic data, and without
any basis within the Rigvedic data itself, that a
movement from west to east is to be discerned in
the Rigveda.
Thus, western places within the horizon of the

Rigveda are treated as places old and familiar to
the Vedic Aryans, being their “early habitats”;
while eastern places within the horizon of the
Rigveda are treated as new and unfamiliar places
with which the Vedic Aryans are “becoming
acquainted”.
The same goes for places outside the horizon of

the Rigveda (i.e. places not named in the
Rigveda): places to the west of Afghanistan, not
named in the Rigveda, are treated as places
which have been “forgotten” by the Vedic Aryans;
while places to the east of western Uttar Pradesh,
not named in the Rigveda, are treated as places
“still unknown” to the Vedic Aryans.
3. Thirdly, and as a direct corollary to the above, it

is automatically assumed that there was a
movement of place-names as well from west to
east.
There are three rivers named in the Rigveda to

which this applies: the SarasvatI, GomatI and
Sarayu. The SarasvatI in the Rigveda is the river
to the east of the Punjab (flowing through
Haryana) and the GomatI and Sarayu in the
Rigveda are rivers to the west of the Punjab
(western tributaries of the Indus). This is the
general consensus, and it is confirmed by an
examination of the references in the Rigveda.
But a SarasvatI (HaraxvaitI) and a Sarayu

(Haroiiu) are also found in Afghanistan; and a
GomatI and a Sarayu are found in northeastern
Uttar Pradesh. Clearly, there has been a transfer
of name, in the case of these three river-names,
from one river to another.
The logical procedure would be to suspend

judgement, till further evidence is forthcoming, as
to the locations of the rivers which originally bore
these three names. A second, and slightly less
logical, procedure, would be to automatically
assume that the Rigvedic rivers originally bore all
the three names, since the oldest recorded
occurence of the three names is in the Rigveda.
However, a west-to-east movement is assumed in

respect of all three names, and consequently, the
westernmost rivers bearing the three names are
taken to be the original bearers of those names.
4. Thus far, the distortion in interpretation and

presentation of the geographical data in the
Rigveda is still relatively mild. It is in fact too mild
for some extremist scholars who would like to
present a more definitive picture of a west-to-east
movement into India.
Some of these scholars attempt to connect stray

words in the Rigveda, often words not even
having any geographical context, with places far
to the west of the horizon of the Rigveda: an
extreme example of this is the attempt to suggest
that a root word rip- in the Rigveda indicates a
subdued memory of the Rhipaean mountains: the
Urals.
Some scholars, not satisfied with the idea that the

Vedic Aryans came from the west, attempt to
show that they were still in the west even during
the period of composition of the Rigveda: the
Saptasindhu, it is suggested by some, refers to
seven rivers in Central Asia, and the SarasvatI in
the Rigveda is not the river of Haryana, but the
river of Afghanistan.
There is even an extreme lunatic fringe which

would like to suggest that the GaNgA and
YamunA of the Rigveda are rivers in Afghanistan.
A political “scholar”, Rajesh Kochhar, as part of a
concerted campaign to show that the events in
the RAmAyaNa took place in Afghanistan,
transfers the entire locale of the epic to
Afghanistan: “Ravana’s Lanka can be a small
island in the midst of river Indus… by Vindhyas is
1
meant Baluch hills, and by sea the Lower Indus.”
He does this under cover of examining the
geography of the Rigveda, in his book, The Vedic
People: Their History and Geography (Orient
Longman, New Delhi, 1999), where he decides
that in the RAmAyaNa (which he examines for the
geography of the Rigveda), SarasvatI is identified
with Helmand and GaNgA and YamunA as its
2
tributaries in the hilly areas of Afghanistan. He
makes this revolutionary discovery on the basis of
a verse in the VAlmIki RAmAyaNa (2.65.6) where
“YamunA is described as surrounded by
3
mountains”.
This is the level to which “scholarship” can stoop,

stumble and fall.
In this book, we will examine the geography of the

Rigveda, not on the basis of interpretations of
verses from the VAlmIki RAmAyaNa or the
HanumAn CAlIsA, but on the basis of the actual
geographical data within the hymns and verses of
the Rigveda itself, under the following heads:
I. The Rigvedic Rivers.

II. The Evidence of River-names.
III. The Evidence of Place-names.
IV. The Evidence of Animal-names.
Appendix: The So-called Negative Evidence.

I
THE RIGVEDIC RIVERS
The rivers named in the Rigveda can be classified

into five geographical categories:
1. The Northwestern Rivers (i.e. western

tributaries of the Indus, flowing through
Afghanistan and the north):
TRSTAmA (Gilgit)
Susartu
AnitabhA
RasA
SvetI
KubhA (Kabul)
Krumu (Kurrum)
GomatI (Gomal)
Sarayu (Siritoi)
Mehatnu
SvetyAvarI
Prayiyu (Bara)
Vayiyu
SuvAstu (Swat)
GaurI (Panjkora)
KuSavA (Kunar)
2. The Indus and its minor eastern tributaries:

Sindhu (Indus)
SuSomA (Sohan)
ArjIkIyA (Haro)
3. The Central Rivers (i.e. rivers of the Punjab):

VitastA (Jhelum)
AsiknI (Chenab)
ParuSNI (Ravi)
VipAS (Beas)
SuturI (Satlaj)
MarudvRdhA (Maruvardhvan)
4. The East-central Rivers (i.e. rivers of

Haryana):
SarasvatI
DRSadvatI/HariyUpIyA/YavyAvatI
ApayA
5. The Eastern Rivers:

ASmanvatI (Assan, a tributary of the YamunA)
YamunA/AMSumatI
GaNgA/JahnAvI
A few words of clarification will be necessary in

the case of the identities of some of these rivers:
1. HariyUpIyA/YavyAvatI: HariyUpIyA is another

name of the DRSadvatI: the river is known as
RaupyA in the MahAbhArata, and the name is
clearly a derivative of HariyUpIyA.
The YavyAvatI is named in the same hymn and

context as the HariyUpIyA, and almost all the
scholars agree that both the names refers to the
same river.
It is also possible that YavyAvatI may be another

name of the YamunA. M.L. Bhargava, in his study
of Rigvedic Geography, incidentally (i.e. without
making such an identification) makes the
following remarks: “The old beds of the ancient
DRSadvatI and the YamunA… ran very close to
each other… the two rivers appear to have come
close at a place about three miles southwest of
ChacharaulI town, but diverged again immediately
after… the YamunA… then again ran
southwestwards almost parallel to the DRSadvatI,
the two again coming about two miles close to
4
each other near old Srughna……”
The battle described on the HariyUpIyA -

YavyAvatI may therefore have taken place in the
area between these rivers.
However, pending further evidence (of this

identity of YavyAvatI with the YamunA), we must
assume, with the scholars, that the YavyAvatI is
the same as the HariyUpIyA.
2. JahnAvI: JahnAvI, which is clearly another

name of the GaNgA, is named in two hymns; and
in both of them, it is translated by the scholars as
something other than the name of a river: Griffith
translates it as “Jahnu’s children” (I.116.19) and
“the house of Jahnu” (III.58.6).
The evidence, however, admits of only one

interpretation:
a. JahnAvI is clearly the earlier Rigvedic form of

the later word JAhnAvI: the former word is not
found after the Rigveda, and the latter word is not
found in the Rigveda.
The word clearly belongs to a class of words in

the Rigveda which underwent a particular
phonetic change in the course of time: JhnAvI in
the Rigveda becomes JAhnavI after the Rigveda;
brahmANa becomes brAhmaNa in the Rigveda
itself (both words are found in the Rigveda while
only the latter is found after the Rigveda); and the
word pavAka has already become pAvaka in the
course of compilation of the Rigveda (only the
latter form is found in the Rigveda, but according
to B.K. Ghosh, “the evidence of the metres...
clearly proves that the actual pronunciation of the
word pAvaka must have been pavAka in the
5
Rigvedic age” ).
b. The word JAhnavI (and therefore also the word

JahnAvI which has no independent existence,
and for which there is no alternative source of
information since it is found only twice in the
Rigveda and nowhere outside it) literally means
“daughter of Jahnu”, and not “Jahnu’s children” or
“the house of Jahnu”.
And the word JAhnavI (and therefore also

JahnAvI as well) has only one connotation in the
entire length and breadth of Sanskrit literature: it
is a name of the GaNgA.
c. One of the two references to the JahnAvI in the

Rigveda provides a strong clue to the identity of
this word: JahndvI (I. 116.19) is associated with
the SiMSumAra (I.116.18) or the Gangetic
dolphin. The dolphin is not referred to anywhere
else in the Rigveda.
The MaNDala-wise distribution of the names of

the rivers in the Rigveda is as follows:
Early MaNDala I
SarasvatI : I.3.10-12.
Middle MaNDala I
SarasvatI : I.89.3.
Sindhu : I.83.1.
General and Late MaNDala I

GaurI : I.164.4.
RasA : I. 112.12.
Sindhu : I.44.12; 122.6; 126.1; 186.5
(plus the references to the Sindhu in the
refrain
of the Kutsas in the last verses of I.94-96,
98,
100-103, 105-115).
SarasvatI : I.13.9; 142.9; 164.49, 52; 188.8
JahnAvI : I.116.19.
MaNDala II
SarasvatI : II.1.11; 3.8; 30.8; 32.8; 41.16-18.
MaNDala III
VipAS: III.33.1.
SutudrI: III.33.1.
SarasvatI: III.4.8; 23.4; 54.13.
DRSadvatI: III.23.4,
ApayA: III.23.4.
JahnAvI: III.58.6.
MaNDala IV
Sarayu: IV.30.18.
KuSavA: IV.18.8.
Sindhu: IV.30.12; 54.6; 55.3.
ParuSNI: IV.22.2.
VipAS: IV.30.11.
RasA: IV.43.6.
MaNDala V
Sarayu: V.53.9.
KubhA: V.53.9.
Krumu: V.53.9.
AnitabhA: V.53.9.
RasA: V.41.15; 53.9.
Sindhu: V.53.9.
ParuSNI: V.52.9.
SarasvatI: V.5.8; 42.12; 43.11; 46.2,
YamunA: V.52.17.
MaNDala VI
SarasvatI: VI.49.7; 50.12. 52.6; 61.1-7, 10-11,
13-14
HariyUpIyA: VI.27.5.
YavyAvatI: VI.27.6.
GaNgA: VI.45.31.
MaNDala VII
AsiknI: VII.5.3.
ParuSNI: VII.18.8, 9.
SarasvatI: VII.2.8; 9.5; 35.11; 36.6; 39.5; 40.3;
95.1-2, 4-6; 96.1, 3-6.
YamunA: VII.18.19.
MaNDala VIII
GomatI: VIII.24.30.
SvetyAvarI: VIII.26.18.
SuvAstu: VIII.19.37.
Prayiyu: VIII.19.37.
Vayiyu: VIII.19.37.
Sindhu: VIII.12.3; 20.24, 25; 25.14; 26.18,
72.7.
ArjIkIyA: VIII.7.29; 64.11.
SuSomA: VIII.7.29; 64.11.
AsiknI: VIII.20.25.
ParuSNI: VIII.75.15.
SarasvatI: VIII.21.17, 18; 38.10; 54.4
AMSumatI: VIII.96.13.
RasA: VIII.72.13.
MaNDala IX
Sindhu: IX.97.58.
ArjIkIyA: IX.65.23.
SarasvatI: IX.5.8; 67.32; 81.4.
RasA: IX.41.6.
MaNDala X
Sarayu: X.64.9.
GomatI: X.75.6.
Mehatnu: X.75.6.
KubhA: X.75.6.
Krumu: X.75.6.
Sveti: X.75.6.
RasA: X.75.6; 108.1, 2; 121.4.
Susartu: X.75.6.
TRSTAmA: X.75.6.
Sindhu: X.64.9; 65.13; 66.11; 75.1, 3-4, 6-9.
ArjIkIyA: X.75.5.
SuSomA: X.75.5.
VitastA: X.75.5.
MarudvRdhA: X.75.5.
AsiknI: X.75.5.
ParuSNI: X.75.5.
SutudrI: X.75.5.
SarasvatI: X.17.7-9; 30.12; 64.9; 65.1,13;
66.5;
75.5; 110.8; 131.5; 141.5; 184.2
ASmanvatI: X.53.8.
YamunA: X.75.5.
GaNgA: X.75.5.
II
THE EVIDENCE OF RIVER NAMES
The names of the rivers in the Rigveda have

always formed the basis for any analysis of
Rigvedic geography.
Let us examine the geographical picture

presented by these river-names when the
MaNDalas are arranged in their chronological
order (click on the link).
Click Here
As the Chinese put it, one picture is worth a
thousand words. The graph gives us the entire
geographical picture in a nutshell: (click on the
link)
Click Here
1. In the pre-Rigvedic period and the early part of

the Early Period (MaNDala VI), the Vedic Aryans
were inhabitants of an area to the east of the
SarasvatI.
2. In the course of the Early Period (MaNDalas III

and VII), and the early part of the Middle Period
(MaNDala IV and the middle upa-maNDalas),
there was a steady expansion westwards.
3. Though there was an expansion westwards,

the basic area of the Vedic Aryans was still
restricted to the east in the Middle Period
(MaNDala II), and even in the early parts of the
Late Period: MaNDala V knows the western rivers
from the KubhA (Kabul) in the north to the Sarayu
(Siritoi) in the south, but its base is still in the
east. SarasvatI is still the most important river in
the MaNDala: it is referred to by the eponymous
RSi Atri (V.42.12; 43.11) who also refers to the
RasA (V.41.15). All the other references to the
western rivers (Sarayu, KubhA, Krumu, AnitabhA,
RasA, Sindhu) occur in a single verse (V.53.9) by
a single RSi SyAvASva, obviously a very mobile
RSi who also refers elsewhere to the ParuSNI
(V.52.9) and even the YamunA (V.52.17).
4. In the later part of the Late Period (MaNDalas

VIII, IX, X, and the general and late upa-
maNDalas) the Vedic Aryans were spread out
over the entire geographical horizon of the
Rigveda.
Let us examine the evidence of the river-names in

greater detail under the following heads:
A. The Westward Expansion in the Bharata
Period.
B. The Evidence of Some Key Rivers.
II.A. The Westward Expansion in the Bharata

Period
The graph of the rivers clearly shows that there

was a westward expansion of the Vedic Aryans
from the time of SudAs onwards.
In the Early period, right from pre-Rigvedic times

to the time of SudAs, the Vedic Aryans were
settled in the area to the east of the Punjab:
MaNDala VI knows of no river to the west of the
SarasvatI.
However, in the MaNDalas and upa-maNDalas

following MaNDala VI, we find a steady
movement westwards:
a. MaNDala III refers to the first two rivers of the

Punjab from the east: the SutudrI and the VipAS.
b. MaNDala VII refers to the next two rivers of the

Punjab from the east: the ParuSNI and AsiknI.
c. The middle upa-maNDalas of MaNDala I

contain the first reference to the Indus, but none
to the rivers west of the Indus.
d. MaNDala IV contains the first references to

rivers west of the Indus.
If the case for the westward expansion is strong

enough even merely from the evidence of the
names of the rivers, it becomes unimpeachable
when we examine the context in which these
names appear in the hymns:
1. The SutudrI and VipAS are not referred to in a

casual vein. They are referred to in a special
context: hymn III.33 is a special ode to these two
rivers by ViSvAmitra in commemoration of a
historical movement of the warrior bands of the
Bharatas led by SudAs and himself, across the
billowing waters of these rivers.
What is important is that this hymn is

characterized by the Western scholars
themselves as a historical hymn commemorating
the migratory movement of the Vedic Aryans
across the Punjab.,
But the Western scholars depict it as a movement

from the west to the east: Griffith calls the hymn
“a relic of the traditions of the Aryans regarding
their progress eastward in the land of the Five
Rivers”.
However, an examination of the facts leaves no

doubt that the direction of this historical
movement was from the east to the west: the very
distribution of the river-names in the Rigveda, as
apparent from our graph of the rivers, makes this
clear.
But there is more specific evidence within the

hymns to show that this movement was from the
east to the west:
SudAs is a descendant of DivodAsa (VII.18.25),

DivodAsa is a descendant of SRnjaya (VI.47.22
and Griffith’s footnotes to it) and SRnjaya is a
descendant of DevavAta (IV.15.4): SudAs is
therefore clearly a remote descendant of
DevavAta.
DevavAta established the sacrificial fire on the

banks of the ApayA between the SarasvatI and
the DRSadvatI (III.23.3-4) The SarasvatI is to the
east of the VipAS and SutudrI, and the ApayA
and DRSadvatI are even further east. No
ancestor of SudAs is associated with any river to
the west of the SarasvatI.
The historical movement of the Vedic Aryans

across the SutudrI and the VipAS, at the time of
SudAs, can only be a westward movement.
2. The ParuSNI and AsiknI, also, are not referred

to in a casual vein: they also are referred to in a
special context. The context is a major battle
fought on the ParuSNI by the Bharatas under
SudAs and VasiSTha (who replaced ViSvAmitra
as the priest of SudAs).
The direction of the movement is crystal clear in

this case as well: SudAs with his earlier priest
ViSvAmitra is associated with the SutudrI and
VipAS, and with his later priest VasiSTha is
associated with the ParuSNI which is to the west
of the two other rivers.
But there is more specific evidence in MaNDala

VII about the direction of movement in this battle,
which is the subject of various references
throughout the MaNDala:
a. The battle is fought on the ParuSNI and the

enemies of SudAs (who is referred to here as the
PUru) are described in VII.5.3 as the people of
the AsiknI. The AsiknI is to the west of the
ParuSNI hence it is clear that the enemies of
SudAs are fighting from the west of the ParuSNI
while SudAs is fighting from the east.
Curiously, Griffith mistranslates the name of the

river AsiknI as “dark-hued”, thereby killing two
birds with one stone: the people of the AsiknI
become “the dark-hued races”, thereby wiping out
the sense of direction inherent in the reference,
while at the same time introducing the racial motif
b. In VII.83.1, two of the tribes fighting against

SudAs, the PRthus and the ParSus, are
described as marching eastwards (prAcA)
towards him.
Griffith again mistranslates the names of the

tribes as “armed with broad axes” and the word
prAcA as “forward”.
c. VII.6.5 refers indirectly to this battle by talking

of the defeat of the tribes of Nahus (i.e. the tribes
of the Anus and Druhyus who fought against
SudAs) as follows: “Far, far away hath Agni
chased the Dasyus, and, in the east, hath turned
the godless westward”. SudAs is therefore clearly
pressing forward from the east.
3. The first references to the Indus are in the

middle upa-maNDalas (I.83.1) and in MaNDala IV
(IV.30.12; 54.6; 55.3). There is, perhaps, a
westward movement indicated even in the very
identity of the composers of the hymns which
contain these references: I.83 is composed by
Gotama RAhUgaNa who does not refer to any
river west of the Indus, while the references in
MaNDala IV are by his descendants, the
VAmadeva Gautamas, who also refer to two
rivers to the west of the Indus (IV.18.8; 30.18).
Thus, we have a clear picture of the westward

movement of the Vedic Aryans from their
homeland in the east of the SarasvatI to the area
to the west of the Indus, towards the end of the
Early Period of the Rigveda: IV.30.18 refers to
what is clearly the westermnost point in this
movement, a battle fought in southern
Afghanistan “on yonder side of Sarayu”.
II. B. The Evidence of Some Key Rivers:
The key rivers in the Rigveda are:

a. The Indus to the west of the Five Rivers of the
Punjab.
b. The SarasvatI to the east of the Five Rivers of

the Punjab.
c. The GaNgA and YamunA, the easternmost

rivers named in the Rigveda.
The evidence of these key rivers is extremely

significant:
1. The Indus and the SarasvatI:
The word Sindhu in the Rigveda primarily means

“river” or even “sea”; it is only secondarily a name
of the Indus river: thus Saptasindhava can mean
“seven rivers” but not “seven Induses”.
The relative insignificance of the Indus in the

Rigveda is demonstrated by the fact that the
Indus is not mentioned even once in the three
oldest MaNDalas of the Rigveda.
Since the word Sindhu, in its meaning of “river”,

occurs frequently throughout the Rigveda,
scholars are able to juggle with the word, often
mistranslating the word Sindhu as “the Indus”
even when it means “river”.
However, even this sophistry is not possible in the

case of the three oldest MaNDalas (VI, III and
VII): the word Sindhu, except in eight verses,
occurs only in the plural, and can be translated
only as “rivers”.
In seven of the eight references, in which the

word occurs in the singular, it clearly refers to
some other “river” which is specified within the
context of the reference itself:
a. III.33.3, 5; 53.9: VipAS.
b. VII.18.5: ParuSNI.
c. VII.33.3: YamunA.
d. VII.36.6; 95.1: SarasvatI.
In the eighth reference (VII.87.6) the word means

“sea”: the verse talks of the sun setting in the sea.
In sharp contrast, the SarasvatI is referred to

many times in the three oldest MaNDalas. In fact,
there are three whole hymns dedicated to it in
these MaNDalas: VI.61; VII.95, 96.
All in all, the SarasvatI is referred to in nine

MaNDalas out of ten in the Rigveda (i.e. in all
except MaNDala IV, which represents the
westernmost thrust in the westward movement of
the Vedic Aryans). The Indus is referred to in
only six MaNDalas (I, IV, V, VIII, IX, X); and in
three of these (V, IX, X), the references to the
SarasvatI far outnumber the references to the
Indus.
It is only in the latest parts of the Rigveda that the

Indus overshadows the SarasvatI:
a. In MaNDala VIII, the references to the Indus

outnumber the references to the SarasvatI (by six
verses to four).
b. In the general and late upa-maNDalas of

MaNDala I, the Indus, but not the SarasvatI, is
enumerated with other deities in the refrain of the
Kutsas which forms the last verse of nineteen out
of their twenty-one hymns.
c. In MaNDala X, although there are more

references to the SarasvatI, it is the Indus, and
not the SarasvatI, which is the main river lauded
in the nadIstuti (X.75), the hynm in Praise of the
Rivers.
The SarasvatI is so important in the whole of the

Rigveda that it is worshipped as one of the Three
Great Goddesses in the AprI-sUktas of all the ten
families of composers (being named in nine of
them and implied in the tenth). The Indus finds
no place in these AprI-sUktas.
The contrast between the overwhelming

importance of the SarasvatI and the relative
unimportance of the Indus is so striking, and so
incongruous with the theory of an Aryan invasion
from the northwest, that many scholars resort to
desperate explanations to account for it: Griffith,
in his footnote to VI.61.2, suggests that perhaps
“SarasvatI is also another name of Sindhu or the
Indus”.
2. The Eastern Rivers
The GaNgA and the YamunA are the two

easternmost rivers named in the Rigveda. One or
the other of these two rivers (either by these
names, or by their other names, JahnAvI and
AMSumatI respectively) is named in seven of the
ten MaNDalas of the Rigveda, including the three
oldest MaNDalas (VI, III and VII).
By contrast, the Indus and its western tributaries,

as we saw, are named in only six MaNDalas,
which do not include the three oldest MaNDalas
of the Rigveda.
But even more significant than these bare

statistics is the particular nature of the four
references to the GaNgA, the easternmost river of
them all:
a. The nadIstuti begins its enumeration of the

rivers with the GaNgA and moves westwards.
Whether this circumstance in itself is a significant

one or not is debatable; but while many scholars,
without necessarily having arrived at any specific
ideas about Rigvedic chronology or geography,
find it important, certain others seek to deflect its
importance, and even to dismiss the importance
of the GaNgA itself in the Rigveda:
Griffith, in his footnote to X.75.5, takes pains to

suggest that “the poet addresses first the most
distant rivers. GaNgA: the Ganges is mentioned,
indirectly, in only one other verse of the Rgveda,
and even there, the word is said by some to be
the name of a woman. See VI.45.3l.”
b. The reference in VI.45.31 is definitely

significant: the composer compares the height of
a patron’s generosity to the height of the wide
bushes on the banks of the GaNgA.
This makes it clear that even in the oldest

MaNDala in the Rigveda, the GaNgA is a familiar
geographical landmark, whose features conjure
up images which are very much a part of
traditional idiomatic expression.
c. The reference in III.58.6. is infinitely more

significant. Griffith translates the verse as follows:
“Ancient your home, auspicious is your friendship:
Heroes, your wealth is with the house of Jahnu.”
Here, not only does Griffith mistranslate JahnAvI

as “the house of Jahnu”, he compounds it with a
further misinterpretation of the grammatical form:
JahnAvyAm is clearly “on (the banks of) the

JahnAvI” on the lines of similar translations by
Griffith himself in respect of other rivers:
ParuSNyAm (V.52.9: on the banks of the
ParuSNI), YamunAyAm (V.52.17: on the banks of
the YamunA), DRSadvatyAm… ApayAyAm
SarasvatyAm (III.23.4: on the banks of the
DRSadvatI, ApayA and SarasvatI).
The correct translation of III.58.6, addressed to

the ASvins, is: “Your ancient home, your
auspicious friendship, O Heroes, your wealth is
on (the banks of the JahnAvI.”
What is noteworthy is that the phrase

PurANamokah “ancient home” is used in the
second oldest MaNDala in the Rigveda, in
reference to the banks of the GaNgA.
d. The reference in I.116.19 associates the

JahnAvI with BharadvAja, DivodAsa and the
Gangetic dolphin (all of whom are referred to in
the earlier verse I.116.18). It is clear, therefore,
that the river is specially associated with the
oldest period of the Rigveda, the period of
MaNDala VI (which is also the only place, outside
the nadIstuti, where the GaNgA is referred to by
that name).
The evidence of the rivers in the Rigveda is

therefore unanimous in identifying the area to the
east of the SarasvatI as the original homeland of
the Vedic Aryans.
III
THE EVIDENCE OF PLACE-NAMES

The evidence of place-names in the Rigveda,
usually ignored, is secondary to the evidence of
river-names. Nevertheless, significant evidence
in this respect does exist; and an examination of
this evidence fully corroborates the geographical
picture derived from our examination of the
evidence of the river-names.
The places named directly or indirectly in the

Rigveda can be classified into five basic
geographical regions, from west to east, on the
basis of present-day terminology:
A. Afghanistan.
B. Punjab.
C. Haryana.
D. Uttar Pradesh.
E. Bihar.
To go into further detail:
III.A. Afghanistan
The only place-name from Afghanistan that we

find in the Rigveda is “GandhArI”, and this name
occurs only once in the whole of the Rigveda: in
the general and late upa-maNDalas of MaNDala I
(I.126.7).
But, the name is also found indirectly in the name

of a divine class of beings associated with
GandhAra, the gandharvas, who are referred to in
the following verses:
I.22.14; 163.2;
III.38.6;
VIII.1.11; 77.5;
IX.83.4; 85.12; 86.36; 113.3;
X.10.4; 11.2; 85.40, 41; 123.4, 7; 136.6; 139.4, 6;
177.2.
As we can see, the gandharvas are referred to in

20 verses in 16 hymns, and all except one of
these references are in the very latest parts of the
Rigveda: MaNDalas VIII, IX and X, and the
general and late upa-maNDalas of MaNDala I.
The one reference in an early MaNDala (III.38.6)
is not even an exception which proves the
general rule, it is in itself strong corroboration of
the late provenance of the gandharvas in the
Rigveda: III.38 is one of the six hymns (III.21, 30,
34, 36, 38-39) which are specifically named in the
Aitareya BrAhmaNa (VI.18) as being late
interpolations into MaNDala III. As we saw in an
earlier chapter, these hymns have been
incorporated into MaNDala III in the eight-
MaNDala stage of the Rigveda, and are
contemporaneous with the hymns in MaNDala
VIII.
III.B. Punjab
The Punjab is known in the Rigveda as

“Saptasindhu”.
There are other phrases in the Rigveda which

mean “seven rivers”; but these do not constitute
references to the Punjab, as seven is a number
commonly applied in the Rigveda to various
entities to indicate “all” or “many”: thus we have
references to the seven horses and seven wheels
of the Sun’s chariot, seven mouths of BRhaspati,
seven RSis, seven priests at the sacrifice, seven
holy places, seven castles of the aerial demon
destroyed by Indra, seven holy singers, seven
rays of the sun, seven flames of Agni, seven male
children, seven elements, seven Adityas, seven
foundations of the sea, seven races of men,
seven heads, seven hands, seven tongues,
seven threads, seven germs within the seed,
seven metres, seven tones, and so on repeated
throughout the Rigveda.
The following verses are instructive in this regard:
I.164.3: “The seven who on the

seven-wheeled car are mounted,
have horses, seven in tale, who
draw them onward. Seven sisters
utter songs of praise together, in
whom the names of the seven cows
are treasured.”
VIII.28.1: “The seven carry seven

spears; seven are the splendours
they possess, and seven the glories
they assume.”
However, the word “Saptasindhu” in the Rigveda

(and, for that matter, Hapta-HAndu in the Avesta)
is clearly a name for a specific region, which is
generally and correctly identified by the scholars
with the Punjab (the Land of the Five Rivers
ensconsed between two more: the Indus in the
west and the SarasvatI in the east).
The Saptasindhu is referred to in the following

verses:
I.32.12; 35.8;
II. 12.3, 12;
IV.28.1;
VIII.54.4; 69.12; 96.1;
IX.66.6;
X.43.3; 67.12.
If Afghanistan is directly or indirectly referred to

only in the Late MaNDalas, the Punjab is referred
to only in the Middle and Late MaNDalas.
III.C. Haryana
The region in Haryana known as KurukSetra or

BrahmAvarta in ancient times was considered to
be the holiest place on earth.
However, neither the word Kuruksetra, nor the

word BrahmAvarta, is found in the Rigveda.
But the Rigveda refers to this holy region by other

names or epithets: it is known as vara A pRthivyA
(the best place on earth) or nAbhA pRthivyA (the
navel or centre of the earth); and two specific
places in this region are named in the hymns:
ILAyAspada or ILaspada, and MAnuSa.
These two places are clearly named in III.23.4:

“He (DevavAta) set thee in the best place on
earth (vara A pRthivyA) in ILAyAspada, on an
auspicious day. Shine brightly, Agni, on the
DRSadvatI, on MAnuSa on the ApayA, and on
the SarasvatI.”
The above is not Griffith’s translation: he

translates ILAyAspada literally as “ILA’s place”
and misinterprets it as a reference to a fire-altar
(any fire-altar); likewise, he translates MAnuSa as
“man”.
However, the meaning of the verse is clear. And

we find detailed confirmation of the identity and
location of these two places in the MahAbhArata:
The MahAbhArata, in its TIrthayAtrA Parva

section of the Vana Parva, devotes one part
(III.81, containing 178 verses) to the KurukSetra
region, and gives details about the locations of
the major pilgrim centres in this region.
Within a span of 21 verses (III.81.53-73) it gives

details about the locations of the particular places
with which we are concerned here:
Mbh. III.81.53-54: “Then from there

one should go to the world-famous
ManuSa… By bathing (in the lake)
there, a man who is chaste and
master of his senses is cleansed of
all evils, and (he) glories in the
world of heaven.”
Mbh. III.81.55-56: “The distance of

a cry east of MAnuSa, there is a
river called ApagA, visited by the
Siddhas;… when one brahmin is
fed there, it is as though a crore of
them have been fed.”
Mbh. III.81.62-64: “Thereupon one

should go to the world-famous
SAraka… There is also there the
Abode-of-IlA Ford (IlAspada): by
bathing there and worshipping the
ancestors and Gods, one suffers no
misfortune…”
Mbh. III.81.73: “By bathing in the

DRSadvatI and satisfying the
deities, a man finds the reward of a
Land-of-the-fire (AgniSToma) and
6
an Overnight-Sacrifice (AtirAtra).”
M.L. Bhargava, in his brilliant research on the

subject points out that these places are still
extant: MAnuSa is still known as MAnas, still a
pilgrim centre, a village 3½ miles northwest of
Kaithal; the ApayA or ApagA tIrtha is still
recognised at Gadli between MAnas and Kaithal;
and ILAyAspada or ILaspada at SAraka is the
present-day Shergadh, 2 miles to the southeast of
Kaithal: “MAnuSa and IlAspada were thus
situated on the right and left sides of the ApayA,
about 5½ miles apart, and in the tract between
7
the DRSadvatI and the SarasvatI.”
What is more, ILA, the deity worshipped at

ILAyAspada or ILaspada, is one of the three
Great Goddesses (one, as we saw, is SarasvatI)
who are worshipped in the AprI-sUktas of all the
ten families of composers in the Rigveda, and
specifically named in all ten of them.
The third Great Goddess is BhAratI (named in

seven of the AprI-sUktas, called by another name
MahI, in two others, and implied in the tenth), and
M.L. Bhargava points out that BhAratI is the deity
of the still extant “BhAratI-tIrtha of Kopar or Koer
in the middle of KurukSetra, 22 miles east of
Kaithal and 12 miles south-southwest of
8
Thanesar”.
It is clear that the three Great Goddesses, who

are worshipped in the AprI-sUktas of all the ten
families of composers in the Rigveda, are deities
of places in KurukSetra: this is specifically stated
in II.3.7 which refers to the “three high
places” (adhI sAnuSu trISu) in “the centre of the
earth” (nAbhA pRthivyA = KurukSetra). The next
verse names the three Goddesses, BhAratI, ILA
and SarasvatI; and this is the only reference,
outside the ten AprI-sUktas, where these
Goddesses are named together.
Haryana therefore clearly occupies a central

position in the Rigveda in more ways than one.
The following are the verses which refer to these

places in Haryana:
a. Vara A pRthivyA:
III. 23.4; 53.11.
b. NAbhA pRthivyA:
I.143.4;
II.3.7;
III.5.9; 29.4;
IX.72.7; 79.4; 82.3; 86.8
X.1.6.
c. ILaspada/ILAyAspada:
I. 128.1;
II. 10.1;
III. 23.4; 29.4;
VI. 1.2;
X. 1.6; 70.1; 91.1, 4; 191.1.
d. MAnuSa:
I. 128.7;
III. 23.4.
(As the word MAnuSa can also mean “man”, it is

difficult to recognize the references to the holy
spot of that name in other occurences of the word
in the Rigveda. Hence it will be safe to cite only
the two above verses, in which the references are
indisputable.)
The references to Haryana are fairly distributed

throughout the Rigveda, right from the oldest
MaNDala VI: VI.1.2 refers to Agni being
established at ILaspada. Even more significantly,
III.23.4 tells us that DevavAta (an ancestor of
DivodAsa of the oldest MaNDala VI) established
Agni at that spot. (Incidentally this appears to
reflect an ancient custom of maintaining a
perpetual fire, a custom still preserved by the
Zoroastrians.)
The references to these places are particularly

profuse in MaNDala III, the MaNDala which
represents the commencement of the westward
expansion of the Vedic Aryans.
III.D. Uttar Pradesh:
The Uttar Pradesh of the present-day is more or

less equivalent to the land known in ancient
literature as AryAvarta or MadhyadeSa. Neither
the word AryAvarta, nor the word MadhyadeSa, is
found in the Rigveda. Nor is there any direct
reference in the hymns to any place in Uttar
Pradesh.
But, the AnukramaNIs provide us with a priceless

clue: hymns IX.96 and X.179.2 are composed by
a late Bharata RSi who (like many other
composers in MaNDala X and the corresponding
parts of MaNDala IX) attributes his compositions
to his remote ancestor, Pratardana. He,
accordingly, uses the epithets of his ancestor: in
IX.96, the epithet is DaivodAsI (son or
descendant of DivodAsa); and in X.179.2, the
epithet is KASirAja (King of KASI).
Pratardana was a king of KASI, which is in

eastern Uttar Pradesh. This can only mean that
the Bharata Kings of the Early Period of the
Rigveda were Kings of KASI; and, in the light of
the other information in the Rigveda, the land of
the Bharatas extended from KASI in the east to
KurukSetra in the west.
The above conclusion is inescapable: the

information in the AnukramaNIs cannot be
rejected on any logical ground (short of
suggesting a conspiracy theory), and it fits in with
all the other evidence:
a. The evidence of Indian tradition

outside the Rigveda which knows
the land from KASI to KurukSetra
as AryAvarta or MadhyadeSa
throughout not only the Puranic and
Epic literature (which, moreover,
clearly describes this land as the
original homeland in its traditional
accounts, as noted by Pargiter), but
even the rest of the Vedic
literature. The geography even of
the Yajurveda is clearly an Uttar
Pradesh centred geography. That
the geography of the Rigveda is
also the same has escaped the
recognition of the scholars purely
and simply because these scholars
are so mesmerised by the Aryan
invasion theory, and so obsessed
with the vital need to locate the
Rigveda in the northwest and the
Punjab for the sheer survival of the
theory, that their ideas and
conclusions about the geography of
the Rigveda are based on the
tenets of this theory rather than on
the material within the hymns of the
text.
It may be noted that all the pilgrim-

centres of Hinduism are located to
the east of Haryana. There is no
Hindu pilgrim centre worthy of
particular note in the Punjab or the
northwest. This also discounts the
possibility that the oldest and
hoariest text of Hinduism could
have been composed in those
parts.
b. The evidence of the rivers in the

Rigveda, particularly the evidence
of the references to the GaNgA.
c. The evidence of the other place-

names in the Rigveda, particularly
the reference to Bihar.
III.E. Bihar
The most historically prominent part of ancient

Bihar was Magadha, also known as KIkaTa.
While the word Magadha is not found in the

Rigveda, the word KIkaTa is found in III.53.14.
The reference is to SudAs’s battle with the
KIkaTas and their king Pramaganda (whose
name is connected by many scholars with the
word Magadha = Pra-maganda).
This clinches the origin of the Bharatas in Uttar

Pradesh: the expansion of the Bharatas under
SudAs took place in two directions, eastwards
into Bihar, and westwards across the SarasvatI
into the Punjab. Clearly, only a homeland in the
area between KASI and KurukSetra fits into this
picture.
The evidence of the place-names in the Rigveda

can be summarized as follows:
Click Here
IV
THE EVIDENCE OF ANIMAL-NAMES
The evidence of the river-names and the place-

names is so clear that it does not really require
further confirmation.
However, we may note the evidence of the

animals named in the Rigveda, which tends to
further confirm the eastern provenance of the
Rigvedic Aryans.
There are many animals which are peculiar to

India: that is, animals found only in India, or only
in India and places cast (such as Southeast Asia),
or, if they are found elsewhere, only in places
(such as the interior of Africa) which cannot have
any relevance to the history of the Vedic Aryans
or the Indo-Europeans.
The following are examples of some such

prominent animals named in the Rigveda:
Click Here
1. The Elephant (Elaphus Maximus: ibha, vAraNa,

hastin, sRNi):
I.64.7; 84.7; 140.2;
IV.4.1; 16.14;
VI.4.5; 20.8;
VIII.33.8;
IX.57.3;
X.40.4; 106.6.
2. The Buffalo (Bubalus Bibalus: mahiSa):

I.64.7; 95.9; 121.2; 141.3;
III.46.2;
IV. 18.11;
V.29.7, 8;
VI.8.4; 17.11;
VII.44.5;
VIII.12.8; 35.7-9; 69.15; 77.10;
IX.33.1; 69.3; 73.2; 86.40; 87.7; 92.6; 95.4;
96.6,
18, 19; 97.41; 113.3.
X.8.1; 28.10; 45.3; 60.3; 65.8; 66.10; 106.2;
123.4;
128.8; 140.6; 189.2.
3. The Indian Bison (Bibos Gaurus: gaura):

I.16.5;
IV.21.8; 58.2;
VII.69.6; 98.1;
VIII.4.3; 45.24;
X.51.6; 100.2.
4. The Peacock (Pavo Cristatus: mayUra):

I.191.14;
III.45.1;
VIII.1.25.
5. The Chital or Spotted Deer (Axis Axis: pRSatI):
I.37.2; 39.6; 64.8; 85.4, 5; 87.4; 89.7; 162.21;
186.8;
II.34.3, 4; 36.2;
III.26.4, 6;
V.42.15; 55.6.; 57.3; 58.6; 60.2;
VII.40.3;
VIII.7.28.
These animals are found mentioned in references

throughout the different periods of the Rigveda.
Further, the names of all these animals are purely

Aryan or Indo-European: the elephant, for
example has four names, each of which has a
purely “Aryan” etymology.
And the references to these animals are not

casual ones. It is clear that the animals form an
intimate part of the idiomatic lore and traditional
imagery of the Rigveda: the spotted deer, for
example, are the official steeds of the chariots of
the Maruts; and the name of the buffalo (like that
of the bull, boar and lion) serves as an epithet,
applied to various Gods, signifying great strength
and power. The Gods approaching the place of
sacrifice to drink the libations evoke the image of
thirsty bisons converging on a watering place in
the forest. The outspread tails or manes of
Indra’s horses evoke the image of the outspread
plumes of the peacock’s tail.
The elephant is referred to not only in its wild

form, with the image of a wild elephant crashing
through the forest, uprooting the trees and
bushes in its path, but in its fully domesticated
form as well: one verse (X.40.4) refers to wild
elephants being tracked by hunters; another
(IV.4.1) refers to a mighty king with his (retinue of)
elephants; another (IX.57.3) refers to an elephant
(perhaps a temple elephant?) being decked up by
the people; and yet another (VI.20.8) refers to
Tugra with his (garrisons of) elephants in what is
clearly a reference to a battle. (In IV.4.1 and
VI.20.8, Griffith mistranslates ibha as “attendants”
or “servants”.)
In sharp contrast to these intimate references to

typically Indian animals are the references to an
animal which is restricted to the extreme
northwest: the bactrian camel of Afghanistan and
beyond.
This camel, uSTra, is referred to only in the

following verses:
I.138.2;
VIII.4.7; 5.37; 46.22, 31.
The distribution of these references is restricted

only to hymns belonging to the Late Period. It is
clear that this distribution indicates an expanding
horizon of the Vedic Aryans; and this is not the
expanding horizon of a people from outside India
expanding into India, but of a people from within
India expanding out into the northwest.
The significance of the late “appearance” of the

camel in the Rigveda may be expressed in the
words of a modem Western scholar, a staunch
and even fanatical supporter of the Aryan
invasion theory: Michael Witzel, in referring to the
geography of MaNDala VIII tells us that “Book 8
concentrates on the whole of the west cf. camels,
mathra horses, wool sheep. It frequently
mentions the Sindhu, but also the Seven
9
Streams, mountains and snow.” This book also
“lists numerous tribes that were unknown to other
10
books.” Witzel further notes that “camels appear
(8.5.37-39) together with the Iranian name KaSu
‘small’ (Hoffman 1975), or with the suspicious
name Tirindra and the ParSu (8.6.46). The
combination of camels (8.46.21, 31), mathra
horses (8.46.23) and wool, sheep and dogs
(8.56.3) is also suggestive: the borderlands
(including GandhAra) have been famous for wool
and sheep, while dogs are treated well in
11
Zoroastrian Iran but not in South Asia.”
Although Witzel (whose writings we will be

dealing with in an appendix to this book) tries
generally to twist and distort the information in the
Rigveda so as to demonstrate a movement into
India from the northwest, his reaction to the
information in MaNDala VIII (a late MaNDala,
although Witzel does not admit it) unwittingly, but
clearly, shows the expanding horizon of a people
from “South Asia” coming into contact with “the
borderlands (including GandhAra)”.
The combined evidence of river-names, place-

names and animal-names gives us a single
unanimous verdict: the Vedic Aryans were
inhabitants of the interior of India, and their
direction of expansion was from the east to the
west and northwest.
APPENDIX
THE SO-CALLED NEGATIVE EVIDENCE
The evidence of the Rigveda is so clear that it

brooks no other conclusion except that the Vedic
Aryans expanded from the interior of India to the
west and northwest.
However, there are certain points, raised by the

scholars, which claim to negate such a conclusion
and to establish that the Vedic Aryans were in
fact newcomers into India who were still
floundering around in the northwestern outskirts
of the land.
We will examine these points under the following

heads:
A. Tigers and Rice.
B. Soma.
Appendix A. Tigers and Rice
According to the scholars, the Rigveda does not

mention either the tiger or rice; and this is
significant, since it shows that the Vedic Aryans at
that time were still unacquainted with that
common Indian animal and that common Indian
cereal.
In delineating the parts of India which had
become “known” to the incoming Aryans at the
time of the Rigveda, Michael Witzel (whom we
have already referred to earlier) declares: “It is
also important to note that the tiger and rice are
still unknown to the RV, which excludes the
areas, roughly speaking, east of Delhi: the
GaNgA-YamunA Doab and the tracts of land
12
South of it.”
Let us examine the logic:
The Tiger: It is “important to note” that the

scholars claim that the Vedic Aryans were
unacquainted with the tiger right from the time of
composition of the earliest hymn of the Rigveda to
the time of composition of the latest hymn (in
whatever chronological order the hymns are
arranged).
But what these scholars deliberately ignore, in

their desperate attempt to grab at whatever straw
they think is available, is that the tiger is not
restricted to the area “east of Delhi”: the tiger was
a very common animal in the western Punjab (the
seals of Harappa and Mohenjodaro contain many
pictorial representations of the tiger, even when
they do not have a single one of the lion) and in
fact, the tiger in ancient times was found as far to
the northwest as northern Afghanistan, northern
Iran and parts of Central Asia.
Even if we follow the logic of the invasion-

theorists and assume that the Vedic Aryans
migrated into India from the northwest, these
Vedic Aryans should have been very long familiar
with the tiger well before they even glimpsed their
very first elephant, spotted deer, peacock or
Indian bison.
It is clearly impossible that the tiger could have

been “still unknown” to the Vedic Aryans who
were so intimately familiar with all these animals,
and whose area of acquaintance (even assuming
that they came from outside) extended upto Bihar
(KIkaTa) in the east.
Incidentally, when the tiger is mentioned in later

texts (including the other Veda SaMhitAs), it has a
purely “Aryan” name: vyAghra, which not only has
a purely Indo-European etymology, but also has
cognate forms in Iranian babr and Armenian
vagr. And even in the Rigveda, while the word
vyAghra does not occur even once in the text, it
occurs in the name of one of the composers of
IX.97: VyAghrapAda VAsiSTha.
That the tiger is not mentioned even once in the

whole of the Rigveda certainly does call for an
explanation, but non-familiarity with the animal
cannot be that explanation under any
circumstance. Possible explanations are:
a. There was some kind of a ritual taboo on the

mention of the tiger during the period of
composition of the Rigvedic hymns, OR
b. The word siMha (lion) which occurs in the

Rigveda in the following references, stood for
both the lion as well as the tiger (according to
American archaeologist Mark Kenoyer, it probably
stood for the tiger rather than for the lion):
I.64.8; 95.5; 174.3;

III.2.11; 9.4; 26.5;
IV.16.4;
V.15.3; 74.4; 83.3;
VII.18.17;
IX.89.3; 97.28;
X.28.4, 10; 67.9.
Of these two possible explanations, the first is a

more likely one.
Rice: Rice is not mentioned in the Rigveda, but

nor is any other specific grain: neither wheat, nor
millet, nor even barley (the word yava, like the
word dhAnA/dhAnya, in the Rigveda is accepted
by most of the scholars to be a reference to
“grain” in general, and not to barley as it does in
later times. The word is cognate to the Lithuanian
word javai which also means “grain”, the
Lithuanian word for barley being mieZiai). All
these grains are known. to have been cultivated
in the Indus sites, but not one of them is
mentioned by name in the Rigveda which knows
of lands as far east as Bihar (KIkaTa).
Yet not only do the scholars deduce that rice in

particular was “unknown” to the Vedic Aryans,
because it is not mentioned by name in the
hymns; they even draw far-reaching and
fundamental historical conclusions from this
omission.
And yet, is it true that rice was unknown to the

Vedic Aryans? And, more to the point, do these
scholars themselves sincerely believe that this
was the case?
The Rigveda clearly refers to certain culinary

preparations made from rice: apUpa and puroLNS
(varieties of rice-cakes) and odana (rice-gruel).
These are referred to in the following verses:
ApUpa:
III. 52.1, 7;
VIII. 91.2;
X. 45.9.
PuroLAS:
I. 162.3;
III. 28.1-6; 41.3; 52.2-6, 8;
IV. 24.5; 32.16;
VI. 23.7;
VII. 18.6;
VIII. 2.11; 31.2.
Odana:
VIII. 69.14; 77.6, 10.
That these were rice preparations is something

that cannot be easily denied outright. Even
Witzel himself, elsewhere, somewhat qualifies,
although negatively, his firm assertion that rice
was “still unknown” to the Vedic Aryans: “Unless
the Rgvedic words (brahma-)-udana and puroLAS
mean a certain rice dish, as they do later on,
cultivation and ritual use of rice first appear in the
13
Atharvaveda…”
Griffith translates the words apUpa and puroLAS

by neutral words like “cake”, “sacrificial cake” and
“me al-cake”, and even suggests in one place (in
his footnote to VIII.2.3, in reference to the word
yava) that the sacrificial cake is “made of barley-
meal”.
But in his footnote to 1.40.3, he also admits that

“the fivefold gift” offered to Agni consists of “an
offering of grain, gruel, curdled milk, rice-cake,
and curds”.
And he clearly translates the word odana in

VIII.77.6, 10 as “brew of rice” and “brew of rice
and milk”.
Appendix B. Soma
In the case of Soma, the argument is to the

opposite effect: according to the scholars, the
Soma plant was a species of Ephedra found in
the extreme northwestern parts of India extending
to Central Asia and beyond. Species of Ephedra
found further eastwards were not capable of
yielding the kind of juice described in the Rigveda.
Hence, the fact that the ritual use of Soma formed

such an integral part of the Rigvedic religion in
every period of the text (and that this feature is
shared with the Iranians) proves that the Vedic
Aryans entered India from the northwest, bringing
the Soma plant and cult with them.
This is the argument. But is this argument either

valid or logical, or in keeping with the facts of the
case?
One undeniable fact is that the Soma plant was a

native of the extreme northwestern and northern
regions: all the references to the sources of
Soma, in the Rigveda, make it very clear that the
plant grew in the mountains of Kashmir,
Afghanistan, and the extreme northwest of the
Punjab.
But, arguing, solely from this fact, that the Vedic

Aryans, who used Soma prominently in their
rituals, also came from the northwestern parts,
bringing the plant with them, is like arguing that
the Irish people, to whom potatoes constitute a
staple food, came from America to Ireland,
bringing the potato plant with them. Or, that the
medieval Europeans, who used Indian spices in
their culinary diet, went to Europe from India,
taking the spices with them.
Clearly, the use of a particular plant by a

particular people cannot be the basis for historical
conclusions about the geographical origins of that
people, unless this is demonstrated by their
traditional understanding of their association with
the plant in question.
And the evidence in the Rigveda shows that:
1. The actual Soma-growing areas

were distant and unknown to the
Vedic Aryans in the early parts of
the Rigveda, and became known to
them only later after they expanded
westwards.
2. The Soma plant and its ritual

were not originally known to the
Vedic Aryans and their priests, but
were introduced to them in very
early times by priests from the
Soma-growing areas.
3. The expansion of the Vedic

Aryans (and, by a chain of events,
the dispersion of the Indo-
Europeans, as we shall see in later
chapters) into the west and
northwest was a direct
consequence of their quest for
Soma.
The detailed evidence is as follows:
1. Soma is regarded as growing in distant areas:

this area is so distant that it is constantly identified
with the heavens (IV.26.6; 27.3, 4; VIII.100.8;
IX.63.27; 66.30; 77.2; .86.24, etc.)
The only specific thing known about the place of

origin of Soma is that it grows on mountains
(I.93.6; III.48.2; V.43.4; 85.2; IX.18.1; 62.4; 85.10;
95.4; 98.9, etc.). Nothing more specific is
mentioned in the Family MaNDalas or the early
upa-maNDalas of MaNDala I.
The area of Soma is clearly not part of the Vedic

area (nor is there even the slightest hint anywhere
in the Rigveda that it ever was): it is constantly
referred to as being far away (IV.26.6; IX.68.6;
X.11.4; 144.4). This area is also known as the
“dwelling of TvaSTR” (IV.18.3); and this is what
the scholars have to say about TvaSTR: “TvaSTR
is one of the obscurest members of the Vedic
pantheon. The obscurity of the concept is
explained… (by) HILLEBRANDT (who) thinks
TvaSTR was derived from a mythical circle
14
outside the range of the Vedic tribes.”
Soma is mythically reported to be brought by an

eagle to the Vedic people, and even to their
Gods, from its place of origin:
I.80.2; 93.6;
III.43.7;
IV.18.13; 26.4-7; 27.3, 4;
V.45.9;
VI.20.6;
VIII.82.9; 100.8;
IX.68.6; 77.2; 86.24; 87.6;
X.11.4; 99.8; 144.4, 5.
That this place of origin is alien to the Vedic

people is clear from the fact that this eagle is
reported to have to hurry (IV.26.5) to escape the
guardians of Soma, who are described as
attacking the eagle (IV.27.3) to prevent it from
taking the Soma away.
“TvaSTR is especially the guardian on Soma,

15
which is called ‘the mead of TvaSTR’ (I.117.22)”
and Indra is described as conquering TvaSTR in
order to obtain the Soma.
In his footnote to 1.43.8, Griffith refers to “the

people of the hills who interfere with the gathering
of the Soma plant which is to be sought there”.
The Family MaNDalas are generally ignorant

about the exact details of the Soma-growing
areas. Whatever specific information is there is in
the later MaNDalas:
The prime Soma-growing areas are identified in

VIII.64.11 as the areas near the SuSomA and
ArjIkIyA rivers (the SohAn and HAro, northeastern
tributaries of the Indus, in the extreme north of the
Punjab and northwest of Kashmir) and
SaryaNAvAn (a lake in the vicinity of these two
rivers). In VIII.7.29, the reference is to the
SuSoma and ArjIka (in the masculine gender,
signifying mountains; while the rivers of these
names are in the feminine gender), clearly the
mountains which gave rise to the SusomA and
ArjIkIyA rivers, alongwith SaryaNAvAn (which
also appears in X.35.2 as a mountainous area,
perhaps referring to the mountains surrounding
the lake of the same name).
In another place, the best Soma is said to be

growing on the MUjavat mountains. The MUjavat
tribes are identified (Atharvaveda V-XXII-5, 7, 8,
14) with the GandhArIs. These mountains are
therefore also in the extreme north of the Punjab
and in adjacent parts of Afghanistan.
That GandhArI (Afghanistan) in the Rigveda is

associated with Soma is clear from the specific
role assigned in the Rigveda to the Gandharva or
gandharvas (mythical beings associated in the
Rigveda with that region). In the words of
Macdonell: “Gandharva is, moreover, in the RV
often associated (chiefly in the ninth book) with
Soma. He guards the place of Soma and
protects the races of the gods (9.83.4; cp.
1.22.14). Observing all the forms of Soma, he
stands on the vault of heaven (9.85.12). Together
with Parjanya and the daughters of the sun, the
Gandharvas cherish Soma (9.113.3). Through
Gandharva’s mouth the gods drink their drought
(AV.7.73.3). The MS (3.8.10) states that the
Gandharvas kept the Soma for the gods… It is
probably as a jealous guardian of Soma that
Gandharva in the RV appears as a hostile being,
who is pierced by Indra in the regions of air
(8.66.5) or whom Indra is invoked to overcome
(8.1.11). … Soma is further said to have dwelt
16
among the Gandharvas…”
All these places are found mentioned only in the

later MaNDalas (i.e. after the westward expansion
of the Vedic Aryans):
ArjIkA/ArjIkIyA:
VIII. 7.29; 64.11;
IX. 65.23; 113.2;
X. 75.5.
SuSoma/SuSomA:
VIII. 7.29; 64.11;
X. 75.5.
SaryaNAvAn:
I. 84.14;
VIII. 6.39; 7.29; 64.11;
IX. 65.22: 113.1;
X. 35.2.
MUjavat:
X. 34.1.
GandhArI:
I. 126.6.
2. The special priests of the Vedic Aryans (i.e. of

the Bharatas) were the ANgirases, VasiSThas
and ViSvAmitras. These priests, however, are
not specially associated with the Soma plant and
ritual.
The following table will make the position clear:

(click on the link)
Click Here
As we can see, the nine priestly families are

divided into two distinct categories: the KaSyapas
and BhRgus, who are very specially associated
with Soma, and the other seven families which
are not. The Bharatas separate the two groups.
Clearly, the KaSyapas and BhRgus are the two

families which are specially associated with
Soma. And these are the two families which were
originally alien to the Vedic Aryans: the KaSyapas
are associated throughout Indian tradition with
Kashmir (KaSyapa-mIra); and the BhRgus,
except for one branch consisting of Jamadagni
and his descendants, are associated with the
enemies of the Vedic Aryans living to their north
and northwest (as we shall see in greater detail in
our chapter on the Indo-Iranian homeland). Both
these families are thus directly associated with
the Soma-growing areas to the north and
northwest of the Vedic Aryan territory.
It is not only in the statistical analysis of the

number of verses to Soma that the special
relationship shared by these two families with the
Soma plant and ritual becomes apparent; the joint
testimony of the Avesta and the Rigveda also
confirms this special relationship. As Macdonell
puts it: “The RV and the Avesta even agree in the
names of ancient preparers of Soma; Vivasvat
and Trita Aptya on the one hand, and Vivanhvant,
17
Athwya and Thrita on the other.”
According to the Avesta, the first preparer of

Soma was Vivanhvant (Vivasvat), the second was
Athwya (Aptya) and the third was Thrita (Trita).
Vivasvat in the Rigveda is generally the Sun

(note: in many references, the sky is referred to
as “VivasvAn’s dwelling”, which may be compared
with the reference to AuSija’s dwelling or abode in
our discussion on the word AuSija in our chapter
on the chronology of the Rigveda); but Vivasvat is
also the name of the father of two persons: Yama
and Manu. In the Avesta also, Vivanhvant is the
father of Yima.
Both Vivasvat and Yama Vaivasvata are identified

in the Rigveda as BhRgus (see the discussion on
the YAmAyana group of RSis in our chapter on
the composers of the Rigveda); and Manu
Vaivasvata is identified in the AnukramaNIs of
VIII.29 with KaSyapa.
Trita Aptya is not clearly identified with any family

in the Rigveda, but it is significant that he is
described by the GRtsamadas (Kevala BhRgus)
in II.11-19 as belonging to “our party” (Griffith’s
translation).
The KaSyapas are indeed very closely associated

with Soma: not only are 70.60% of the verses
composed by them dedicated to Soma
PavamAna, but the AprI-sUkta of the KaSyapas is
the only AprI-sUkta dedicated to Soma (all the
other nine AprI-sUktas are dedicated to Agni).
But while the KaSyapas are exclusive Soma

priests, the fact is that they entered the Rigveda
at a late stage: they became exclusive Soma
priests in the period following the expansion of
the Vedic Aryans into the Soma-growing areas.
The identification of the BhRgus with Soma is

deeper, older and more significant: it is clear that
the Soma plant originated among the BhRgus of
the northwest, and it is they who introduced the
plant and its rituals to the Vedic Aryans and their
priests:
a. The word Soma, which occurs
thousands of times in the hymns of
the Rigveda, is found in the name
of only one composer RSi:
SomAhuti BhArgava.
b. The word PavamAna, which

occurs more than a hundred times
in the Soma PavamAna MaNDala,
is found only once outside
MaNDala IX: in VIII.101.14
composed by Jamadagni
BhArgava.
c. Both the Rigveda and the

Avesta, as we have seen, are
unanimous in identifying BhRgus as
the earliest preparers of Soma..
d. The overwhelming majority of the

hymns to Soma in MaNDala IX, as
we have seen in our chapter on the
chronology of the Rigveda, are
composed by RSis belonging to the
Middle and Late Periods of the
Rigveda: the only two hymns (other
than hymns by BhRgus) which can
be ascribed (and only, as we have
pointed out, for the lack of clear
contrary evidence) to. RSis
belonging to the period of the three
Early Family MaNDalas are IX.71
(ascribed to RSabha VaiSvAmitra
of MaNDala III) and IX.90 (ascribed
to VasiSTha MaitrAvaruNI of
MaNDala VII).
However, fourteen hymns are

ascribed to BhRgu RSis. Of these,
two which are ascribed to
Jamadagni BhArgava (IX.62, 65) of
the period of MaNDala III, are
clearly composed by his
descendants; but the remaining
twelve hymns are ascribed to
remote ancestral BhRgu RSis of the
pre-Rigvedic period, who are
already ancient and mythical even
in the oldest MaNDalas: Vena
BhArgava (IX.85), USanA KAvyA
(IX.87-89) and KavI BhArgava
(IX.47-49, 75-79).
The oldest Soma hymns in the

Rigveda therefore appear to be
composed exclusively by BhRgus.
e. The Rigveda clearly indicates

that it was the BhRgus who
introduced Soma to the Vedic
Aryans, and to their Gods and
priests. According to at least three
references (I.116.12; 117.22;
119.9), the location or abode of
Soma was a secret; and this secret
was revealed to the ASvins by
Dadhyanc, an ancient BhRgu RSi,
already mythical in the Rigveda,
and older than even Kavi BhArgava
and USanA KAvya. Dadhyanc is
the son of AtharvaNa, and
grandson of the eponymous
BhRgu.
Even the symbolism inherent in the

eagle who brought Soma to the
Vedic Aryans probably represents
this role of the BhRgus: according
to Macdonell, “the term eagle is
connected with Agni Vaidyuta or
lightning (TB 3, 10, 51; cp.
18
12.12)”; and
likewise, “BERGAIGNE thinks there
can hardly be a doubt that bhRgu
was originally a name of fire, while
KUHN and BARTH agree in the
opinion that the form of fire it
19
represents is lightning” (see also
Griffith’s footnote to IV.7.4)
The evidence in the Rigveda thus clearly shows

that the Vedic Aryans did not come from the
Soma-growing areas bringing the Soma plant and
rituals with them: the Soma plant and rituals were
brought to the Vedic Aryans from the Soma-
growing areas of the northwest by the BhRgus,
priests of those areas.
3. The expansion of the Vedic Aryans into the

west and northwest was a direct consequence of
their quest for Soma:
The westward movement commenced with the

crossing of the Sutudri and VipAS by ViSvAmitra
and the Bharatas under SudAs, described in
hymn III.33; and the fifth verse of the hymn
clarifies both the direction and purpose of this
crossing.
Griffith translates III.33.5 (in which ViSvAmitra

addresses the rivers) as: “Linger a little at my
friendly bidding; rest, Holy Ones, a moment in
your journey…”; but he clarifies in his footnote: “At
my friendly bidding: according to the Scholiasts,
YAska and SAyaNa, the meaning of me vAcase
somyAya is ‘to my speech importing the Soma’;
that is, the object of my address is that I may
cross over and gather the Soma-plant.”
This crossing, and the successful foray into the

northwest, appears to have whetted the appetite
of SudAs and the Bharatas for conquest and
expansion: shortly afterwards, the ViSvAmitras
perform an aSvamedha sacrifice for SudAs,
described in III.53.11: “Come forward KuSikas,
and be attentive; let loose SudAs’s horses to win
him riches. East, west, and north, let the king
slay the foeman, then at earth’s choicest place
(vara A pRthivyA = KurukSetra) perform his
worship.”
While some expansion took place towards the

east as well (KIkaTa in III.53.14), the main thrust
of the expansion is clearly towards the west and
northwest: the first major battle in this long drawn
out western war is on the YamunA, the second
(the DASarAjña) on the ParuSNI, and the final
one in southern Afghanistan beyond the Sarayu.
While SudAs was still the leader of the Bharatas
in the battles on the YamunA and the ParuSNI,
the battle beyond the Sarayu appears to have
taken place under the leadership of his remote
descendant Sahadeva in the Middle Period of the
Rigveda.
Sahadeva’s son (referred to by his priest

VAmadeva in IV.15.7-10), who also appears to
have been a participant. in the above battle
beyond the Sarayu, may have been named
Somaka in commemoration of earlier conquests
of the Soma-growing areas of eastern
Afghanistan by his father Sahadeva.
Footnotes:
1
VPHG, p.211.
2ibid.
3ibid.
4GORI, p.41-42.
5HCIP, p.341.
6MBH, pp.381-382.
7GORI, p.32.
8ibid., p.35.
9IASA, p.317.
10ibid., p.319.
11ibid., p.322.
12IAW, p. 176.
13IASA, p.102.
14VM, p. 117.
15ibid., p.116.
16VM, p.136.
17VM, p.114.
18VM, p.112.
19ibid., p.140.

Back to Home
Chapter 5
The Historical Identity of the Vedic Aryans
We have examined the chronology and

geography of the Rigveda, and seen the
expansion of the Vedic Aryans from their original,
homeland in the east to the west and northwest.
But a basic question that remains is: who exactly

were these Vedic Aryans and what was their
historical identity?
According to the scholars, the Vedic Aryans were

a branch of the Indo-Iranians of Central Asia; and
these Indo-Iranians were themselves a branch of
the Indo-Europeans of South Russia.
That is, the Indo-Europeans were originally a

people in South Russia; one branch of these Indo-
Europeans, the Indo-Iranians, migrated towards
the east and settled down in Central Asia; much
later, one branch of these Indo-Iranians, the
Indoaryans, migrated southeastwards into the
northwestern parts of India; and thus commenced
the story of the Aryans in India.
These Indoaryans are called Vedic Aryans since

they composed the hymns of the Rigveda during
the period of their earliest settlements in the
northwest and the Punjab, before they came into
contract with other parts of India.
These Vedic Aryans were faceless and

anonymous groups of people, whose only
historical identity is that they were the ultimate
ancestors of the different tribes, peoples, priestly
families and royal dynasties found throughout the
Sanskrit texts.
But all this is the version of the scholars. As we

have already seen, the scholars are wrong in their
fundamental proposition that the Vedic Aryans
moved into India from the northwest. They are
also wrong in their conclusions about the
historical identity of the Vedic Aryans:
The Vedic Aryans were not the ultimate ancestors

of the different tribes and peoples found in the
Sanskrit texts: they were in fact just one of these
tribes and peoples. They have a definite
historical identity: the Vedic Aryans were the
PUrus of the ancient texts.
And, in fact, the particular Vedic Aryans of the

Rigveda were one section among these PUrus,
who called themselves Bharatas.
F.E. Pargiter, the eminent western analyst of

India’s traditional history, came close to making
this identification when he remarked that “the bulk
of the Rigveda was composed in the great
development of Brahmanism that arose under the
successors of king Bharata who reigned in the
1
upper Ganges-Jumna doab and plain”. And
when he noted, in referring to the kings identified
in the PurANas as the kings of North PañcAla,
that “they and their successors are the kings who
2
play a prominent part in the Rigveda”.Ih?
Unfortunately, Pargiter went off at a tangent,

consciously trying to identify the presence of
Aryans, Dravidians and Austrics among the tribes
and dynasties in the PurANas; and thereby
missed out on clinching the identification which is
so crucial to an understanding. of Vedic, Indian
and Indo-European history.
We will examine the evidence, identifying the

PUrus, and among them the Bharatas, as the
Vedic Aryans of the Rigveda, under the following
heads:
I. The Kings and Tribes in the Rigveda.

II. The RSis and Priestly Families in the Rigveda.
Ill. The Aryas in the Rigveda.
I
THE KINGS AND TRIBES IN THE RIGVEDA
We will examine the evidence under the following

heads:
A. The Kings in the Rigveda.
B. The Tribes in the Rigveda.
I.A. The Kings in the Rigveda
As we have seen in our chapter on the

chronology of the Rigveda, the predominant
dynasty in the Rigveda is the dynasty of
DevavAta, one of the descendants of the ancient
king Bharata.
The kings in this dynasty, as we have already

seen, are:
DevavAta
SRnjaya
VadhryaSva
DivodAsa
Pratardana
Pijavana
DevaSravas
SudAs
Sahadeva
Somaka
These kings are Bharatas, but they are also

PUrus: according to the PurANas, the Bharatas
are a branch of the PUrus; and this is confirmed
in the Rigveda, where both DivodAsa (I.130.7)
and SudAs (I.63.7) are called PUrus, and where
the Bharata composer Parucchepa DaivodAsI
repeatedly speaks as a PUru (I.129.5; 131.4).
Some other names of kings in the Rigveda who

appear in the Puranic lists as PUru kings (some
belonging to the Bharata dynasty of DevavAta,
and some not) are:
AjamILha (IV.44.6).
Dhvasra/Dhvasanti and PuruSanti (I.112.23;
IX.58.3).
(SuSanti and PurujAti of the Puranic lists.)
Mudgala (X.102.2, 5, 6, 9).
RkSa (VIII.68.15, 16; 74.4, 13).
Srutarvan (VIII.74.4, 13; X.49.5).
Vidathin (IV.16.13; V.29.11).
Santanu (X.98.1, 3, 7).
KuSika (III.26.1).
Incidentally, the other Veda SaMhitAs also refer

to the following prominent PUru kings:
BhImasena of KASI (Yajurveda, KAThaka

SaMhitA, VII.1.8)
ParIkSita I (Atharvaveda, XX.127.7-10)
PratIpa (Atharvaveda, XX.129.2)
VicitravIrya (Yajurveda, KAThaka SaMhitA, X.6)
DhRtarASTra (Yajurveda, KAThaka SaMhitA,
X.6)
The only other prominent dynasty in the Rigveda

is the TRkSi dynasty of MandhAtA, identifiable as
a branch of the IkSvAkus of the PurANas.
The kings of this dynasty, as we have already

seen, are:
MandhAtA
Purukutsa
Trasadasyu
These kings are not PUrus; but they are accorded

a special position in the Rigveda only because of
the special aid given by them to the PUrus.
According to the PurANas, MandhAtA’s father

was an IkSvAku king, but his mother was a PUru,
being the daughter of a PUru king MatInAra.
Moreover, the PurANas record that the Druhyus,
who, in the earliest pre-Rigvedic period, were
inhabitants of the Punjab, were pressing
eastwards onto the PUrus. In this context,
MandhAtA moved westwards, confronted the
invading hordes of Druhyus, defeated them, and
drove them out into Afghanistan and beyond.
The Rigveda itself records (I.63.7; VI.20.10) that
Indra, through Purukutsa, rendered help to the
PUrus in a war against the DAsa tribes; and
VII.19.3 refers to Indra aiding the PUrus, through
Trasadasyu, in “winning land and slaying
foemen”. IV.38.1, likewise, thanks Mitra and
Varuna for the help which Trasadasyu, “the
winner of our fields and ploughlands, and the
strong smiter who subdued the Dasyus”, rendered
to the PUrus.
It may be noted that most scholars, on the basis

of these references, even go so far as to classify
Purukutsa and Trasadasyu themselves as PUrus.
The only other kings of identifiable dynasty who

are classifiable as heroes in the Rigveda (as
distinct from kings who are merely praised in
dAnastutis on account of liberal gifts given by
them to the RSis concerned: such liberal donors
or patrons include DAsas and PaNis, as in
VIII.46.32 and VI.45.31) are AbhyAvartin
CAyamAna and VItahavya.
AbhyAvartin CAyamAna is an Anu king, and he

clearly appears as a hero in VI.27. However, it is
equally clear that this is only because he is an ally
of the Bharata king SRnjaya: his descendant Kavi
CAyamAna who appears (though not in Griffith’s
translation) in VII.18.9 as an enemy of the
Bharata king SudAs, is referred to in hostile
terms.
VItahavya is a Yadu, and he is referred to in

VI.15.2, 3 and VII.19.2 (and also in the
Atharvaveda VI.137.1). However, nothing more is
known about him in the Rigveda; and it may be
noted that he is associated in VI.15 with
BharadvAja, the priest of the Bharata king
DivodAsa, and again remembered in passing
(though not in Griffith’s translation) in the context
of the Bharata king SudAs’ battle with the ten
kings.
Clearly, the only kings that really matter in the

Rigveda are the kings of the PUrus (and, in
particular, of the Bharatas); and the only non-
PUru kings who matter are those closely aligned
with the PUrus or those to whom the PUrus as a
race are deeply indebted.
I.B. The Tribes in the Rigveda
Traditional history knows of many different

streams of tribes or peoples, but the two main
streams are of those belonging to the Solar Race
of the IkSvAkus, and those belonging to the Lunar
Race of the AiLas. The AiLas are further divided
into five main branches: the Yadus, TurvaSas,
Druhyus, Anus and PUrus.
The Rigveda is little concerned with the IkSvAkus

as a people, inspite of the fact that the second
most important dynasty in the Rigveda (but only,
as we have seen, because of the aid given by the
kings of this dynasty to the PUrus) is that of the
TRkSis, a branch of the IkSvAkus.
The word IkSvAku itself occurs only once in the

Rigveda as a name of the Sun (X.60.4).
The word TRkSi occurs only twice, once in a list

of enumeration of tribes or peoples (VI.46.8), and
once as an epithet of Trasadasyu’s son
(VIII.22.7).
The Five branches of the AiLas, however, are

referred to much more frequently.
Some of these references are those in which

various tribes or peoples are merely enumerated
(or in which the tribes serve as pointers of
direction):
a. I.108.8: Yadus, TurvaSas, Druhyus, Anus,

PUrus.
b. VIII.10.5: Yadus, TurvaSas, Druhyus, Anus.
c. VI.46.8: Druhyus, PUrus, (and TRkSis).
d. VIII.4.1: Anus, TurvaSas.
e. I.47.7: TurvaSas.
But the other references to these five peoples,
more concrete in nature, are quite conclusive in
establishing the identity of the Vedic Aryans with
the PUrus:
Anus and Druhyus
The Anus and Druhyus (apart from the above-

mentioned enumerations of tribes or peoples) are
referred to only in a few verses:
Anus: V.31.4;
VI. 62.9;
VII. 18.13, 14;
VIII. 74.4.
Druhyus: VII. 18.6, 12, 14.
It is significant that most of these references are

hostile references, in which Anus and Druhyus
feature as enemies: VI.62.9: VII.18.6, 12-14.
Only two verses (both refering to the Anus) are

more ambiguous:
a. In V.31.4, the Anus are described as

manufacturing a chariot for Indra. The reference
is clearly to the BhRgus who (as we have already
seen in earlier chapters, and will see in greater
detail in the chapter on the Indo-Iranian
homeland) were the priests of the people who
lived to the northwest of the Vedic Aryans: i.e. of
the Anus, who lived to the northwest of the
PUrus. Griffith himself puts it as follows in his
footnote: “Anus: probably meaning BhRgus who
belonged to that tribe.”
This identity of the Anus and BhRgus is clear in

VII.18: verse 14 refers to the Anus and Druhyus,
while verse 6 refers to the BhRgus and Druhyus.
Likewise, while V.31.4 describes the Anus as

manufacturing a chariot for Indra, IV.16.20 refers
to the BhRgus as manufacturing a chariot for
Indra.
b. VIII.74.4 refers to Agni as Agni of the Anus:

this again is probably a reference to the fact that
the BhRgus are credited with the introduction of
fire.
The verse in question, in any case, does not refer

to any Anu king or person, it refers to the PUru
king Srutarvan, son of RkSa.
It is clear from these references that the Anus and

Druhyus are not identifiable with the Vedic
Aryans.
Yadus and TurvaSas
The Yadus and TurvaSas (apart from the verses

which enumerate tribes or peoples) are referred
to in many verses (often together):
Yadus and TurvaSas:

I. 36.18; 54.6; 174.9;
IV. 30.17;
V. 31.8;
VI. 20.12; 45.1;
VII. 19.8;
VIII. 4.7; 7.18; 9.14; 45.27;
IX. 61.2;
X. 49.8; 62.10.
Yadus:
VIII. 1.31;6.46, 48.
TurvaSas:
VI. 27.7;
VII. 18.6;
VIII. 4.19.
But these references make it very clear that the

Yadus and TurvaSas are not identifiable with the
Vedic Aryans:
a. The two peoples appear to be located at a

great distance from the land of the Vedic Aryans:
they are described as coming “from afar” (I.36.18;
VI.45.1), from “the further bank” (V.31.8) and
“over the sea” (VI.20.12). Some of the verses
refer to the Gods “bringing” them across flooded
rivers (I.174.9; IV.30.17).
b. The very fact, that inspite of being two distinct

tribes of the five, they are overwhelmingly more
often referred to in tandem, is evidence of the fact
that their individuality is blurred and they are
thought of as a pair. This is definitely a measure
of their distant location from the Vedic Aryans.
Even among the six verses which refer to only

one of the two, VI.27.7 refers to the TurvaSas
alongwith the VRcIvans, who are Yadus (cf.
VRjinIvant of the traditional dynastic lists).
c. Four of the references to the Yadus and

TurvaSas are definitely hostile ones, in which they
figure as enemies of the Vedic Aryans: VI.27.7;
VII.18.6; 19.8; IX.61.2.
d. Although there are so many references to the

Yadus and TurvaSas, the majority of them refer to
just two historical incidents in which (as in the
case of Purukutsa and Trasadasyu) the Yadus
and TurvaSas appear to have come to the aid of
the Vedic Aryans (thereby making it clear that
they were not always enemies of the Vedic
Aryans; unlike the Druhyus, and, to a slightly
lesser extent, the Anus).
The first incident is clearly a very old one, in

which Indra is credited with bringing the Yadus
and TurvaSas safely over flooded rivers: I.174.9;
IV.30.17; V.31.8; VI.20.12; 45.1.
The second incident, in which the Yadus came to

the aid of the KaNvas in fighting their enemies, in
response to an appeal contained in I.36.18 (in
which they are called “from afar” to come to the
aid of KaNva), is referred to in I.36.18; 54.6;
VIII.4.7; 7.18; 9.14; 45.27; X.49.8.
e. All the other references (apart from the hostile

references and the references to the two historical
incidents) are merely references in dAnastutis
(and, as we have seen, even DAsas and PaNis
are praised in such circumstances) in VIII.1.31;
4.19; 6.46, 48; X.62.10.
PUrus:
The references to the PUrus, on the other hand,

make it very clear that the PUrus, and in particular
the Bharatas among them, are the Vedic Aryans,
the People of the Book in the literal sense.
The Bharatas are referred to in the following

verses:
I. 96.3;
II. 7.1, 5; 36.2;
III. 23.2; 33.11, 12; 53.12, 24;
IV. 25.4;
V. 11.1; 54.14;
VI.16.19, 45;
VII.8.4; 33.6.
The references are very clear:
a. In many verses, even Gods are referred to as

Bharatas: Agni in I.96.3; II.7.1, 5; IV.25.4, and
VI.16.9; and the Maruts in II.36.2.
b. In other verses, Agni is described as belonging

to the Bharatas: III.23.2; V.11.1; VI.16.45; VII.8.4.
c. In the other references to the Bharatas

(III.33.11, 12; 53.12, 24; V.54.14; VII.33.6) it is
clear that they are the unqualified heroes of the
hymns.
There is not a single reference even faintly hostile

to the Bharatas in the whole of the Rigveda.
The PUrus (apart from the verses which

enumerate tribes or peoples) are referred to in the
following verses:
I.59.6; 63.7; 129.5; 130.7; 131.4;
IV.21.10; 38.1, 3; 39.2;
V.17.1;
VI.20.10;
VII.5.3; 8.4; 18.13; 19.3; 96.2;
VIII.64.10;
X.4.1; 48.5.
The references make it very clear that the PUrus

are being referred to in a first-person sense:
a. The Vedic Gods are clearly

identified as the Gods of the PUrus:
Agni is described as a “fountain” to

the PUrus (X.4.1), a “priest” who
drives away the sins of the PUrus
(I.129.5), the Hero who is
worshipped by the PUrus (1.59.6),
the protector of the sacrifices of the
PUrus (V.17.1), and the destroyer
of enemy castles for the PUrus
(VII.5.3).
Mitra and Varuna are described as

affording special aid in battle and
war to the PUrus, in the form of
powerful allies and mighty steeds
(IV.38.1, 3; 39.2).
Indra is identified as the God to

whom the PUrus sacrifice in order
to gain new favours (VI.20.10), and
for whom the PUrus shed Soma
(VIII.64.10). Indra gives freedom to
the PUrus by slaying VRtra
(IV.21.10), helps the PUrus in battle
(VII.19.3), and breaks down enemy
castles for the PUrus (I.63.7; 130.7;
131.4).
Indra even speaks to the PUrus and

asks them to sacrifice to him alone,
promising in return his friendship,
protection and generosity (X.48.5.).
In a Biblical context, this would
have been a testimony of “God’s
covenant” with the People of the
Book.
b. It is generally accepted by the

scholars that the SarasvatI
represents the geographical
heartland of the Vedic Aryan
civilization. SarasvatI is invoked
(alongwith two other Goddesses
who, as we have seen in our
chapter on the Geography of the
Rigveda, were deities of places
close to the banks of the SarasvatI)
in the AprI-sUktas of all the ten
families of composers of hymns in
the Rigveda.
It becomes clear, in VII.96.2, that

the SarasvatI was a PUru river, and
it flowed through PUru lands. The
river is addressed with the words:
“The PUrus dwell, Beauteous One,
on thy two grassy banks.”
c. The identity of the PUrus with the

Vedic Aryans is so unmistakable,
that the line between “PUru” and
“Man” is distinctly blurred in the
Rigveda:
Griffith, for example, sees fit to

translate the word PUru as “Man” in
at least five verses: I.129.5; 131.4;
IV.21.10; V.171.1; X.4.1.
The Rigveda itself, in no uncertain

terms, identifies the PUrus in
VIII.64.10 with “mankind”: PUrave…
mAnave jane.
In fact, the Rigveda goes so far as

to coin a word PUruSa/PuruSa
(descendant of PUru) for “man”, on
the lines of the word manuSa
(descendant of Manu).
While the word ManuSa for “man” is
representative of a general Indo-
European word with counterparts in
other Indo-European branches
(Germanic, as in English “man”),
the word PUruSa/PuruSa is purely
Rigvedic in origin: the word is found
in the Rigveda in 28 verses, of
which 17 are found in the late
MaNDala X. Of the 11 verses in the
other nine MaNDalas, 9 are by the
priests of SudAs and his
descendant Somaka (i.e. by
ViSvAmitra, VasiSTha, Kutsa and
VAmadeva). The word, therefore,
was clearly coined during the period
of SudAs, and gained increasing
currency during the period of
composition of the Rigvedic hymns.
d. There are two verses in which

the PUrus are referred to in hostile
terms: VII.8.4; 18.3.
Far from disproving the general

scenario, however, these
references only further confirm the
point that the Bharatas, themselves
a branch of the PUrus, were the
particular Vedic Aryans of the
Rigveda: both the verses refer to
conflict between the Bharatas and
the other PUrus.
In VII.8.4. “Bharata’s Agni” is

described as conquering the PUrus
in battle.
In VII.18.3, VasiSTha, speaking on

behalf of the Bharata king SudAs,
addresses Indra with the plea: “May
we, in sacrifice, conquer (the)
scornful PUru(s).”
II
THE RSIS AND PRIESTLY FAMILIES
IN THE RIGVEDA
As we have seen, the Rigveda, by way of its ten

AprI-sUktas, recognizes ten families of RSis or
composers. The AprI-sUktas are therefore a key
to an understanding of some of the basic aspects
of the system of priestly families in the Rigveda.
Two basic points which become apparent from

the AprI-sUktas are of great importance in
identifying the Bharatas, among the PUrus, as the
particular Vedic Aryans of the Rigveda:
1. Nine of the ten families recognized in the

Rigveda are identifiable with the seven primary
and two secondary families of RSis recognized in
Indian tradition: the seven primary families are the
ANgirases, BhRgus, ViSvAmitras, VasiSThas,
Agastyas, KaSyapas and Atris, and the two
secondary families are the Kevala-ANgirases
(KaNvas in the Rigveda) and Kevala-BhRgus
(GRtsamadas in the Rigveda).
But the Rigveda also recognizes a tenth family,

the Bharatas. This family does not figure as a
separate family in later priestly traditions, which
place kings who became RSis among either the
ANgirases or the BhRgus.
This special treatment shows that to the Vedic

Aryans, there were nine families of priestly RSis,
but only one family of royal RSis; and, by
implication, the tribal identity of these royal RSis
is also the tribal identity of the Vedic Aryans.
2. There are three Great Goddesses invoked in

the ten AprI-sUktas. One of them is BhAratI, who,
as the very name suggests, was the tutelary deity
of the Bharatas.
An examination of the references to this Goddess

in the AprI-sUktas brings out a significant state of
affairs: the ten AprI-sUktas fall into three distinct
categories in line with our classification of the
periods of the Rigveda into Early, Middle and
Late.
As per our chronology, five families of RSis

originated in the Early Period of the Rigveda: the
ANgirases, BhRgus, ViSvAmitras, VasiSThas and
Agastyas. All these five families refer to the
Three Goddesses in a particular order of
reference: BhAratI, ILA, SarasvatI (I.142.9;
X.110.8; III.4.8; VII.2.8; I.188.9).
Two families originated in the Middle Period of the

Rigveda, when the heyday of the Bharatas was
waning, but the Rigveda was still a Bharata book:
the KaSyapas and GRtsamadas. Both these
families still refer to the same Three Goddesses,
but in changed order of reference: The KaSyapas
change the order to BhAratI, SarasvatI, ILA,
(IX.5.8); and the GRtsamadas to SarasvatI, ILA,
BhAratI (II.3.8).
The GRtsamadas reverse the order and place

BhAratI last; but, in another hymn, they make
amends for it by naming all the Three Goddesses
in the original order: BhAratI, ILA, SarasvatI
(II.1.11). This, incidentally, is the only hymn, apart
from the AprI-sUktas, to refer to the Three
Goddesses by name.
Three families originated in the Late Period of the

Rigveda, when the predominance of the Bharatas
(of the particular branch whose ruling dynasty
was descended from DevavAta) was practically a
thing of the past: the Atris, KaNvas, and the
Bharatas themselves. Not one of the three refers
to BhAratI at all.
The Atris and KaNvas replace the suggestive

name of the Goddess BhAratI with the more
general name MahI (which is an epithet of the
Goddesses in I.142.9 and IX.5.8) and change the
order to ILA, SarasvatI, MahI (V.5.8; I.13.9).
The Bharatas, caught in a bind, since they can

neither refer to the Goddess as BhAratI, nor
replace her name with another, follow a safe path:
they refer to Three Goddesses, but name only
one: ILA. (X.70.8).
All this proves one more thing contrary to general

belief: according to the scholars, the AprI-sUktas
were late compositions. On the contrary, it
becomes clear that each new family of RSis, soon
after it came into being and became a party to the
performance of ritual sacrifices, composed its own
AprI-sUkta. The AprI-sUkta, therefore, depicts
the situation prevailing close to the time of the
birth of the family (which, of course, does not
apply to the two ancient pre-Rigvedic families, the
ANgirases and BhRgus, whose antecedents go
back deep into the pre-Rigvedic past).
It must be noted that any RSi performing a

particular sacrifice was required to chant verses
appropriate to that particular sacrifice, regardless
of the family identities of the composers of those
verses. It is only at the point where an AprI-sUkta
was to be chanted, that he had to chant the
particular AprI-sUkta of his own family. Hence,
the composition of an AprI-sUkta, if no other
hymn, was a must for any family, for a RSi
belonging to that family to be able to participate in
certain sacrifices.
This, incidentally, also explains why the AprI-

sUkta of the Agastyas, whose other hymns were
certainly composed in the Middle and Late
periods of the Rigveda, clearly shows that it was
composed in the Early period of the Rigveda.
The Bharata-PUru factor is vital to an

understanding of the very presence of the
different families of RSis in the corpus of the
Rigveda:
1. The ANgirases and VasiSThas are two families

which are fully and militantly affiliated to the
Bharatas throughout the Rigveda.
2. The ViSvAmitras are a partially affiliated family:

they were fully and militantly affiliated to the
Bharatas in the period of MaNDala III, and,
moreover, the ViSvAmitras were themselves
descended from a branch of PUrus (a different
branch from that of DivodAsa and SudAs, but
possibly descended from DevavAta) who also
called themselves Bharatas.
However, their close affiliation with the Bharatas

of the Rigveda ceased after the ViSvAmitras were
replaced by the VasiSThas as the priests of
SudAs.
3. The KaSyapas and GRtsamadas are two

families which are associated with the Bharatas,
but not militancy affiliated to them.
Their association is based on the fact that the

provenance of these two families was in the
Middle Period of the Rigveda, which was still the
(albeit late) period of the Bharatas.
The two families were more concerned with

religious subjects (nature-myths and rituals), and
hardly at all with politics or militancy; but the only
kings referred to by the KaSyapas (as patrons)
are the PUru or Bharata kings Dhvasra and
PuruSanti (IX.58.3), and the only prominent king
remembered by the GRtsamadas is DivodAsa
(II.19.6).
4. The BhRgus and Agastyas are relatively

neutral families in the Rigveda, both being
basically aloof from the Vedic mainstream:
The BhRgus were, in fact, the priests of the

people (the Anus) who lived to the northwest of
the Vedic Aryans, and therefore generally on
hostile terms with the Vedic Aryans and their
RSis. However, one branch of the BhRgus,
consisting of Jamadagni and his descendants,
became close to the Vedic RSis; and these are
the BhRgus of the Rigveda.
The Agastyas are traditionally a family of RSis

whose earliest and most prominent members
migrated to the South, away from the area of the
Vedic Aryans, at an early point of time in their
history.
Both these families owe their presence in the

Rigveda to two factors:
a. Agastya and Jamadagni, the founders of these

two families, were closely related to, and
associated with, two other prominent eponymous
RSis: Agastya was VasiSTha’s brother, and
Jamadagni was ViSvAmitra’s nephew.
b. The two families were not affiliated to, or even

associated with, the Bharatas, but nor were they
affiliated to, or associated with, any other tribe or
people.
Both the families, nevertheless, gained a late

entry into the corpus of the Rigveda: even the
oldest hymns of the BhRgus are found in the late
MaNDalas; while the hymns of the Agastyas are,
anyway, late hymns by RSis belonging to a later
branch of the family.
5. The Atris and KaNvas are also relatively

neutral families, but in a different sense from the
BhRgus and Agastyas.
These two families, in fact, are not only not

affiliated to the Bharatas in particular or the PUrus
in general, but they are more often associated
with non-PUrus (IkSvAkus, Yadus, TurvaSas,
Anus). This association is basically mercenary:
the Atris and KaNvas appear to have officiated as
priests for, and composed dAnastutis in praise of,
any king (irrespective of his tribal identity) who
showered them with gifts. This more catholic or
cosmopolitan nature of these two families is also
recognized (in the case of the Atris) in I.117.3,
where Atri is characterised as pAñcajanya
(belonging to all the five tribes).
The KaNvas are even associated with the Yadus

and TurvaSas in the con text of a battle, in which
the Yadus and TurvaSas came to their aid in
response to an appeal by the KaNvas.
All this raises a question: if the PUrus alone,

among the five tribes, are to be identified with the
Vedic Aryans, and the Rigveda itself is a PUru
book, what is the explanation for the presence of
these two families in the Rigveda?.
The answer is simple:
a. These two families originated in

the Late Period of the Rigveda,
when the predominance of the
Bharatas had ended, and the PUrus
in general had become more
catholic and cosmopolitan in their
attitudes.
b. Tradition testifies that both these

priestly families were themselves of
PUru origin:
According to the VAyu PurANa

(1.59), the earliest Atri RSi was
PrabhAkara, who married the ten
daughters of a PUru king
BhadrASva or RaudrASva, and had
ten sons from whom all the Atri
clans are descended.
As for the KaNvas, “all the

authorities agree that they were an
3
offshoot from the Paurava line”.
c. While the Atris and KaNvas

(though descended from PUrus)
were generally catholic or
cosmopolitan in their associations,
the most important Atri and KaNva
RSis in the Rigveda are closely
associated with the PUrus:
Among the Atris, SyAvASva Atreya

is closely associated with the
PUrus: according to SAyaNa’s
interpretation of V.54.14, SyAvASva
was himself a Bharata. He is also
the only Atri to pay homage to the
memory of SudAs (V.53.2).
Among the KaNvas, PragAtha

KANva and Sobhari KANva are
closely associated with the PUrus:
PragAtha identifies himself as a
PUru directly in VIII.64.10, and also
indirectly in VIII.10.5 (where he
asks the ASvins to abandon the
other four tribes, who are named,
and come to the PUrus, who are
not directly named). Sobhari is the
only KaNva RSi to pay homage to
the memory of DivodAsa
(VIII.103.2) and to call him an Arya.
Sobhari KANva and SyAvASva

Atreya are also two RSis
associated (VIII.19.32, 36; 36.7;
37.7) with Trasadasyu, whose
importance in the Rigveda is due to
the help given by him to the PUrus.
It is significant that these three RSis

are perhaps the most important Atri
and KaNva RSis in the Rigveda:
SyAvASva Atreya has the largest

number of hymns and verses (17
hymns, 186 verses) among the
Atris in the Rigveda, more than
those ascribed to the eponymous
Atri Bhauma (13 hymns, 126
verses). Apart from these two Atris,
all the other Atri RSis have one,
two, three, or at the most four
hymns.
PragAtha KANva does not have the

largest number of hymns among
the KaNvas in the Rigveda, but,
MaNDala VIII, associated with the
KaNvas, is called the “PragAtha
MaNDala”, and the dominant form
of metre used in this MaNDala is
also named after PragAtha.
These three RSis are the only RSis, belonging to

the Atri and KaNva families, whose descendants
have a place in the Rigveda: AndhIgu SyAvASvI
(IX.101.1-3), Bharga PrAgAtha (VIII.60-61), Kali
PrAgAtha (VIII.66), Haryata PrAgAtha (VIII.72)
and KuSika Saubhara (X.127).
The presence of the Atris and KaNvas in the

Rigveda is therefore fully in keeping with the PUru
character of the Rigveda.
III
THE ARYAS IN THE RIGVEDA
One word which the scholars are unanimous in

treating as a denominative epithet of the Vedic
Aryans in the Rigveda is, beyond any doubt, the
word Arya: according to them, Arya in the
Rigveda refers to the Vedic Aryans (and, by
implication, words like DAsa and Dasyu,
contrasted with the word Arya, refer to people
other than the Vedic Aryans).
This is a perfectly logical understanding of the use

of the word Arya in the Rigveda (although
scholars opposed to the Aryan invasion theory
balk at this interpretation of the word, in the
mistaken belief that this interpretation somehow
symbolises the concept of invader Aryans and
native non-Aryans).
But the actual connotation of this fact must be

made clear. The Vedic Aryans called themselves
Arya in the Rigveda, the Iranians called
themselves Airya in their texts, the Irish called
themselves, or their land, Eire, in their traditions:
all these different Indo-European peoples were
each, individually and separately, calling
themselves by this particular name. But it does
not follow that they would also be calling each
other by the same name.
The word is used in the sense of “We, the
Noble”. When an Iranian, for example, used the
word Airya, he undoubtedly meant an Iranian, or
even perhaps an Iranian belonging to his own
particular tribe or community. He would never
have dreamt of refering to a Vedic Aryan or an
Irishman by the same term.
The use of the word Arya in the Rigveda must be

understood in this sense: the Vedic Aryans used
the word Arya in reference to Vedic Aryans as
distinct from other people, and not in reference to
Indo-European language speaking people as
distinct from non-Indo-European language
speaking people. All other people, Indo-
Europeans or otherwise, other than themselves,
were non-Aryas to the Vedic Aryans.
Therefore, also, in order to identify the Vedic

Aryans, it is necessary to identify the people who
are referred to as Arya in the Rigveda.
The word Arya is used 36 times in 34 hymns in

the Rigveda:
I.51.8; 59.2; 103.3; 117.21; 130.8; 156.5;

II.11.18, 19;
III.34.9;
IV.26.2; 30.18;
V.34.6;
VI.18.3; 22.10; 25.2; 33.3; 60.6;
VII.5.6; 18.7; 33.7; 83.1;
VIII.24.27; 51.9; 103.1;
IX.63.5, 14;
X.11.4; 38.3; 43.3; 49.3; 65.11; 69.6; 83.1; 86.19;
102.3; 138.3.
But the word has an individual-specific

connotation only in the case of three persons:
a. In three hymns (I.130.8; IV.26.2;

VIII.103.1) DivodAsa is clearly the
person referred to as an Arya.
b. In one hymn, the word refers to
DivodAsa’s father VadhryaSva
(X.69.6).
c. The word occurs in all the three

DASarAjña hymns pertaining to
SudAs’ great Battle of the Ten
Kings (VII.18, 33, 83).
In the tribal sense, the word is used only in

reference to the PUrus:
a. In I.59.2, Agni is said to have

been produced by the Gods to be a
light unto the Arya. In the sixth
verse, it is clear that the hymn is
composed on behalf of the PUrus.
b. In VII.5.6, again, Agni is said to

have driven away the Dasyus and
brought forth broad light for the
Arya. In the third verse, the deed is
said to have been done for the
PUrus.
An examination of the family identity of the RSis

who use the word Arya clinches the identification
of the PUrus (and particularly the Bharatas) as
the Aryas of the Rigveda: of the 34 hymns in
which the word is used, 28 hymns are composed
by the Bharatas, ANgirases and VasiSThas.
The situation stands out in extraordinary clarity if

we examine the number of hymns, which refer to
the Aryas, from a statistical viewpoint: the
Bharatas themselves, for example, use the word
Arya in three hymns. The Bharatas have a total
of 19 hymns out of 1028 hymns in the Rigveda:
this amounts to 1.85% of the total number of
hymns in the Rigveda. And they have 3 hymns
which use the word Arya, out of 34 such hymns in
the Rigveda: this amounts to 8.82% of the total
number of such hymns in the Rigveda. The
frequency rate of Arya-hymns by the Bharatas is
therefore 8.82 divided by 1.85, which comes to
4.77.
The following table shows how, when the same
test is applied to all the ten families of RSis in the
Rigveda, they fall into four distinct categories in
line with their relationship to the Bharatas (the
standard frequency rate being 1). (Table on next
page.)
The frequency rate of Arya-hymns by the

Bharatas is 4.77. The only other families with a
frequency rate above one are the priestly families
of the Bharatas. The general associates and
partial affiliates of the Bharatas have a frequency
rate below one. The neutral families have a
frequency rate of zero, except for the KaNvas,
who appear to constitute an exception to the rule.
However, this is an exception which proves the

rule loudly and clearly. The two references by the
KaNvas establish beyond any doubt that the
PUrus, and particularly the Bharatas, are the
Aryas of the Rigveda:
Click Here
a. In VIII.51.9, SruStigu KANva refers to Indra as

the “Good Lord of Wealth… to whom all Aryas,
DAsas, here belong”.
b. In VIII.103, Sobhari KANva identifies DivodAsa

as an Arya.
VIII.51.9 is the only reference in the whole of the

Rigveda in which Aryas and DAsas are both
specifically mentioned together in an equally
benevolent sense: Indra is declared to be a God
who is close to both Aryas and DAsas.
The KaNvas, like the Atris, are a priestly family

with patrons from all the different tribes: the
IkSvAkus, Yadus, TurvaSas, and even the Anus
(in VIII.1.31; 4.19; 5.37; 6.46, 48; 19.32, 36;
65.12, etc.) more than the PUrus. This family is
therefore neutral between the PUrus (i.e. the
Aryas) and the non-PUrus (i.e. the DAsas); and
the use of the word Arya, in VIII.51.9, is made in
order to express this neutrality. It is made,
moreover, in the context of a reference to a
patron RuSama PavIru, who is clearly a non-
PUrus (DAsa).
The second KaNva use of the word Arya is even

more significant: the KaNvas refer to numerous
IkSvAku, Yadu, TurvaSa and Anu kings as
patrons (as mentioned above), and, in many other
verses (I.36.18; VIII.4.7; 7.18; 9.14; 39.8; 40.12;
45.27; 49.10) they even refer to a historical
incident in which the Yadus and TurvaSas came
to their aid in battle. But not one of these kings is
referred to as an Arya.
DivodAsa is referred to only once in the KaNva

hymns, in VIII.103.2, and he is called an Arya in
the previous verse.
Therefore, it is clear that even the neutral families

of RSis used the word Arya in the Rigveda only in
reference to the Bharatas in particular or the
PUrus in general.
Incidentally, Purukutsa and Trasadasyu are

eulogised to the skies by the priestly families
affiliated to the Bharatas, for their rescue-act
performed for the PUrus. A VAmadeva even calls
Trasadasyu an ardhadeva or demi-god (IV.42.8,
9). But nowhere is either Purukutsa or
Trasadasyu called an Arya.
The connotation of the word Arya in the Rigveda

is therefore clear and unambiguous.
But there is more: there is a circumstance in the

Rigveda, in connection with the word Arya, which
is the subject of debate and controversy: the word
Arya is used, in nine of the thirty-four hymns
which refer to Aryas, in reference to enemies of
the Vedic Aryans. In eight of these nine, the
verses refer to both Arya and DAsa enemies
together.
The exact implication of this should be
understood: there are two entities being referred
to: Aryas and DAsas. In these nine references,
both the Aryas and DAsas are referred to as
enemies. So who are these people (the
protagonists of these nine hymns): are they
Aryas, are they DAsas, or are they a third group
of people different from both Aryas and DAsas?
The consensus among all serious scholars,

fortunately, is a logical one: it is accepted that the
protagonists of these nine hymns are definitely
Aryas themselves, although their enemies in
these cases include both Aryas and DAsas (non-
Aryas).
These references become meaningful only in one

circumstance: the PUrus are the Aryas of the
Rigveda; the Bharatas (the predominant branch
of the PUrus through most of the Rigveda) are the
protagonist Aryas of the Rigveda; and these
references refer to Bharata conflicts with other
Aryas (other PUrus) and non-Aryas (non-PUrus).
This conclusion is fully confirmed by an

examination of the references:
1. There are nine hymns which refer to Arya

enemies in the Rigveda (of which the first one
does not refer to DAsa enemies as well):
IV. 30.18;
VI. 22.10; 33.3; 60.6;
VII. 83.1;
X. 38.3; 69.6; 83.1; 102.3.
All these nine references are either by the

Bharatas themselves (X.69.6; 102.3), or by the
ANgirases (IV.30.18; VI.22.10; 33.3; 60.6) and
VasiSThas (VII.83.1; X.38.3; 83.1).
2. The idea expressed in these nine hymns is also

expressed in another way: there are eight other
references which refer to the Arya and DAsa
enemies as “kinsmen” and “non-
kinsmen” (“strangers” in Griffith’s translation)
enemies.
The following seven references refer to these

enemies as jAmi (kinsmen) and ajAmi (non-
kinsmen):
I. 100.11; 111.3;
IV. 4.5;
VI. 19.8; 25.3; 44.17;
X. 69.12.
One of the above verses (X.69.12) is in the same

hymn as a verse (X.69.6) which refers to Arya
and DAsa enemies, thereby confirming that the
same situation is referred to.
All these seven references are either by the

Bharatas themselves (X.69.12) or by the
ANgirases (I.100.11; 111.13; IV.4.5; VI.19.8; 25.3;
44.17).
The eighth reference uses different words to

express the same idea: it refers to sanAbhi
(kinsmen) and niSTya (non-kinsmen) enemies.
This reference, X. 133.5, is composed by a

Bharata in the name of SudAs himself
3. In case any more uncertainty could possibly

remain about the exact identity of the protagonist
Aryas in all the above references, it is cleared by
the ViSvAmitras, who express the same above
idea in more specific terms.
The ViSvAmitras were fully and militantly affiliated

to the Bharatas under SudAs, in the period of
MaNDala III. Their association with SudAs is
detailed in two hymns: III.33 and 53. Of these,
hymn 53 alone refers to SudAs by name (III.53.9,
11) and describes the aSvamedha performed by
the ViSvAmitras for SudAs and the Bharatas.
The last verse of this hymn tells us: “These men,

the sons of Bharata, O Indra, regard not
severance or close connexion. They urge their
own steed, as it were another’s, and take him,
swift as the bow’s string, to battle” (III.53.24).
The Bharatas, in short, are the protagonist Aryas

of the Rigveda who disregard both severance
(apapitvam: i.e. non-relationship with the ajAmi,
niSTya, DAsas, non-kinsmen, non-PUrus) as well
as close connexion (prapitvam: i.e. relationship
with the jAmi, sanAbhi, Aryas, kinsmen, PUrus)
when they set out to do battle.
In short, the PUrus alone were the Vedic Aryans,

the Aryas of the Rigveda; and the non-PUrus
were the DAsas of the Rigveda.
Footnotes:
1AIHT, p.297.
2ibid, p.275.
3IVA, p. 179.

Back to Home
Chapter 6
The Indo-Iranian Homeland
So far, we have examined the history of the Vedic

Aryans on the basis of the Rigveda.
This history is important in a wider context: the

context of the history of the Indo-Iranians, and,
further, the history of the Indo-Europeans.
According to the scholars, the Vedic Aryans had

three historical and prehistorical habitats:
1. An early Indoaryan (i.e. Vedic Aryan) habitat in

the Punjab.
2. An earlier Indo-Iranian habitat in Central Asia

(shared by the Vedic Aryans with the Iranians).
3. An even earlier Indo-European habitat in and

around South Russia (shared by both the Vedic
Aryans and the Iranians with the other Indo-
European groups).
There were therefore two basic migrations

according to this theory. the Indoaryans migrated
first (alongwith the Iranians) from South Russia to
Central Asia; and later (separating from the
Iranians) from Central Asia to the Punjab through
the northwest.
The concepts of a common Indo-Iranian habitat

and a common Indo-European habitat are based
on the fact that the Vedic Aryans share a
common linguistic ancestry and cultural heritage
with the other Indo-European groups in general
and the Iranians in particular.
But the identification of Central Asia as the

location of this common Indo-Iranian habitat and
of South Russia as the location of this common
Indo-European habitat are purely arbitrary
hypotheses with absolutely no basis in
archaeology or in written records.
As we have seen, the Vedic Aryans, far from

migrating into the Punjab from the northwest,
actually advanced into the Punjab from the east,
and later advanced further into the northwest.
This certainly goes against the accepted ideas of
the geographical locations of their earlier habitats.
So what is the geographical location of the Indo-

Iranian homeland (the subject of this chapter)
which, in effect, means the area where the Vedic
Aryans and the Iranians developed common
linguistic and cultural elements which distinguish
them from other Indo-Europeans?
We will examine this question under the following

heads:
I. The ANgirases and BhRgus.

II. The Avestan Evidence as per Western
Scholars.
III. The Historical Identity of the Iranians.
IV. The Iranian Migrations.
I
THE ANGIRASES AND BHRGUS
One very important feature which must be

examined, in order to get a proper perspective on
Indo-Iranian history, is the special position of, and
the symbiotic relationship between, two of the ten
families of RSis in the Rigveda: the ANgirases
and the BhRgus.
While all the other families of RSis came into

existence at various points of time during the
course of composition of the Rigveda, these two
families alone represent the pre-Rigvedic past:
they go so far back into the past that not only the
eponymous founders of these families (ANgiras
and BhRgu respectively) but even certain other
ancient RSis belonging to these families
(BRhaspati, AtharvaNa, USanA) are already
remote mythical persons in the Rigveda; and the
names of the two families are already names for
mythical and ritual classes: the ANgirases are
deified as “a race of higher beings between Gods
and men” (as Griffith puts it in his footnote to
I.1.6), and the BhRgus or AtharvaNas are
synonymous with fire-priests in general.
What is more, the names of these two families are

also found in the Iranian and Greek texts, and
they have the same role as in the Rigveda: the
Iranian angra and Greek angelos are names for
classes of celestial beings (although malignant
ones in the Iranian version) and the Iranian
Athravan and Greek phleguai are names for fire-
priests.
But an examination of the Rigveda shows a

striking difference in the positions of these two
families:
a. The ANgirases are the dominant

protagonist priests of the Rigveda.
b. The BhRgus are more or less

outside the Vedic pale through most
of the course of the Rigveda, and
gain increasing acceptance into the
Vedic mainstream only towards the
end of the Rigveda.
The situation is particularly ironic since not only

are both the families equally old and hoary, but it
is the BhRgus, and not the ANgirases, who are
the real initiators of the two main ritual systems
which dominate the Rigveda: the fire ritual and
the Soma ritual.
The situation may be examined under the

following heads:
A. The ANgirases and BhRgus as Composers.

B. The ANgirases and BhRgus in References.
C. The Post-Rigvedic Situation.
D. Vedic Aryans and Iranians.
I.A.. The ANgirases and BhRgus as

Composers
There is a sea of difference in the relative

positions of the ANgirases and BhRgus as
composers in the Rigveda.
To begin with, the bare facts may be noted (table

on next page).
Click Here
The ANgirases have two whole MaNDalas (IV

and VI) exclusively to themselves (no other family
has a MaNDala exclusively to itself, and the
BhRgus do not have a Family MaNDala at all),
and are the dominant family in two of the four non-
family MaNDalas (I and X) and second in
importance in the two others (VIII and IX). They
are also present as composers in all the other
Family MaNDalas (except in MaNDala II, but
there we have the GRtsamadas whom we shall
refer to presently).
In respect of the BhRgus, we may go into more

details:
No. of No. of
Hymns Verses
EARLY PERIOD [1 joint] [3 joint]
MIDDLE PERIOD 4 31
MANDALA VIII 4 46
MANDALA 14 140
MANDALA 24 256
It is clear from the above details that the BhRgus

are increasingly accepted into the Vedic
mainstream only in the Late Period of the
Rigveda.
This is confirmed also by the fact that the BhRgu
hymns in MaNDalas VIII and IX are all old hymns
(with the exception of IX.62, 65, which are
composed by late descendants of Jamadagni),
the overwhelming majority of them even attributed
to pre-Rigvedic BhRgu RSis, all of which were
kept outside the Vedic corpus and included in it
Only in the Late Period.
A more detailed examination of the hymns by the

BhRgus brings to light the following facts:
1. The few hymns or verses by BhRgus in the

MaNDalas of the Early and Middle Periods are
not there on their own strength, but on the
strength of the close relations of their composers
with the families of the MaNDalas concerned:
a. In the Early Period, we find only

3 verses (III.62.16-18) by a BhRgu
(Jamadagni), all of which are jointly
composed with ViSvAmitra, the
eponymous RSi of the MaNDala.
Jamadagni, by all traditional
accounts, is the nephew of
ViSvAmitra, his mother being
ViSvAmitra’s sister.
b. In the Middle Period, we find only

4 hymns (II.4-7) by a BhRgu
(SomAhuti), and it is clear in this
case also that the composer is
closely associated with the family of
MaNDala II: in the very first of these
hymns, he identifies himself with
the GRtsamadas (II.4.9).
2. The hymns in the Late Period are also clearly

composed by a section of BhRgus who have
become close to the ANgirases, and who,
moreover, find it necessary or expedient to make
this point clear in their hymns:
a. In MaNDala VIII, hymn 102 is

composed by a BhRgu jointly with
an ANgiras RSi; and the hymn to
Agni refers to that God as
“ANgiras”.
b. In MaNDala IX, a BhRgu,

descendant of Jamadagni, identifies
himself with the ANgirases
(IX.62.9). In his footnote, Griffith
notes Ludwig’s puzzled comment
that “the Jamadagnis were not
members of that family”.
c. In MaNDala X, a BhRgu
composer refers to both the
BhRgus and the ANgirases as his
ancestors (X.14.3-6).
Incidentally, the GRtsamadas of MaNDala II are

classified as “Kevala-BhRgus” and have a
separate AprI-sUkta from both the ANgirases and
the BhRgus. It is, however, clear that they are
actually full-fledged ANgirases who adopted some
specifically BhRgu practices and hence formed a
separate family:
The AnukramaNIs classify the GRtsamadas as

“Saunahotra ANgiras paScAt Saunaka
BhArgava”: i.e. ANgirases of the Saunahotra
branch who later joined the Saunaka branch of
the BhRgus. However, the hymns clearly show
that the GRtsamadas identify themselves only as
Saunahotras (II.18.6; 41.14, 17) and never as
Saunakas. They refer only to ANgirases (II.11.20;
15.8; 17.1; 20.5; 23.18) and never to BhRgus.
They refer only to the ancestral ANgiras RSi
BRhaspati (who is deified in four whole hymns,
II.23-26, as well as in II.1.3; 30.4, 9) and never to
the ancestral BhRgu RSis AtharvaNa, Dadhyanc
or USanA.
All in all, it is clear that while the BhRgus are

historically at least as ancient a family as the
ANgirases and, in respect of the origin of Vedic
rituals, even more important than the ANgirases,
nevertheless, in the Rigveda, they are a family
outside the pale who find a place in the Vedic
mainstream only in the Late Period.
And all the BhRgus of the Rigveda (excluding, of

course, the pre-Rigvedic BhRgus whose hymns
are accepted into the corpus in the Late Period)
and of later Indian tradition are clearly members
of one single branch descended from Jamadagni,
or of groups later adopted into this branch.
Significantly, Jamadagni is half a PUru: his

mother is the sister of ViSvAmitra who belongs to
a branch of PUrus who also call themselves
Bharatas.
This probably explains the gradual separation of

the Jamadagni branch from the other BhRgus
and their subsequent close association with the
Vedic Aryans (the PUrus) and their priests, the
ANgirases.
I.B. The ANgirases and BhRgus in References
In the case of references to ANgirases and

BhRgus within the hymns, also, the same case
prevails: we see a sharp difference in the number
and nature of references to the two families as a
whole as well as to the individual mythical
ancestral RSis belonging to the two families. And
there is a difference between the nature of
references to them in the earlier parts of the
Rigveda and those in its later parts:
1. To begin with, the ANgirases are referred to in

at least 76 hymns (97 verses), while the BhRgus
are referred to in 21 hymns (24 verses).
The difference in the references to the ANgirases

and BhRgus in the first seven MaNDalas of the
Rigveda may be noted:
The ANgirases are clearly the heroes and

protagonist RSis of these MaNDalas:
a. Even the Gods are referred to as

ANgirases: Agni (I.1.6; 31.1, 2, 17;
74.5; 75.2; 127.2; IV.3.15; 9.7;
V.8.4; 10.7; 11.6; 21.1; VI.2.10;
11.3; 16.11), Indra (I.100.4; 130.3),
the ASvins (1.112.8) and USas
(VII.75.1; 79.3).
b. The ancient ANgirases as a

class are deified as a semi-divine
race participating in Indra’s celestial
activities (I.62.1-3, 5; 83.4; II.11.20;
15.8; 17.1; 20.5; 23.18; IV.3.11;
16.8; V.45.7, 8; VI.17.6; 65.5).
In a corollary to this, special classes

of semi-divine ANgirases, called
Navagvas and DaSagvas are also
“described as sharing in Indra’s
battles” (Griffith’s footnote to I.33.6).
They are referred to in 8 hymns and
verses (I.33.6; 62.4; II.34.12;
III.39.5; IV.51.4; V.29.12; 45.7;
VI.6.3).
c. ANgirases are invoked as a class

of Gods themselves, in the
company of other classes of Gods
like the Adityas, Maruts and Vasus
(III.53.7; VII.44.4) or as
representatives of brAhmanas as a
whole (VII.42.1).
d. The eponymous ANgiras (I.45.3;

78.3; 139.9; III.31.7, 19; IV.40.1;
VI.49.11; 73.1) or the ANgirases as
a whole (I.51.3; 132.4; 139.7;
VII.52.3) are referred to as the
recepients of the special favours of
the Gods.
And finally, many verses, by

composers belonging to the
ANgiras family, refer to themselves
by the name (I.71.2; 107.2; 121.1,
3; IV.2.15; VI.18.5; 35.5).
In sharp contrast, there are only twelve

references to the BhRgus in these seven
MaNDalas. Eleven of them (I.58.6; 60.1; 127.7;
143.4; II.4.2; III.2.4; 5.10; IV.7.1,4; 16.20; VI.15.2)
are in hymns to Agni, and they merely
acknowledge the important historical fact that the
fire-ritual was introduced by the ancient BhRgus.
And, in VII.18.6, the only contemporary reference

to the BhRgus in the first seven MaNDalas of the
Rigveda, the BhRgus figure as enemies.
Again, while the pattern of references to the

ANgirases in the last three MaNDalas of the
Rigveda is exactly the same as in the first seven
MaNDalas, the pattern of references to the
BhRgus changes.
The BhRgus are referred to in ten hymns (12

verses) in MaNDalas VIII, IX and X; and now the
references to them are analogous to the
references to the ANgirases:
a. In some references, the BhRgus

and the ANgirases are specifically
classed together (VIII.6.18; 43.14;
as well as in X.14.6 below).
b. The ancient BhRgus are deified

as a semi-divine race participating
in the celestial activities of the Gods
(VIII.3.16; IX.101.13).
c. BhRgus are specifically referred

to as Gods (X.92.10) and named
alongwith other classes of Gods
such as the Maruts (VIII.35.3;
X.122.5).
The eponymous BhRgu (VIII.3.9) is

referred to as a recepient of the
special favours of the Gods.
There are also, of course, references which refer

to the introduction of the fire ritual by the BhRgus
(X.39.14; 46.2, 9; as well as X.122.5 above); and
in one reference, a BhRgu composer refers to his
ancestors (X.14.6).
2. In respect of individual pre-Rigvedic RSis who

have already acquired a mythical status in the
earliest parts of the Rigveda, we have BRhaspati
and the Rbhus among the ANgirases, and
AtharvaNa, Dadhyanc and USanA KAvya among
the BhRgus.
The difference in treatment of these RSis is also

sharp:
a. BRhaspati is completely deified,

and, by a play on sounds, identified
also as BrahmaNaspati, the Lord of
prayer, worship and brahmanhood
itself; he is the deity of thirteen
whole hymns (I.18, 40, 191; II.23-
26; VI.73; VII.97; X.67-68, 182),
and the joint deity with Indra in one
more (IV.49).
He is, in addition, lauded or invoked

as a deity in 69 other verses,
distributed throughout the Rigveda:
I. 14.3; 38.13; 62.3; 89.6; 90.9;

105.17;
106.5; 139.10; 161.6;
II. 1.3; 30.4, 9;
III. 20.5; 26.2; 62.4-6;
IV. 40.1;
V. 42.7, 8; 43.12; 46.3, 5; 51.12;
VI. 47.20; 75.17;
VII. 10.4; 41.4; 44.1;
VIII. 10.2; 27.1; 96.15;
IX. 5.11; 80.1; 81.4; 83.1; 85.6;
X. 13.4; 14.3; 17.13; 35.11; 42.11;
43.11;
44.11; 53.9; 64.4, 15; 65.1, 10;
92.10; 97.15,
19; 98.1, 3, 7; 100.5; 103.4;
108.6, 11;
109.5; 130.4; 141.2-5; 167.3;
173.3, 5; 174.1.
b. Likewise, the Rbhus, a group of

three pre-Rigvedic ANgirases, three
brothers named Rbhu, VAja and
Vibhvan, are also completely
deified. They are collectively
known as Rbhus, but, rarely, also
as VAjas. They are the deities of
eleven whole hymns (I.20, 110-111,
161; III.60; IV.33-37; VII.48).
They are, in addition, lauded or

invoked in 30 other verses
distributed throughout the Rigveda:
I. 51.2; 63.3;
III. 52.6; 54.12, 17;
IV. 51.6;
V. 42.5; 46.4; 51.3;
VI. 50.12;
VII. 35.12; 37.1, 2, 4; 51.3;
VIII. 3.7; 9.12; 35.15; 77.8; 93.34;
X. 39.12; 64.10; 65.10; 66.10; 76.5;
80.7;
92.11; 93.7; 106.7; 176.1.
In addition, Agni is called a Rbhu in II.1.10, and

Indra in X.23.2. The name RbhukSan, an
alternative name for Rbhu, is also applied to other
Gods: Indra (I.162.1; 167.10; 186.10; II.31.6;
V.41.2; VIII.45.29; X.74.5) and the Maruts
(VIII.7.9, 12; 20.2).
c. On the other hand, the praise of

the ancient pre-Rigvedic BhRgu
RSis is meagre and subdued.
The three RSis (AtharvaNa,

Dadhyanc and USanA KAvya) are
together referred to in a total of only
39 verses throughout the Rigveda:
I. 51.10, 11; 80.16; 83.5; 84.13;

116.12;
117.12, 22; 119.9; 121.12; 139.9;
IV. 16.2; 26.1;
V. 29.9; 31.8; 34.2;
VI. 15.17; 16.13, 14; 20.11; 47.24;
VIII. 9.7; 23.17;
IX. 11.2; 87.3; 97.7; 108.4;
X. 14.3, 6; 15.19; 21.5; 22.6; 40.7;
48.2;
49.3; 87.12; 92.10; 99.9; 120.9.
Although these references are

laudatory ones, these RSis are
definitely not treated as deities in
the Rigveda. And it is clear that the
praise accorded to them, in these
references, is primarily on account
of the historical role played by them
in introducing the ritual of fire-
worship among the Vedic Aryans.
This role is hinted at in a number of ways:
Some of the references refer directly or indirectly

to the introduction of fire-worship by these RSis
(I.80.16; 83.5; VI.15.17; 16.13, 14; VIII.23.17). But
many refer to this symbolically by connecting
these RSis in a mythical way with Indra’s
thunderbolt (the BhRgus are mythically identified
with lightning since it also plays the role of
bringing down fire from the heavens to the earth):
this thunderbolt is said to be made out of the
bones of Dadhyanc (I.84.13), and USanA is said
to have manufactured this bolt for Indra (I.51.10,
11; 121.12; V.34.2). In this connection, USanA is
often closely associated with the mythical Kutsa
(the personified form of the thunderbolt) and Indra
(IV.26.1; V.29.9; 31.8; X.49.3; 99.9), in some
cases both USanA and this mythical Kutsa being
mentioned in different verses in the same hymn
(IV.16; VI.20).
The references to the three RSis fall into clear

chronological categories:
a. The oldest references, in the

MaNDalas of the Early and Middle
Periods (i.e. MaNDalas VI, III, VII,
IV, II, and the early and middle upa-
maNDalas) are only by ANgirases,
and they refer only to the
introduction of fire-worship by the
BhRgus (in the different ways
already described).
b. The next batch of references, in

the MaNDalas of the relatively
earlier parts of the Late MaNDalas
(MaNDalas V, VIII, and most of the
late upa-maNDalas) are now by
RSis belonging to different families
(ANgirases, ViSvAmitras,
VasiSThas, Atris, and KaNvas), but
they still refer only to the
introduction of fire-worship by the
BhRgus.
c. The latest references (in

MaNDalas IX and X, and in the
latest hymns of MaNDala I, the
hymns of Parucchepa and the
ASvin hymns of the KakSIvAns)
also refer to the introduction of fire-
worship by the BhRgus (I.121.12;
X.49.3; 99.9), but now there are
other kinds of references:
Some verses refer to the

introduction of Soma (I.116.12;
117.12, 22; 119.9; IX.87.3; 108.4).
In some, BhRgu composers refer to
their ancestors (X.14.3, 6; 15.9),
and in one, the BhRgu composer
calls himself an AtharvaNa
(X.120.9). In the other references,
these RSis are mentioned as the
favoured of the Gods, either alone
(I.117.12; IX.97.7; X.22.6) or in the
company of other RSis (I.139.9;
X.40.7; 48.2; 87.12).
The picture is clear: the ANgirases were the

dominant priests of the Vedic Aryans, and the
BhRgus were outside the Vedic pale. They were
only referred to, in early parts of the Rigveda, in
deference to the fact that it was they who
introduced the ritual of fire-worship among the
ANgirases.
It is only in the Late Period of the Rigveda that the

BhRgus were increasingly accepted into the
Vedic mainstream.
I.C. The Post-Rigvedic Situation
The BhRgus, outside the Vedic pale for most of

the period of the Rigveda, were accepted into the
Vedic mainstream only towards the end of the
Rigvedic period.
However, in the post-Rigvedic period, there is a

sudden miraculous transformation in their status
and position.
The BhRgus were clearly a very enterprising and

dynamic family (if their ancient role in the
introduction of fundamental rituals is a pointer),
and, once they were accepted into the Vedic
mainstream, they rapidly became an integral part
of this mainstream. In fact, before long they took
charge of the whole Vedic tradition, and became
the most important of all the families of Vedic
RSis.
The extent of their domination is almost

incredible, and it starts with a near monopoly over
the Vedic literature itself: the only recession of the
Rigveda that is extant today is a BhRgu recession
(SAkala); one (and the more important one) of the
two extant recessions of the Atharvaveda is a
BhRgu recession (Saunaka); one (and the most
important one) of the three extant recessions of
the SAmaveda is a BhRgu recession (JaiminIya);
and one (and the most important one among the
four KRSNa or Black recessions) of the six extant
recessions of the Yajurveda is a BhRgu recession
(TaittirIya).
The BhRgus are the only family to have extant
recessions of all the four Vedas (next come the
VasiSThas with extant recessions of two; other
families have either one extant recession or
none).
Not only is the only extant recession of the

Rigveda a BhRgu recession, but nearly every
single primary text on the Rigveda, and on its
subsidiary aspects, is by a BhRgu.
a. The PadapAtha (SAkalya).

b. The all-important AnukramaNIs or Indices
(Saunaka).
c. The BRhaddevatA or Compendium of Vedic
Myths (Saunaka).
d. The RgvidhAna (Saunaka).
e. The ASTAdhyAyI or Compendium of Grammar
(PANini).
f. The Nirukta or Compendium of Etymology
(YAska).
Later on in time, the founder of the one system

(among the six systems of Hindu philosophy), the
PUrva MImAMsA, which lays stress on Vedic
ritual, is also a BhRgu (Jaimini).
The dominance of the BhRgus continues in the

Epic-Puranic period: the author of the RAmAyaNa
is a BhRgu (VAlmIki).
The author of the MahAbhArata, VyAsa, is not a

BhRgu (he is a VasiSTha), but his primary
disciple VaiSampAyana, to whom VyAsa recounts
the entire epic, and who is then said to have
related it at Janamejaya’s sacrifice, whence it was
recorded for posterity, is a BhRgu. Moreover, as
Sukhtankar has conclusively proved (The BhRgus
and the BhArata, Annals of the Bhandarkar
Research Institute, Pune, XVIII, p.1-76), the
BhRgus were responsible for the final
development and shaping of the MahAbhArata as
we know it today.
In the PurANas, the only RSi to be accorded the

highest dignity that Hindu mythology can give any
person - the status of being recognised as an
avatAra of ViSNu - is a BhRgu (ParaSu-RAma,
son of Jamadagni).
The BhRgus are accorded the primary position in

all traditional lists of pravaras and gotras; and in
the BhagavadgItA, Krishna proclaims: “Among the
Great RSis, I am BhRgu; and among words I am
the sacred syllable OM…” (BhagavadgItA, X.25).
In fact, down the ages, it is persons from BhRgu

gotras who appear to have given shape to the
most distinctive and prominent positions of Hindu
thought on all aspects of life: KAma, Artha,
Dharma and MokSa; from VAtsyAyana to
KauTilya to Adi SankarAcArya.
I.D. Vedic Aryans and Iranians
The BhRgus clearly occupy a very peculiar

position in Indian tradition and history.
An American scholar, Robert P. Goldman, in a

detailed study of the history of the BhRgus as it
appears from the myths in the MahAbhArata,
makes some significant observations. According
to him:
1. The mythology clearly “sets the BhRgus apart

from the other brahmanical clans… The myths…
unequivocally mark the BhRgus as a group set
1
apart from their fellow brahmans.”
The characteristic feature which sets the BhRgus

apart is “open hostility to the gods themselves…
One of the greatest of the BhRgus is everywhere
said to have served as the priest and chaplain of
the asuras, the demon enemies of heaven and of
2
order (dharma).”
After analysing various myths involving the most

prominent BhRgu RSis, Goldman again reiterates
his point that “hostility emerges as the more
characteristic phenomenon, and the one that
most clearly sets the group apart from the other
famous sages and priestly families of Indian
myth… the motifs of hostility, violence and curses
between gods and sages… are virtually definitive
3
of the BhArgava cycle.”
And “the association of the sage Sukra with the

asuras is one of the strangest peculiarities of the
4
BhArgava corpus”.
At the same time, the traditions record certain

ambiguous moments in this hostility where it
appears that “the BhArgava seems unable to
decide between the asuras and their foes on any
5
consistent basis”.
There is, for example, “a myth that is

anomalous… at the request of Siva, RAma,
although he was unskilled at arms, undertakes to
do battle against the asuras… He does so, and,
having slain all the asuras, he receives the divine
6Here, it must be noted,
weapons that he wishes.”
RAma (ParaSu-RAma) is actually “said to
associate with the gods, and, especially, to fight
7
their battles with the asuras”.
And even in “the long and complex saga of Sukra

and the asuras, Sukra is twice said to have
abandoned the, demons to their fate, and even to
have cursed them… the first time he appears to
have been motivated simply by a desire to join the
8
gods and assist at their sacrifice.”
Goldman, therefore, arrives at two conclusions:
1. “The identification of Sukra as the purohita and

protector of the asuras may shed some light on
some of the most basic problems of early Indian
and even early Indo-Iranian religion. If, as has
been suggested on the basis of the Iranian
evidence, the asuras were the divinities of Aryans
for whom, perhaps, the devas were demons, then
Sukra and perhaps the BhArgavas were originally
9
their priests.”
2. “The repeated theme of Sukra and his

disciples’… ultimate disillusionment with the
demons and their going over to the side of the
gods may also be viewed as suggestive of a
process of absorption of this branch of the
BhRgus into the ranks of the orthodox
10
brahmins.”
Goldman’s conclusions fully agree with our

analysis of the position of the BhRgus in the
Rigveda: in short, the traditional Indian myths
about the BhRgus, as recorded in the Epics and
PurANas, conjure up a historical picture which
tallies closely with the historical picture which
emerges from any logical analysis of the
information in the hymns of the Rigveda.
What is particularly worthy of note is that these

myths, and these hymns, have been faithfully
preserved for posterity by a priesthood dominated
by none other than the BhRgus themselves - i.e.
the BhRgus of the post-Rigvedic era.
And it is clear that these later BhRgus, even as

they faithfully recorded and maintained hymns
and myths which showed their ancestors in a
peculiar or questionable light, were puzzled about
the whole situation.
As Goldman puts it: “That one of the greatest

BhArgava sages should regularly champion the
asuras, the forces of chaos and evil - in short, of
adharma - against the divine personifications of
dharma is perplexing and has no non-BhArgava
parallel in the literature. The origin of the
relationship was evidently puzzling to the epic
redactors themselves, for the question is raised at
least twice in the MahAbhArata. In neither case is
11
the answer given wholly satisfactory.”
We have one advantage over the redactors of the

MahAbhArata - we have the evidence of the
Avesta before us:
1. The Avesta clearly represents the opposite side

in the conflict:
a. In the Avesta, the Asuras (Ahura)

are the Gods, and Devas (DaEva)
are the demons.
b. Here also the BhRgus or

AtharvaNas (Athravan) are
associated with the Asuras (Ahura),
and the ANgirases (Angra) with the
Devas (DaEva).
2. The Avesta also shows the movement of a

group from among the BhRgus towards the side
of the Deva-worshippers: there are two groups of
Athravan priests in the Avesta, the Kavis and the
Spitamas, and it is clear that the Kavis had moved
over to the enemies.
The pre-Avestan (and pre-Rigvedic) Kavi Usan

(Kavi USanA or USanA KAvya) is lauded in the
BahrAm YaSt (Yt.14.39) and AbAn YaSt
(Yt.5.45). Also, a dynasty (the most important
dynasty in Avestan and Zoroastrian history) of
kings from among the Kavis is twice lauded in the
Avesta, in the FarvardIn YaSt (Yt.13.121) and the
ZamyAd YaSt (Yt.19.71). The kings of this
dynasty, named in these YaSts, include Kavi
KavAta (KaikobAd of later times) and Kavi
Usadhan (Kaikaus of later times, who is regularly
confused, in later traditions, with the above Kavi
Usan).
However, the Kavis as a class are regularly

condemned throughout the Avesta, right from the
GAthAs of ZarathuStra onwards, and it is clear
that they are regarded as a race of priests who
have joined the ranks of the enemies even before
the period of ZarathuStra himself.
Hence, it is not the BhRgus or AtharvaNas as a

whole who are the protagonist priests of the
Avesta, it is only the Spitama branch of the
Athravans. Hence, also, the name of the Good
Spirit, opposed to the Bad Spirit Angra Mainyu (a
name clearly derived from the name of the
ANgirases), is Spenta Mainyu (a name clearly
derived from the name of the Spitamas).
The picture that emerges from this whole

discussion is clear:
a. The ANgirases were the priests

of the Vedic Aryans, and the
BhRgus were the priests of the
Iranians.
b. There was a period of acute

hostility between the Vedic Aryans
and the Iranians, which left its mark
on the myths and traditions of both
the peoples.
Now the crucial question on which hinges the

history of the Indo-Iranians, and the problem of
the Indo-Iranian homeland, is: where and when
did this hostility take place?
According to the scholars, this hostility took place

in the Indo-Iranian homeland, which they locate in
Central Asia; and this hostility preceded, and was
the reason behind, the Indoaryans and Iranians
splitting from each other and going their own
separate ways into India and Iran respectively.
This scenario, however, lies only in the field of

hypothesis, and is totally unsupported by the facts
as testified by the joint evidence of the Rigveda
and the Avesta.
To arrive at the true picture, therefore, we must

now turn to the evidence of the Avesta.
II
THE AVESTAN EVIDENCE
AS PER WESTERN SCHOLARS
The official theory about the Indo-Iranians is that
they migrated into Central Asia from the West
(from an original Indo-European homeland in
South Russia) and then they split into two: the
Iranians moving southwestwards into Iran, and
the Indoaryans moving southeastwards into India.
According to another version, now generally

discarded by the scholars, but which still forms
the basis for off-hand remarks and assumptions,
the Indo-Iranians first migrated into the Caucasus
region, from where they moved southwards into
western Iran. From there, they moved eastwards,
with the Indoaryans separating from the Iranians
somewhere in eastern Iran and continuing
eastwards into India.
It will therefore be necessary to examine what

exactly are the facts, and the evidence, about the
early history of the Indo-Iranians, as per the
general consensus among the Western scholars.
This is very important because an examination

shows that there is a sharp contradiction between
the facts of the case as presented, or admitted to,
by the scholars, and the conclusions reached by
themselves on the basis of these facts.
The Iranians are historically known in three

contiguous areas: Central Asia, Iran and
Afghanistan. The basic question which arises,
therefore, is: which of these areas was historically
the earliest one?
Michael Witzel, a western scholar whose writings

we will be dealing with in greater detail in an
appendix to this book, refers dismissively to the
theory outlined by us in our earlier book that India
was the original Indo-European homeland, as the
“contrary view that stresses the Indian home of
the Indo-Aryans. Even Indo-Iranians, not to
mention all Indo-Europeans (!) are increasingly
located in South Asia whence they are held to
have migrated westwards, a clearly erroneous
12
view…”
However, Witzel is compelled to admit that “it is
not entirely clear where the combined Indo-
Iranians lived together before they left for Iran and
India, when they went on their separate ways, by
13
what routes, and in what order”.
As we can see, in spite of admitting that the

evidence does not tell him “where the combined
Indo-Iranians lived together”, he goes on with
“before they left for Iran and India”. That they did
not live together in either Iran or India is to him a
foregone conclusion which requires no evidence.
There is thus a natural inbuilt bias in the minds of

most scholars towards a conclusion favouring a
movement into Iran and India from Central Asia,
which is not based on evidence but on a theory
which locates the original Indo-European
homeland in South Russia, making Central Asia a
convenient stopping point on the way to Iran and
India.
However, another scholar, P. Oktor Skjærvø, in

his paper published in the same volume as
Witzel’s papers, gives us a summary of whatever
evidence does exist on the subject. According to
him: “Evidence either for the history of the Iranian
tribes or their languages from the period following
the separation of the Indian and Iranian tribes
down to the early 1st millennium BC is sadly
lacking. There are no written sources, and
archaeologists are still working to fill out the
14
picture.”
Thus, there is neither literary evidence nor

archaeological evidence for Iranians before the
early first millennium BC.
When literary evidence does turn up, what does it

indicate?
“The earliest mention of Iranians in historical

sources is, paradoxically, of those settled on the
Iranian plateau, not those still in Central Asia,
their ancestral homeland. ‘Persians’ are first
mentioned in the 9th century BC Assyrian annals:
on one campaign, in 835 BC, Shalmaneser (858-
824 BC) is said to have received tributes from 27
kings of ParSuwaS; the Medes are mentioned
under Tiglath-Pileser III (744-727 BC); at the
battle of Halulê on the Tigris in 691 BC, the
Assyrian king Sennacherib (704-681 BC) faced
an army of troops from Elam, ParsumaS, Anzan,
and others; and in the Vassal Treaties of
Esarhaddon (680-669 BC) and elsewhere
numerous ‘kings’ of the Medes are mentioned
(see also, for example, Boyce 1975-82: 5-13). …
There are no literary sources for Iranians in
Central Asia before the Old Persian inscriptions
(Darius’s Bisotun inscription, 521-519 BC, ed.
Schmitt) and Herodotus’ Histories (ca. 470
BC). These show that by the mid-Ist millennium
BC tribes called Sakas by the Persians and
Scythians by the Greeks were spread throughout
Central Asia, from the westernmost edges (north
and northwest of the Black Sea) to its
15
easternmost borders.”
Thus, while Witzel indicates his bias towards

Central Asia as the earliest habitat of the Iranians
while admitting to absence of specific data to that
effect, Skjærvø indicates the same bias while
admitting to specific data to the opposite effect.
The sum of the specifically datable inscriptional

evidence for the presence of Iranians is therefore
835 BC in the case of Iran and 521 BC in the
case of Central Asia. This may not be clinching
evidence (indicating that Iranians were not
present in these areas before these dates), but,
such as it is, this is the evidence.
There is, however, an older source of evidence:

the Avesta.
As Skjærvø puts it, “the only sources for the early

(pre-Achaemenid) history of the eastern Iranian
peoples are the Avesta, the Old Persian
inscriptions, and Herodotus. … In view of the
dearth of historical sources it is of paramount
importance that one should evalute the evidence
of the Avesta, the holy book of the Zoroastrians,
parts at least of which antedate the Old Persian
16
inscriptions by several centuries.”
The Avesta is the oldest valid source for the

earliest history and geography of the Iranians,
and Skjærvø therefore examines the “internal
evidence of the Avestan texts” in respect of
geographical names.
About the “earliest geographical names”, he tells

us: “A very few geographical names appear to be
inherited from Indo-Iranian times. For instance,
OPers. Haraiva-, Av. (acc.) HarOiium, and OPers.
HarauvatI, Av. HaraxvaitI-, both of which in
historical times are located in the area of southern
Afghanistan (Herat and Kandahar), correspond to
the two Vedic rivers Sarayu and SarasvatI.
These correspondences are interesting, but tell us
nothing about the early geography of the Indo-
17
Iranian tribes.”
Here again we see the sharp contradiction

between the facts and the conclusion: “the
earliest geographical names … inherited from
Indo-Iranian times” indicate an area in southern
Afghanistan, as per Skjærvø’s own admission.
However, this evidence does not accord with the
Theory. Hence Skjærvø concludes that while this
information is “interesting” (whatever that means),
it “tells us nothing about the early geography of
the Indo-Iranian tribes”!
The geography of the Avesta is also equally

“interesting”: “Two Young Avestan texts contain
lists of countries known to their authors, YaSt 10
and VidEvdAd, Chapter 1. The two lists differ
considerably in terms of composition and are
therefore most probably independent of one
another. Both lists contain only countries in
18
northeastern Iran.” Skjærvø clarifies on the
same page that when he says “northeastern Iran”,
he means “Central Asia, Afghanistan and
19All these places are
northeastern modem Iran”.
“located to the east of the Caspian Ocean, with
20
the possible exception of Raga”. But, again, he
clarifies later that this is only if Raga is identified
with “Median RagA … modem Ray south of
Tehran. In the VidEvdAd, however, it is listed

between the Helmand river and Caxra (assumed
to be modern Carx near Ghazna in southeast
Afghanistan) and is therefore most probably
21
different from Median RagA and modern Ray.”
While Skjærvø accepts that western Iran was

unknown to the early Iranians, he is deliberately
silent on a crucial part of the Avestan evidence.
He deliberately omits to mention in his list of

names “inherited from Indo-Iranian times” (i.e.
common to the Rigveda and the Avesta) as well
as in his description of the areas covered in YaSt
10 and VidEvdAd, Chapter 1, the name of a
crucial area known to the Avesta: the Hapta-
HAndu or the Punjab!
Skjærvø does mention the Hapta-HAndu when he

details the list of names given in the VidEvdAd;
but he merely translates it as “the Seven
22
Rivers”, pointedly avoids mentioning anywhere
that this refers to the Punjab, and generally treats
it as just another piece of information which is
“interesting” but “tells us nothing” about anything,
since it runs counter to the Theory.
But whatever the conclusions of the scholars, the

facts of the case, as indicated by themselves,
give us the following picture of Iranian geography:
1. Pre-Avestan Period: Punjab,

southern Afghanistan.
2. Early and Late Avestan Periods:

Punjab, Afghanistan, Central Asia,
northeastern Iran.
3. Post-Avestan Period:
Afghanistan, Central Asia, Iran.
To deviate slightly from the evidence of the

Western scholars, we may compare this with the
following picture of Rigvedic geography derived
by us in this book on the basis of the evidence in
the Rigveda:
1. Pre-Rigvedic Period: Haryana

and areas cast.
2. Early Rigvedic Period: Haryana

and areas east, eastern and central
Punjab.
3. Middle Rigvedic Period: Haryana

and areas east, Punjab.
4. Late Rigvedic Period: Haryana

and areas east, Punjab, southern
Afghanistan.
The direction of origin and

movement is clear:
1. Originally, the Vedic Aryans were

in Haryana and areas to the east,
while the Iranians were in Punjab
and southern Afghanistan.
2. Towards the end of the Early

Period of the Rigveda, the Vedic
Aryans had started moving
westwards and penetrating into the
Punjab, entering into direct conflict
with the Iranians.
3. In the Middle and Late Periods of

the Rigveda, the Vedic Aryans were
now together with the Iranians in
the Punjab and southern
Afghanistan, and the Iranians had
also spread out further northwards
and westwards.
To return to the Western scholars P. Oktor

Skjærvø and Michael Witzel, it is not only the
facts about the Avesta (as detailed by Skjærvø)
which clearly indicate a movement from east to
west; even the relative chronology suggested by
the two scholars, extremely late though it is, and
coloured as it is by their staunch belief in the
Theory, clearly shows a movement from India to
the west:
Skjærvø admits that the earliest evidence for the

Iranians is 835 BC in the case of Iran, and 521
BC in the case of Central Asia.
In respect of the Avesta, which is the earliest

source for the Iranians (and whose earliest
geographical names pertain to southern
Afghanistan and the Punjab), Skjærvø notes that
“the most common estimates range between
23However, he opines that “the …
10,00-600 BC”.
‘early date’ for the older Avesta would be the 14th-
11th centuries BC, close to the middle of the
second millennium … the extreme ‘late date’ - 8th-
24
7th centuries BC”.
In respect of the Rigveda, Witzel himself goes far

beyond these dates. As he puts it: “Since the
SarasvatI, which dries up progressively after the
mid 2nd millennium BC (Erdosy 1989) is still
described as a mighty river in the Rigveda, the
earliest hymns in the latter must have been
25
composed by C.1500 BC”
He repeats this point in respect of a specific

historical incident: the SarasvatI is “prominent in
Book 7: it flows from the mountains to the sea
(7.95.2) - which would put the battle of 10 kings
prior to 1500 BC or so due to the now well-
documented dessication of the SarasvatI (Yash
26
Pal et al, 1984)”.
Witzel states that “the earliest hymns” in the
Rigveda “must have been composed by 1500
BC”. But the specific incident he quotes suggests
that, by his reckoning, even very late hymns were
already in existence by 1500 BC: the hymn he
quotes is VII.95. According to him elsewhere,
27
MaNDala VII is “the latest of the family books” ;
even within this MaNDala, hymn 95 must, by his
28
reckoning, be “a comparatively late hymn” ,
which is how he describes hymn 96 which is a
companion hymn to hymn 95.
The historical incident he refers to, which he

places far earlier than Skjærvø’s earliest dating
for the earliest parts of the Avesta (whose earliest
references are to areas in southern Afghanistan
and the Punjab), is SudAs’s battle of the ten
kings, fought on the ParuSNI central Punjab.
This battle was, moreover, preceded by other

battles fought by SudAs. SudAs’s priest in the
battle of ten kings was VasiSTha. VasiSTha’s
predecessor was ViSvAmitra, and under his
priesthood SudAs had fought a battle,
considerably to the east of the Punjab, with the
KIkaTas of Bihar.
Witzel, of course, refuses to accept the location of

Mata in Bihar. But, even so, he places KIkaTa at
least as far east of the Punjab as the area to “the
south of KurukSetra, in eastern Rajasthan or
29
western Madhya Pradesh.”
In sum, the facts and the evidence of the Indo-

Iranian case, as detailed by the Western scholars
(and inspite of the contrary “conclusions” reached
by them), show beyond any doubt that the only
area of Indo-Iranian contact was in the Punjab-
Haryana region and southern and eastern
Afghanistan.
To get a final and complete perspective on the

geography of the Avesta, let us examine what
perhaps the most eminent Western scholar on the
subject, Gherardo Gnoli, has to say. Gnoli is not
a scholar who is out to challenge the standard
version of an Indo-Iranian movement from Central
Asia into Iran and India, and, indeed, he probably
does not even doubt that version.
But the geographical facts of the Avesta, as set

out by Gnoli in great detail in his book Zoroaster’s
Time and Homeland, show very clearly that the
oldest regions known to the Iranians were
Afghanistan and areas to its east. They also
show (and he says so specifically in no uncertain
terms) that areas to the west, and also to the
north, were either totally unknown to the Iranians,
or else they were areas newly known to them and
which did not form a part of their traditional ethos.
Any references to migrations, in his analysis, are
always to migrations from east to west or from
south to north.
The Avesta, incidentally, contains five groups of

texts:
1. The Yasna (Y), containing 72 chapters divided

into two groups:
a. The GAthAs of ZarathuStra (Y.28-34, 43-51,
53).
b. The Yasna (proper) (Y.1-27, 35-42, 52, 54-
72).
2. The YaSts (Yt.), 24 in number.
3. The VidEvdAt or VendidAd (Vd), containing 22

chapters.
4. The VisprAt or Vispered.
5. The Khordah Avesta or the Lesser Avesta,

containing the SIrOzas, NyAyIS, AfrIn, etc.
Only the first three, because of their size, antiquity

and nature, are of importance in any historical
study: of these, the GAthAs and some of the
YaSts form the chronologically oldest portions. In
terms of language, the dialect of the GAthAs and
some of the other chapters of the Yasna, i.e. Y.19-
21, 27, 3541, 54, called GAthic, is older than the
Zend dialect of the rest of the Avesta.
We will examine the geography of the Avesta, as

detailed by Gnoli as follows:
A. The West and the East.

B. The North and the South.
C. The Punjab.
II. A. The West and the East
Gnoli repeatedly stresses “the fact that Avestan

geography, particularly the list in Vd. I, is confined
30
to the east,” and points out that this list is
“remarkably important in reconstructing the early
31
history of Zoroastrianism”.
Elsewhere, he again refers to “the entirely eastern

character of the countries listed in the first chapter
of the VendidAd, including Zoroastrian RaYa, and
the historical and geographical importance of that
32
list”.
The horizon of the Avesta, Gnoli notes, “is

according to Burrow, wholly eastern and therefore
certainly earlier than the westward migrations of
33
the Iranian tribes.”
In great detail, he rejects theories which seek to

connect up some of the places named in the
Avesta (such as Airyana VaEjah and RaYa) with
areas in the west, and concludes that this attempt
to transpose the geography of the Avesta from
Afghanistan to western Iran “was doubtless due
to different attempts made by the most powerful
religious centres of western Iran and the
influential order of the Magi to appropriate the
traditions of Zoroastrianism that had flourished in
the eastern territories of the plateau in far-off
times. Without a doubt, the identification of RaYa
with AdurbAdagAn, more or less parallel with its
identification with Ray, should be fitted into the
vaster picture of the late location of Airyana
34
VaEjah in ADarbAyjAn.”
The crucial geographical list of sixteen Iranian
lands, in the first chapter of the VendidAd, is fully
identified: “From the second to the sixteenth
country, we have quite a compact and consistent
picture. The order goes roughly from north to
south and then towards the east: Sogdiana
(Gava), Margiana (Mourv), Bactria (BAx?I, Nisaya
between Margiana and Bactria, Areia (HarOiva),
KAbulistAn (VaEkArAta), the GaznI region (UrvA),
XnAnta, Arachosia (HaraxvaitI), Drangiana
(HaEtumant), a territory between Zamin-dAvar
and Qal‘at-i-Gilzay (RaYa), the LUgar valley
(Caxra), BunEr (VarAna), PañjAb (Hapta HAndu),
RaNhA … between the KAbul and the Kurram, in
the region where it seems likely the Vedic river
35
RasA flowed.”
Gnoli notes that India is very much a part of the

geographical picture: “With VarAna and RaNhA,
as of course with Hapta HAndu, which comes
between them in the Vd. I list, we find ourselves
straight away in Indian territory, or, at any rate, in
territory that, from the very earliest times, was
certainly deeply permeated by Indo-Aryans or
36
Proto-Indoaryans.”
Although the scholars are careful to include

“northeastern modem Iran” in their descriptions,
the areas covered by the VendidAd list only touch
the easternmost borders of Iran: but they cover
the whole of Afghanistan, the northern half of
present-day Pakistan (NWFP, Punjab), and the
southern parts of Central Asia to the north of
Afghanistan, and, again, in the east, they enter
the northwestern borders of present-day (post-
1947) India.
Gnoli identifies fifteen of the sixteen Iranian lands

named in the VendidAd list. But he feels that “the
first of the countries created by Ahura Mazda,
Airyana VaEjah, should be left out” of the
discussion, since “this country is characterized, in
the Vd. I context, by an advanced state of
37
mythicization”.
While this (i.e. that Airyana VaEjah is a mythical
land, a purely imaginary Paradise) is a possibility,
there is another alternate possibility: the other
fifteen lands, from Gava (Sogdiana) to RaNhA
(the region between the KAbul and Kurrum rivers
in the NWFP) are clearly named in geographical
order proceeding from north to south, turning
east, and again proceeding northwards.
That the list of names leads back to the starting

point is clear also from the fact that the
accompanying list of the evil counter-creations of
Angra Mainyu, in the sixteen lands created by
Ahura Mazda, starts with “severe winter” in the
first land, Airyana VaEjah, moves through a
variety of other evils (including various sinful
proclivities, obnoxious insects, evil spirits and
physical ailments), and comes back again to
“severe winter” in the sixteenth land, RaNhA.
A logical conclusion would be that the first land,

Airyana VaEjah, lies close to the sixteenth land
(RaNhA). The lands to the north (VarAna), west
(VaEkArAta, Caxra, UrvA), and south (Hapta-
HAndu) of RaNhA are named, so Airyana VaEjah
must be in Kashmir to the east of RaNhA. RaNhA
itself leads Gnoli “to think of an eastern
mountainous area, Indian or Indo-Iranian, hit by
38
intense cold in winter”.
In sum, the geography of the Avesta almost

totally excludes present-day Iran and areas to its
north and west, and consists exclusively of
Afghanistan and areas to its north and east,
including parts of Rigvedic India (see map
opposite p.120).
II. B. The North and the South
The geographical horizon of the Avesta

(excluding for the moment the Punjab in the east)
extends from Central Asia in the north to the
borders of Baluchistan in the south.
This region, from north to south, can be divided

as follows:
1. Northern Central Asia (XvAirizAm).
2. Southern Central Asia (Gava, Mourv, Bax?I,

Nisaya), including the northern parts of
Afghanistan to the north of the HindUkuS.
3. Central Afghanistan (HarOiva, VaEkArAta,

UrvA, XnAnta, Caxra) to the south of the
HindUkuS
4. Southern Afghanistan (HaraxvaitI, HaEtumant,

RaYa) to the borders of Baluchistan in the south.
Let us examine the position of each of these four

areas in the geography of the Avesta:
1. The Avesta does not know any area to the

north, or west, of the Aral Sea. The northernmost
area, the only place in northern Central Asia,
named in the Avesta is Chorasmia or KhwArizm,
to the south of the Aral Sea.
The compulsion to demonstrate an Iranian (and

consequently Indo-Iranian) migration from the
north into Afghanistan has led many scholars to
identify Chorasmia with Airyana VaEjah, and to
trace the origins of both Zoro-astrianism as well
as the (Indo-)Iranians to this area.
However, Gnoli points out that Chorasmia “is

39
mentioned only once” in the whole of the
Avesta. Moreover, it is not mentioned among the
sixteen lands created by Ahura Mazda listed in
the first chapter of the VendidAd. It is mentioned
among the lands named in the Mihr YaSt
(Yt.10.14) in a description of the God Mi?ra
standing on the mountains and surveying the
lands to his south and north.
Gnoli emphasizes the significance of this

distinction: “the countries in Vd.I and Yt.X are of a
quite different nature: the aim of the first list is
evidently to give a fairly complete description of
the space occupied by the Aryan tribes in a
40
remote period in their history.” Clearly,
Chorasmia is not part of this space.
As a matter of fact, Chorasmia is named as

“practically the very furthest horizon reached by
41
Mi?ra’s gaze” and Gnoli suggests that “the
inclusion of the name of Chorasmia in this YaSt
… could in fact be a mention or an interpolation
whose purpose, whether conscious or
unconscious, was rather meant to continue in a
south-north direction the list of lands over
which Mi?ra’s gaze passed by indicating a
country on the outskirts such as Chorasmia
(which must have been very little known at the
42
time the YaSt was composed)”.
The suggestion that the inclusion of Chorasmia in

the YaSt is an interpolation is based on a solid
linguistic fact: the name, XvAirizAm, as it occurs
in the reference, is “in a late, clearly Middle
43
Persian nominal form”.
Hence Gnoli rejects as “groundless” any theory

which attempts “to show that airyanAm VaEjO in
the VendidAd is equivalent to XvAirizAm in the
44
Mihr YaSt” , and which tries to reconstruct “from
a comparison of the geographical data in the Mihr
YaSt and the ZamyAd YaSt the route followed by
the Iranian tribes in their migration southwards, or
the expansion in the same direction of the
45
Zoroastrian community”.
As a matter of fact, even though it contradicts the

Theory, there have been a great many scholars
who have claimed a movement in the opposite
direction in the case of Chorasmia: “It has been
said that the Chorasmians moved from the south
(from the territory immediately to the east of the
Parthians and the Hyrcanians) towards the north
46
(to XwArizm).”
The scholars who make this claim suggest that

“the probable ancient seat of the Chorasmians
was a country with both mountainous areas and
plains, much further south than XIva, whereas the
oasis of XIva was a more recent seat which they
may have moved to precisely in consequence of
the growing power of the Achaemenians by
which, as Herodotus says, they were deprived of
47
a considerable part of their land”.
While Gnoli does not agree with the late

chronology suggested for this south-to-north
movement, and gives evidence to show that
“Chorasmia corresponded more or less to
historical XwArizm even before Darius I’s reign
48
(521-486 BC)” , he nevertheless agrees with the
suggested direction of migration, which is,
moreover, backed by the opinion of
archaeologists:
“As a matter of fact, we are able to reconstruct a

south-north migration of the Chorasmians on a
smaller scale only, as it is a well known fact that
the delta of the Oxus moved in the same direction
between the end of the second millennium and
the 6th century BC and ended up flowing into the
49
Aral Sea.” Therefore, “we cannot rule out the
possibility that the Chorasmians, as pointed out,
moved in this same direction and that at the
beginning of the Achaemenian empire there were
still settlements of them further south. At all
events, this is the explanation that archaeologists
give for the proto-historic settlement of
Chorasmia, without taking into account precise
50
ethnic identifications.”
In short, far from being the early homeland from

which the (Indo-)Iranians migrated
southwards, “XwArizm … appears upon an
unprejudiced examination, as a remote, outlying
province which never played a really central part
in the political and cultural history of Iran before
51And the region was so
the Middle Ages”.
unknown that there was, among the Iranians,
“absence of any sure knowledge of the very
existence of the Aral Sea as a separate body of
water with a name of its own, even as late as the
52
time of Alexander”.
2. The countries in southern Central Asia and

northern Afghanistan (Sogdiana, Margiana and
Bactria), particularly southern Bactria or Balkh
which falls in northern Afghanistan, are very much
a part of Iranian territory as per the evidence of
the Avesta.
However, this evidence also makes it clear that

these territories were, in the words of Gnoli,
“peripheral”, and the traditions to this effect
persisted as late as the period of the Macedonian
conquest of these areas.
As Gnoli puts it: “in the denomination of Ariana,

which became known to the Greeks after the
Macedonian conquest of the eastern territories of
the old Persian empire, there was obviously
reflected a tradition that located the Aryan region
in the central-southern part of eastern Iran,
roughly from the HindUkuS southwards, and that
considered some of the Medes and the Persians
in the west and some of the Bactrians and
Sogdians in the north as further extensions of
those people who were henceforth known by the
name of Ariani. And this, to tell the truth, fits
nicely into the picture we have been trying to
piece so far. Here too, as in the passages of the
Avesta we have studied from the Mihr YaSt and
the ZamyAd YaSt, the geographical horizon is
central-eastern and southeastern; the northern
lands are also completely peripheral, and
Chorasmia, which is present only in the very
peculiar position of which we have spoken in the
53
Mihr YaSt, is not included.” (Note: by “eastern
Iran”, Gnoli refers to Afghanistan, which forms the
eastern part of the Iranian plateau.)
Balkh or southern Bactria does play a prominent

role in later Iranian and Zoroastrian tradition
“which would have ViStAspa linked with Balx and
54
SIstAn” (i.e. with both the northernmost and
southernmost parts of Afghanistan).
However, referring to “the tradition that links Kavi

ViStAspa with Bactria”, Gnoli notes that “the
explanation of ViStAspa being Bactrian and not
55He attributes the
Drangian is a feeble one”.
tradition to “the period of Bactrian hegemony
which Djakonov dates between 650 and 540 BC”,
during which “the old … tradition of Kavi
ViStAspa, who was originally linked with
Drangiana, could have taken on, so to speak, a
56
new, Bactrian guise”.
The Avesta itself is clear in identifying ViStAspa

with the southern regions only.
In sum, the more northern regions of Sogdiana

and Margiana were “completely peripheral”, and,
in the words of Gnoli, “we may consider that the
northernmost regions where Zoroaster carried out
57
his work were Bactria and Areia”.
3. When we come to the areas to the south of the

HindUkuS, we are clearly in the mainland of the
Avestan territory.
Gnoli repeatedly stresses throughout his book

that the airyo-Sayana or Land of the Aryans
described in the Avesta refers to “the vast region
58
that stretches southward from the HindUkuS,”
that is, “from the southern slopes of the great
mountain chains towards the valleys of the rivers
59
that flow south, like the Hilmand…” In this
respect he notes that “there is a substantial
uniformity in the geographical horizon between Yt.
XIX and Yt.X ... and the same can be said for Vd.I
… these Avestan texts which contain in different
forms, and for different purposes, items of
information that are useful for historical
geography give a fairly uniform picture: eastern
Iran, with a certain prevalence of the countries
reaching upto the southern slopes of the
60
HindUkuS.”
Likewise, in later Greek tradition, ArianE “is the

Greek name which doubtless reflects an older
Iranian tradition that designated with an
equivalent form the regions of eastern Iran lying
mostly south, and not north, of the HindUkuS. It
is clear how important this information is in our
61
research as a whole.”
Again, it must be noted that Gnoli uses the term

“eastern Iran” to designate Afghanistan, which
forms the eastern part of the Iranian plateau.
4. But it is the southern part of this “vast region

that stretches southward from the HindUkuS,”
which clearly constitutes the very core and heart
of the Avesta: SIstAn or Drangiana, the region of
HaEtumant (Hilmand) and the HAmUn-i Hilmand
basin which forms its western boundary
(separating Afghanistan from present-day Iran).
Gnoli notes that “the Hilmand region and the

HAmUn-i Hilmand are beyond all doubt the most
minutely described countries in Avestan
geography. The ZamyAd YaSt, as we have seen,
names the Kasaoya, i.e. the HAmUn-i Hilmand,
USi?am mountain, the KUh-i XwAja, the
HaEtumant, the Hilmand, and the rivers XvAstrA,
HvaspA, Frada?A, XvarAnahvaitI, UStavaitI, Urva?
a, ?rAzi, ZarAnumaiti, which have a number of
parallels both in the Pahlavi texts, and especially
in the list in the TArIx-i SIstAn. Elsewhere, in the
AbAn YaSt, there is mention of Lake FrazdAnu,
62
the Gawd-i Zira.”
He notes the significance of “the identification of

the VourukaSa in Yt.XIX with the HAmUn-i
Hilmand … of the NAydAg with the SilA, the
branch connecting the HAmUn to the Gawd-i Zira,
of the FrazdAnu with the Gawd-i Zira … and
above all, the peculiar relationship pointed out by
Markwart, between VaNuhI DAityA and the
63
HaEtumant…”
Gnoli points out that “a large part of the mythical

and legendary heritage can be easily located in
the land watered by the great SIstanic river and
64
especially in the HamUn” , including the
“important place that Yima/ JamSId, too, has in
the SIstanic traditions in the guise of the
beneficient author of a great land reclamation in
65
the Hilmand delta”.
ViStAspa is identified with Drangiana, ZarathuStra

with RaYa to its northeast. But, “the part played
by the Hilmand delta region in Zoroastrian
eschatology ... (is) important not only and not so
much for the location of a number of figures and
events of the traditional inheritance - we can also
call to mind DaSt-i HAmOn, the scene of the
struggle between WiStAsp and ArjAsp - as for the
eschatology itself. The natural seat of the
XvarAnah - of the Kavis and of the XvarAnah that
is called axvarAta - and of the glory of the Aryan
peoples, past, present and future, the waters of
the Kasaoya also receive the implantation of the
seed of Zara?uStra, giving birth to the three
66
saoSyant- fraSO- CarAtar-”.
This region is subject to “a process of

spiritualization of Avestan geography … in the
famous celebration of the Hilmand in the ZamyAd
67
YaSt…” , and “this pre-eminent position of
SIstAn in Iranian religious history and especially
in the Zoroastrian tradition is a very archaic one
that most likely marks the first stages of the new
religion … the sacredness of the HAmUn-i
68
Hilmand goes back to pre-Zoroastrian times…”
Clearly, the position of the four areas, from north

to south, into which the geographical horizon of
the Avesta can be divided, shows the older and
more important regions to be the more southern
ones; and any movement indicated is from the
south to the north.
Before turning to the Punjab, one more crucial
aspect of Avestan geography must be noted.
According to Gnoli: “the importance of cattle in

various aspects of the Gathic doctrine can be
taken as certain. This importance can be
explained as a reflection in religious practice and
myth of a socioeconomic set-up in which cattle-
69
raising was a basic factor.”
Therefore, in identifying the original milieu of the

Iranians, since “none of the countries belonging to
present-day Iran or Afghanistan was recognised
as being a land where men could live by cattle-
raising, the conclusion was reached once again
that the land must be Chorasmia, and Oxus the
70
river of Airyana VaEjah”.
However, this conclusion was reached “on the

basis of evidence that turned out to be unreliable,
perhaps because it was supplied too hastily”. As
a matter of fact, a “recent study … and, in
general, the results obtained by the Italian
Archaeological Mission in SIstAn, with regard to
the protohistoric period as well, have given ample
proof that SIstAn, especially the HAmUn-i
Hilmand region, is a land where cattle-raising was
widely practised. And it still is today, though a
mere shadow of what it once was, by that part of
the population settled in the swampy areas, that
are called by the very name of GAwdAr. From
the bronze age to the Achaemenian period, from
Sahr-i Suxta to Dahana-i-GulAmAn, the
archaeological evidence of cattle-raising speaks
for itself: a study of zoomorphic sculpture in
protohistoric SIstAn, documented by about 1500
figurines that can be dated between 3200 and
2000 BC leads us to attribute a special ideological
importance to cattle in the Sahr-i Suxta culture,
and this is fully justified by the place this animal
has in the settlement’s economy and food supply
71
throughout the time of its existence.”
We may now turn to the Punjab, an area in which

there can be no doubt whatsoever about cattle-
raising always having been an important
occupation.
II.C. The Punjab
The easternmost regions named in the Avesta

cover a large part of present-day Pakistan, and
include western Kashmir and the Indian Punjab:
VarAna, RaNhA and Hapta-HAndu, and, as we
have suggested, Airyana VaEjah itself.
Gnoli’s descriptions of Avestan geography,

whether or not such is his intention, indicate that
the Iranians ultimately originated either in
southern Afghanistan itself or in areas further
east. Neither of these possibilities is suggested,
or even hinted at, by Gnoli, since, as we have
pointed out, Gnoli is not out to challenge the
standard version of Indo-European history, nor
perhaps does he even doubt that version.
However, his analysis and description of Avestan

geography clearly suggest that the antecedents of
the Iranians lie further east:
1. Gnoli repeatedly stresses the fact that the

evidence of the Avesta must be understood in the
background of a close presence of Indoaryans (or
Proto-Indoaryans, as he prefers to call them) in
the areas to the east of the Iranian area: “With
VarAna and RaNhA, as of course with Hapta-
HAndu, which comes between them in the Vd.I
list, we find ourselves straightaway in Indian
territory or, at any rate, in territory that, from the
very earliest times, was certainly deeply
permeated by Indo-Aryans or Proto-
72
Indoaryans.”
In the Avestan descriptions of VarAna (in the

VendidAd), Gnoli sees “a country, where the
‘Airyas’ (Iranians) were not rulers and where there
was probably a hegemony of Indo-Aryan or proto-
73
Indoaryan peoples.”
Gnoli is also clear about the broader aspects of a

historico-geographical study of the Avesta: “This
research will in fact help to reconstruct, in all its
manifold parts, an historical situation in which
Iranian elements exist side by side with others
that are not necessarily non-Aryan (i.e. not
necessarily non-Indo-European) but also, which is
74
more probable, Aryan or Proto-Indoaryan.”
The point of all this is as follows: Gnoli’s analysis,

alongwith specific statements made by him in his
conclusions with regard to the evidence, makes it
clear that the areas to the west (i.e. Iran) were as
yet totally unknown to the Avesta; and areas to
the north, beyond the “completely peripheral”
areas of Margiana and Sogdiana, were also
(apart from an interpolated reference to
Chorasmia in the Mihr YaSt) totally unknown.
On the other hand, the areas to the east were

certainly occupied by the Indoaryans: the eastern
areas known to the Avesta were already areas in
which Iranians existed “side by side” with
Indoaryans, and “where there was probably a
hegemony” of Indoaryans. Logically, therefore,
areas even further east must have been full-
fledged Indoaryan areas.
The earlier, or “Indo-Iranian”, ethos of the Iranians

cannot therefore, at any rate on the evidence of
the Avesta, be located towards the west or the
north, but must be located towards the east.
2. Gnoli, as we saw, describes the eastern areas

as “Indian territory”, which is quite correct.
However, he goes on to modify this description as

“at any rate ... territory that, from the very earliest
times was certainly deeply permeated by Indo-
75
Aryans or Proto-Indoaryans”.
Here Gnoli falls into an error into which all

analysts of Iranian or Vedic geography inevitably
fall: he blindly assumes (as we have also done in
our earlier book) that the Saptasindhu or Punjab
is the home of the Vedic Aryans.
This assumption, however, is supported neither
by the evidence of the Rigveda nor by the
evidence of the Avesta:
The evidence of the Rigveda shows that the

home of the Vedic Aryans lay to the east of the
Punjab, and the Saptasindhu became familiar to
them only after the period of SudAs’ conquests
westwards.
The evidence of the Avesta shows that the home

of the Iranians at least included the Punjab, long
before most of the present-day land known as
“Iran” became even known to them.
The point of all this is as follows: Gnoli’s analysis

shows that most of the historical Iranian areas
(even present-day Iran and northern Central Asia,
let alone the distant areas to the west of the
Caspian Sea) were not part of the Iranian
homeland in Avestan times.
On the other hand, an area which has not been

an Iranian area in any known historical period, the
Punjab, was a part of the Iranian homeland in
Avestan times.
So any comparison of Avestan geography with

latter-day and present Iranian geography shows
Iranian migration only in the northward and
westward directions from points as far east as the
Punjab.
The Avesta can give us no further information on

this subject.
But, as Gnoli himself puts it, “Vedic-Avestan

comparison is of considerable importance for the
reconstruction of the ‘Proto-Indoaryan’ and early
76
Iranian historical and geographical milieu.”
Hence, we must now turn once again to the

Rigveda.
III
THE HISTORICAL IDENTITY OF THE IRANIANS
Gnoli points out that the Avesta reflects “an

historical situation in which Iranian elements exist
side by side with … Aryan or Proto-Indoaryan
(elements)”.
Turning to the Rigveda, it is natural to expect to

find the same situation reflected there as well.
And if that is so, it must also be likely that the
Iranians have a specific historical identity in Vedic
terms.
The historical identity of the Vedic Aryans

themselves, as we have seen, is quite specific:
this identity does not embrace all the tribes and
peoples named in the Rigveda, but is confined to
the PUrus (and particularly the Bharatas among
them) who are alone called Aryas in the Rigveda.
All the other people, i.e. all non-PUrus, are called

DAsas in the Rigveda. While it is natural to infer
that the term DAsa was a general term for all non-
PUrus as well as a specific term for the particular
non-PUrus who existed “side by side” with the
PUrus (i.e. for the Iranians), there must also have
been a specific tribal name for these particular
non-PUrus.
The Rigveda (in agreement with the PurANas)

classifies the PUrus as one of the five tribes:
namely, the Yadus, TurvaSas, Druhyus, Anus,
PUrus (I.108.8). Prima facie, the Iranians must be
identifiable with one of the remaining four.
Of the four, all sources locate the Yadus and

TurvaSas together in the interior of India, and the
Druhyus are located outside the frontiers of India.
The most likely candidates are therefore the Anus
who are located “side by side” with the PUrus in
all geographical descriptions (and, incidentally,
even in the enumeration of the names of the five
tribes in I.108.8).
And an examination of the evidence
demonstrates beyond the shadow of any doubt
that the ancient Indian tribes of the Anus are
identical with the ancient Iranians:
1. As we have already seen, the Indoaryan-

Iranian conflict very definitely had an ANgiras-
BhRgu dimension to it, with the ANgirases being
the priests of the Indoaryans and the BhRgus
being the priests of the Iranians: a situation
reflected in the traditions of both the peoples.
This situation is also reflected in the Rigveda

where the dominant priests of the text, and the
particular or exclusive priests of the Bharatas (the
Vedic Aryans), are the ANgirases: all the
generations before SudAs have BharadvAjas as
their priests (which, perhaps, explains the
etymology of the name Bharad-vAja); SudAs
himself has the Kutsas also as his priests
(besides the new families of priests: the
ViSvAmitras and the VasiSThas); and SudAs’s
descendants Sahadeva and Somaka have the
Kutsas and the VAmadevas as their priests.
The BhRgus are clearly not the priests of the

Bharatas, and, equally clearly, they are
associated with a particular other tribe: the Anus.
The names Anu and BhRgu are used

interchangeably: compare V.31.4 with IV.16.20,
and VII.18.14 with VII.18.6.
Griffith also recognizes the connection in his

footnote to V.31.4, when he notes: “Anus:
probably meaning BhRgus who belonged to that
tribe.”
2. The Rigveda and the Avesta, as we saw, are

united in testifying to the fact that the Punjab
(Saptasindhu or Hapta-HAndu) was not a
homeland of the Vedic Aryans, but was a
homeland of the Iranians.
The PurANas as well as the Rigveda testify to the

fact that the Punjab was a homeland of the Anus:
Pargiter notes the Puranic description of the

spread of the Anus from the east and their
occupation of the whole of the Punjab: “One
branch headed by USInara established separate
kingdoms on the eastern border of the Punjab,
namely those of the Yaudheyas, AmbaSThas,
NavarASTra and the city KRmilA; and his famous
son Sivi originated the Sivis [footnote: called
Sivas in Rigveda VII.18.7] in Sivapura, and
extending his conquests westwards, founded
through his four sons the kingdoms of the
VRSadarbhas, Madras (or Madrakas), Kekayas
(or Kaikeyas), and SuvIras (or SauvIras), thus
occupying the whole of the Punjab except the
77
north-west corner.”
In the Rigveda, the Anus are repeatedly identified

with the ParuSNI river, the central river of the
Punjab, as the PUrus are identified with the
SarasvatI: in the DASarAjña battle, the Anus are
clearly the people of the ParuSNI area and
beyond. Likewise, another hymn which refers to
the ParuSNI (VIII.74.15) also refers to the Anus
(VIII.74.4).
Michael Witzel notes about the locations of “the

Yadu-TurvaSa and the Anu-Druhyu”, that “the
Anu may be tied to the ParusNSI, the Druhyu to
78
the northwest and the Yadu with the YamunA”.
3. The name Anu or Anava for the Iranians

appears to have survived even in later times: the
country and the people in the very heart of
Avestan land, to the immediate north of the
HAmUn-i Hilmand, were known, as late as Greek
times (cf. Stathmoi Parthikoi, 16, of Isidore of
Charax), as the Anauon or Anauoi.
4. The names of Anu tribes in the Rigveda and

the PurANas can be clearly identified with the
names of the most prominent tribes among latter-
day Iranians.
The DASarAjña battle (described in three hymns
in the Rigveda, VII.18, 33, 83) was between
SudAs on the one hand, and a confederation of
ten tribes from among the Anus and Druhyus on
the other, which took place on the ParuSNI (i.e. in
Anu territory, hence, logically, most of the tribes
were Anus).
Of these ten tribes, the following six, named in

just two verses, may be noted:
a. PRthus or PArthavas (VII.83.1): Parthians.
b. ParSus or ParSavas (VII .83.1): Persians.
c. Pakthas (VII.18.7): Pakhtoons.
d. BhalAnas (VII.18.7): Baluchis.
e. Sivas (VII.18.7): Khivas.
f. ViSANins (VII.18.7): Pishachas (Dards).
Three more tribes, named in adjacent verses,

must be noted separately (as we will have to refer
to them again in the next chapter):
a. BhRgus (VII.18.6): Phrygians.
b. Simyus (VII. 18.5): Sarmatians (Avesta =

Sairimas).
c. Alinas (VII.18.7): Alans.
A major Iranian tribe which is not named in the

Rigveda, but appears as a prominent Anu tribe in
the PurANas and epics is the Madras: Medes
(Madai).
Significantly, the Anu king who leads the

confederation of Anu tribes against SudAs (and
who is named in VII.18.12) has a name which to
this day is common among Zoroastrians: KavaSa.
Furthermore, this king is also called Kavi

CAyamAna four verses earlier (in VII.18.8). This
is significant because an ancestor of this king,
AbhyAvartin CAyamAna, is identified in VI.27.8 as
a PArthava (Parthian). At the same time, Kavi is
the title of the kings of the most important dynasty
in Avestan and Zoroastrian history, the KavyAn or
Kayanian dynasty. In later times, it is the Parthian
kings who were the loudest and most persistent in
their claims to being descendants of the
Kayanians.
If the full name of this king is interpreted as Kavi

KavaSa of the line of CAyamAnas, he can be
identified with Kavi KavAta, the founder of the pre-
Avestan dynasty of KavyAn or Kayanian kings,
whose most prominent descendant was Kavi
ViStAspa.
Incidentally, other descendants of Kavi KavaSa

may be the Kekayas or Kaikayas, one of the two
most prominent Anu tribes of the PurANas and
later Indian tradition (the other being the Madras),
who are located in western Punjab, and whose
name bears such a close resemblance to the
names of the Kayanian kings.
5. The DAsas of the Rigveda are opposed to the

Aryas: since the word Arya refers to PUrus in
general and the Bharatas in particular, the word
DAsa should logically refer to non-PUrus in
general and the Anus (or Iranians) in particular.
The word DAsa is found in 54 hymns (63 verses)

and in an overwhelming majority of these
references, it refers either to human enemies of
the Vedic Aryans, or to atmospheric demons
killed by Indra: in most of the cases, it is difficult to
know which of the two is being referred to, and in
some of them perhaps both are being
simultaneously referred to. In any case, since
these references are usually non-specific, it
makes no material difference to our historical
analysis.
There are eight verses which refer to both Arya

and Dasa enemies; and in this case it is certain
that human enemies are being referred to. As we
have already seen in an earlier chapter, these
verses (VI.22.10; 33.3; 60.6; VII.83.1; X.38.3;
69.6; 83.1; 102.3) help us to confirm the identity
of the Aryas of the Rigveda. However, they give
us no help in respect of the DAsas.
But finally, there are three verses which stand out
from the rest: they contain references which are
friendly towards the DAsas:
a. In VIII.5.31, the ASvins are depicted as

accepting the offerings of the DAsas.
b. In VIII.46.32, the patrons are referred to as

DAsas.
c. In VIII.51.9, Indra is described as belonging to

both Aryas and DAsas.
Given the nature (and, as we shall see later, the

period) of MaNDala VIII, and the fact that all
these three hymns are dAnastutis (hymns in
praise of donors), it is clear that the friendly
references have to do with the identity of the
patrons in these hymns.
A special feature of these dAnastutis is that, while

everywhere else in the Rigveda we find patrons
gifting cattle, horses and buffaloes, these
particular patrons gift camels (uSTra): at least, the
first two do so (VIII.5.37; 46.22, 31), and it is very
likely that the third one does so too (this dAnastuti
does not mention the specific gifts received, and
merely calls upon Indra to shower wealth on the
patron).
In any case, there is a fourth patron in another

dAnastuti in the same MaNDala (VIII.6.48) who
also gifts camels.
Outside of these three hymns, the camel is

referred to only once in the Rigveda, in a late upa-
maNDala of MaNDala I (I.138.2), where it is
mentioned in a simile.
Now, as to the identity of the patrons in these four

hymns:
a. In VIII.5, the patron is KaSu.

b. In VIII.6, the patrons include Tirindira ParSava.
c. In VIII.46, the patrons include PRthuSravas son
of KanIta.
d. In VIII.51, the patron (whose gifts are not

specified) is RuSama PavIru.
In two of these cases, as we can see, the identity

is self-evident: one patron is called a ParSava
(Persian) and another has PRthu (Parthian) in his
name.
But, here is what the Western scholars

themselves have to say: according to Michael
Witzel, “there are, in the opinion of some scholars
(Hoffman, 1975) some Iranian names in Rgveda
79
(KaSu, KanIta, etc.).” More specifically: “An
Iranian connection is also clear when camels
appear (8.5. 37-39) together with the Iranian
name KaSu ‘small’ (Hoffman 1975) or with the
suspicious name Tirindira and the ParSu
80
(8.6.46)”
Griffith also notes the Iranian connection in his

footnote to VIII.6.46: “From ParSu, from Tirindira:
‘from Tirindira the son of ParSu’ - Wilson. Both
names are Iranian (cf. Tiridates, Persa). See
Weber’s ‘Episches in Vedischen Ritual’, pp.36-38,
(Sitzungsberichte der K.P. Akademie der
Wissenschaften, 1891, XXXVIII).”
The only patron whose identity is not specifically

named as Iranian by the scholars is RuSama
PavIru. However, the RuSamas are identified by
81
M.L. Bhargava as a tribe of the extreme
northwest, from the Soma lands of SuSomA and
ArjIkIyA. This clearly places them in the territory
of the Iranians.
In sum, the Iranians are fully identifiable with the

Anus, the particular DAsas (non-PUrus) of the
Rigveda.
IV
THE IRANIAN MIGRATIONS
The evidence of the Rigveda and the Avesta
makes it clear that the Iranians, in the earliest
period, were restricted to a small area in the east,
and the vast area which they occupied in later
historical times was the result of a series of
migrations and expansions.
The early migrations of the Iranians follow a clear

trail: from Kashmir to the Punjab; from the Punjab
to southern and eastern Afghanistan; from
southern and eastern Afghanistan to the whole of
Afghanistan and southern Central Asia; and
finally, in later times, over a vast area spread out
at least as far west as western Iran and as far
north as northern Central Asia and the northern
Caucasus.
The early history of the Iranians may be divided

into the following periods (see chart on next
page).
The details may be examined under the following

heads:
A. The Pre-Rigvedic Period.

B. The Early Period of the Rigveda.
C. The Middle period of the Rigveda.
D. The Late Period of the Rigveda.
IV.A. The Pre-Rigvedic Period
In the pre-Rigvedic period, the Iranians were

inhabitants of Kashmir.
Iranian
Period Rigveda Avesta Geographical
Area
Pre-
1 Rigvedic --- Kashmir
Period
Early
Pre-
Period of
2 Avestan Punjab
the
Period
Rigveda
Middle Period of Punjab,
Period of GAthAs southern and
3
the and early eastern
Rigveda YaSts Afghanistan
Late Punjab,
Proper
Period of Afghanistan,
4 Avestan
the southern
Period
Rigveda Central Asia
In the Avesta, this period is remembered as a

remote period of prehistory, enshrined in the myth
of Airyana VaEjah, the land of severe winters.
This period is not remembered at all in the

Rigveda, since the Rigveda is a PUru book and is
not concerned with the prehistory of the Anus.
Hence, in the case of this period at least, one
must turn to the PurANas, which have a broader
perspective.
In the PurANas, this period is remembered in the

description of the original geographical
distribution of the five AiLa or Lunar tribes.
According to this description, the PUrus were
located in the centre (i.e. Haryana-Uttar Pradesh)
and the other four tribes, in relation to them, were
located as follows: the Anus to their north (i.e.
Kashmir), the Druhyus to their west (i.e. Punjab),
the Yadus to their south-west (i.e. Rajasthan and
western Madhya Pradesh, perhaps extending as
far south as Gujarat and Maharashtra) and the
TurvaSas to their south-east (to the east of the
Yadus). To the northeast of the PUrus were the
tribes of the IkSvAku or Solar race.
The PurANas also relate a series of historical

events which changed the original geographic
locations of at least two of the five tribes:
The Druhyus, inhabitants of the Punjab, started

conquering eastwards and southwards, and their
conquests seem to have brought them into
conflict with all the other tribes and peoples: the
Anus, PUrus, Yadus, TurvaSas, and even the
IkSvAkus.
The result was a more or less concerted attempt

by the different tribes, which led to the Druhyus
being driven out not only from the eastern areas
occupied by them, but even from the Punjab, and
into the northwest and beyond. The place
vacated by them was occupied by the Anus.
This is important here only because it accounts

for the fact that the Anus came to occupy the area
to the west of the PUrus (i.e. the Punjab), while
the Druhyus were pushed further off into the
northwest beyond the Anus.
IV.B. The Early Period of the Rigveda
In the Early Period of the Rigveda, the Iranians

were inhabitants of the Punjab.
In the Avesta, this period is remembered as a

period of prehistory, enshrined in the myth of the
“Vara” or enclosure which Ahura Mazda asks
Yima, the king of Airyana VaEjah, to build as a
defence against the severe winters about to befall
the land: clearly a mythicization of a migration
from a severely cold land to a more congenial
one.
The “Vara” would appear to be a mythicization of

the areas in eastern Punjab occupied by the
Iranians after their migration southwards from
Kashmir: these areas would have been bordered
on the east by the KurukSetra region, which is
referred to in the Rigveda as Vara A PRthivyA
(the best place on earth) or NAbhA PRthivyA (the
navel or centre of the earth). The Avestan
“Vara” (later taken to mean “enclosure”, but
originally merely the first word of the phrase Vara
A PRthivyA) is also thought of as a kind of
Paradise occupying a central position on earth
(and was, on this basis, identified by Tilak with the
North Polar region).
The Avestan concept of a six-month long day and
a six-month long night in the Vara is probably an
indication of the special and sacred position of the
Vara in Avestan mythology: in later Indian
tradition, a six-month long period each represents
the day and night of the Gods; and the
KurukSetra region is known as BrahmAvarta (the
land of BrahmA or the Land of the Gods) as
distinct from AryAvarta (the Land of the Aryas) to
its east.
The KurukSetra region was thus the common

sacred land of the Iranians to its west (the Anus in
the Punjab) and the Vedic Aryans to its east (the
PUrus in Uttar Pradesh).
The hostilities and conflicts which led to the

migrations of the Iranians from this land may be
symbolises in the “excessive heat” created by
Angra Mainyu to drive them out of Hapta-HAndu:
in the Rigveda (VII.6.3) the Dasyus were chased
westwards by Agni.
The memories of the eastern land in the Avesta

are not, however, restricted only to the myth of
the Vara: we find a very significant reference in
the very first verse of the ZamyAd YaSt (Yt.19.1),
the most geographically descriptive YaSt in the
Avesta.
Darmetester translates the verse as follows: “The

first mountain that rose up out of the earth, O
Spitama ZarathuStra! was the Haraiti Barez. That
mountain stretches all along the shores of the
land washed by waters towards the east. The
second mountain was Mount ZeredhO outside
Mount Manusha; this mountain too stretches all
along the shores of the land washed by waters
82
towards the east.” In his footnote to the word
“outside” which precedes Mount Manusha in his
translation, he notes that the phrase pArentarem
aredhO which he translates as “outside” is of
doubtful meaning and probably means “beyond”.
The Manusha of Yt.19.1 (which no one has been

able to identify to this day) is certainly the
MAnuSa of the Rigveda:
a. The Avestan description specifically states that

Manusha is located in the east.
b. The name is identified, even by the Western

scholars, as a name alien to the Iranian ethos and
connected with the Indoaryan ethos: The
Cambridge History of Iran, in its reference to the
word Manusha as it occurs in the name of an
Avestan hero ManuSCithra (whom we will refer to
again shortly) points out that it “means ‘from the
race of Manu’, and refers to the ancient mythical
figure, Manu, son of Vivasvant, who was regarded
in India as the first man and father of the human
race. He has no place in Iranian tradition, where
his role is played by Yima, and later GayOmard.
It appears, though, that we have a derivative of
his name in Manusha (Yasht 19.1), the name of a
83
mountain…”
c. The scholars translate the Avestan reference

as “Mount Manusha”.
However, the reference not only does not call

Manusha a mountain, but the context makes it
clear that it is definitely not one: the verse clearly
states that it is referring to only two mountains,
Haraiti Barez and ZeredhO, and Manusha is
named only in order to point out the direction of
Mount ZeredhO. Haraiti Barez and ZeredhO are
the first two in a list of mountains named in the
following verses of the YaSt, and if Manusha had
also been the name of a mountain, it would have
figured in the list as such in its own right. The
words pArentarem aredhO precede the word
Manusha; and while pArentarem means “beyond”,
the word aredhO (whose meaning is not known)
probably refers to a river or body of water: a
similar word occurs in the name of the Avestan
goddess of waters: aredvI- sUrA anAhitA.
And the name MAnuSa as the name of a place

associated with a body of water occurs in the
Rigveda, as we have already seen: III.23.4
specifically describes this place as being located
between the SarasvatI and DRSadvatI rivers in
the Vara A PRthivyA (i.e. KurukSetra), which is
literally a “land washed by waters towards the
east” of the Iranian area.
The Manusha in the Avestan reference (Yt.19.1)

clearly represents a residual memory of the
earlier eastern homeland.
Information in the Rigveda about the events in the

Early Period is more specific, since this period
represents contemporary events in the Early
MaNDalas while it represents prehistory in the
Avesta.
In the earlier part of the Early Period, there

appears to have been some degree of bonhomie
between the PUrus (Vedic Aryans) and Anus
(Iranians) when they shared a common religious
heritage in the region stretching out on both sides
of KurukSetra.
MaNDala VI, in fact, records an alliance between

the Bharatas (led by SRnjaya) and the Anus (led
by AbhyAvartin CAyamAna) against the Yadus
and TurvaSas who were attacking KurukSetra
(HariyUpIyA = DRSadvatI) from the south (VI.27).
However, in the course of time, relations

deteriorated, and MaNDala VI itself later identifies
the Anus as droghas (enemies or fiends) in
VI.62.9. The hostilities reached a climax during
the time of SudAs, in the DASarAjña battle.
This battle is crucial to an understanding of early

Indo-Iranian history:
1. The evidence of the hymns shows that in this

period all the major Iranian groups were settled in
the Punjab, including all those found, in later
times, in the geographically furthest areas from
the Punjab: the Phrygians (later in Turkey), the
Alans (later in the northern Caucasus), and the
Khivas (later in Chorasmia), not to mention the
major peoples of latter-day Afghanistan
(Pakhtoons) and Iran (Persians, Parthians,
Medes).
2. The hymns clearly record that this battle saw

the defeat of the Anus, the conquest of their
territories by SudAs (VII.18.13), and the
commencement of their migration westwards.
It may also be noted that the Spitama line of

priests also appears to be referred to in the
DASarAjña hymns in the form of a special figure
of speech which has not been understood by the
scholars so far:
In VII.33.9, 12, VasiSTha is referred to as wearing

the vestments spun by Yama and brought to him
by Apsaras.
Yama, as we have seen, is identified with the

BhRgus and the Iranians; and the Apsaras are
mythical beings closely identified with the
Gandharvas who represent the western region of
GandhArI or southeastern Afghanistan.
The references in VII.33.9, 12 are the only

references to Yama or to the Apsaras in the
whole of the Early and Middle MaNDalas and upa-
maNDalas (i.e. in MaNDalas VI, III, VII, IV, II, and
the early and middle upa-maNDalas of MaNDala
I) except for one other reference to Yama in
I.83.5, which also emphasises his BhRgu identity
by naming him with other ancient BhRgus like
AtharvaNa and USanA.
VasiSTha wearing the vestments spun by Yama,

who represents the BhRgus who are his enemies
in the battle, can be understood only in the sense
of a figure of speech indicating victory over his
enemies.
Therefore, this must also be the meaning of the

only other references, in these hymns, to the
vestments of the VasiSThas or the TRtsus: they
are twice referred to as wearing what Griffith
translates as “white robes” (VII.33.1; 83.8).
The word Svityanca, which occurs only in these

two verses in the whole of the, Rigveda, clearly
has some unique connotation different from the
commonplace meaning of “white”.
On the lines of the references to the vestments

spun by Yama, it is clear that the word Svityanca
refers to the identity of the enemies: to the
Spitamas, the particular priests of the enemies of
SudAs and VasiSTha.
To sum up: in the Early Period of the Rigveda, the

Iranians were inhabitants of the Punjab, and it is
only towards the end of this period, in the time of
SudAs, that they started on their migration
westwards.
IV.C. The Middle Period of the Rigveda
IV.C. The Middle Period of the Rigveda
In the Middle Period of the Rigveda, the Iranians

were settled in Afghanistan.
From the viewpoint of Indo-Iranian relations, this

period can be divided into two parts:
The earlier part of this period (MaNDala IV and

the middle upa-maNDalas) represents a
continuation and culmination of the Indo-Iranian
hostilities which commenced in the Early Period.
Unlike the Early Period, however, this period is
contemporaneous with the period of composition
of the earliest parts of the Avesta (the GAthAs
and the earliest core of the YaSts) and hence the
events of this period are contemporary events for
the composers of the Early Avesta, and have a
central place in the text. To the Rigveda,
however, these events are more peripheral, unlike
the earlier events in the Punjab at the time of
SudAs.
The later part of this period (MaNDala II) is a

period of peace in which the two peoples (the
Vedic Aryans in the east and the Iranians in
Afghanistan) developed their religions, and the
hostilities slowly cooled down and became
mythical and terminological memories.
The major historical event of this period is the

great battle which took place in Afghanistan
between a section of Vedic Aryans (led by
RjrASva and the descendants of SudAs) on the
one hand, and the Iranians (led by ZarathuStra
and ViStAspa) on the other.
In the Rigveda, the correspondences with the

early Avestan period of ZarathuStra are all found
in the hymns of the early part of the Middle
Period:
1. The leader of the Iranians in the battle was

Kavi ViStAspa, the patron of ZarathuStra
(mentioned by ZarathuStra in his GAthAs: Y.28.7;
46.16; 51.16; 53.2).
In the Rigveda, IStASva (ViStAspa) is mentioned

in I.122.13, attributed to KakSIvAn Dairghatamas
AuSija: kimiStASva iSTaraSmireta
ISAnAsastaruSa Rnjate nRn.
Griffith translates the above vaguely as “What can

he do whose steeds and reins are choicest?
These, the all potent, urge brave men to
conquest”. And, in his footnotes, he opines that
“the whole hymn, as Wilson observes, ‘is very
elliptical and obscure’ and much of it is at present
unintelligible”.
84
But S.K. Hodiwala points out that SAyaNa
translates it as follows: “What can ISTASva,
IStaraSmi, or any other princes do against those
who enjoy the protection (of Mitra and VaruNa)?”,
and Wilson, while following this translation, notes
that “the construction is obscure and the names,
which are said to be those of Rajas, are new and
unusual”.
A second Avestan hero, whose name may be
noted here, is ThraEtaona.
In the Rigveda, Traitana (ThraEtaona) is referred

to as being killed by (the grace of) Indra in
I.158.5, attributed to DIrghatamas, the father of
KakSIvAn.
2. The VArSAgira battle (referred to in hymn

I.100) is identified by many Zoroastrian scholars
as a battle between the Iranians and Indoaryans
at the time of ZarathuStra. The hymn (in
I.100.17) names five persons as being the main
protagonists in the battle:
a. The leader of the VArSAgiras is

RjrASva. He is identified by most
scholars with the Arejataspa or
ArjAspa who is referred to in the
Avesta as the main enemy of
ViStAspa and his brothers (AbAn
YaSt, Yt.5.109, 113; and GOs YaSt,
Yt.9.30). Later Iranian tradition (as
in the ShAhname) goes so far as to
hold ZarathuStra himself to have
been killed by ArjAspa.
b. Sahadeva is one of the four

companions of RjrASva in the
battle. He is correctly identified by
85
S.K. Hodiwala with the Hushdiv
remembered in the ShAhname
(Chapter 462) as one of the main
enemies of ViStAspa in the battle,
who led ArjAspa’s troops from the
rear. Although not mentioned in the
Avesta, Hushdiv is a natural
development of HazadaEva, which
would be the exact Avestan
equivalent of the Vedic name
Sahadeva.
c. The other three companions of

RjrASva in the battle are AmbarISa,
BhayamAna and SurAdhas.
S.K. Hodiwala points out that “in the Cama
Memorial Volume, E. Sheheriarji quotes RV
I.100.17 …. (and) tries to identify the other
persons mentioned in the said Rigvedic verse by
showing that the names of certain persons known
to be connected with ArjAspa in the Avesta bear
the same meanings as the names of the persons
in the said verse. Thus he says that AmbarISa is
identical with Bidarfsha (= Av. Vidarafshnik)
brother of ArjAspa, since both the names mean
‘one with beautiful garments’. Similarly,
BhayamAna = Vandaremaini, father of ArjAspa,
both meaning ‘the fearless one’; also SurAdhas =
Humayaka, brother of ArjAspa, as both the words
86
mean ‘one with much wealth’…”
Hodiwala, of course, discounts the above

identifications by conceding that “the identification
of persons in two different languages from the
meanings of their names, which are quite different
87
in sound, can have but little weight”.
88
However, Hodiwala correctly identifies
Humayaka, ArjAspa’s comrade in the Avesta
(AbAn YaSt, Yt.5.113) with Somaka, the son of
Sahadeva (IV.15.7-10).
S.K. Hodiwala thus identifies Humayaka of the

Avesta with the Rigvedic Somaka (IV.15.7-10)
while E. Sheheriarji identifies him with the
Rigvedic SurAdhas (I.100.17).
Incidentally, there is a strong likelihood that the

SurAdhas of I.100.17 is the same as the Somaka
of IV.15.7-10.
The distribution of the word SurAdhas in the

Rigveda (everywhere else, outside I.100.17, the
word is an epithet meaning “bountiful”) suggests
that the word may have originally been coined by
ViSvAmitra as an epithet for his patron SudAs,
perhaps on the basis of the similarity in sound
between the two words, SudAs and SurAdhas,
and later the word was also applied to his
descendants:
The word SurAdhas is found only twice in the
Early MaNDalas and upa-maNDalas, in III.33.12;
53.12, and these are the only two hymns in
MaNDala III which deal with ViSvAmitra’s
relationship with SudAs.
In the Middle MaNDalas and upa-maNDalas, the

word is found in I.100.17 as the name of a
companion of RjrASva and Sahadeva; and
elsewhere it is found in IV.2.4; 5.4; 17.8 (all three
in MaNDala IV, which is connected with Somaka).
It is found many times in the Late MaNDalas and

upa-maNDalas as a general term meaning
“bountiful”: I.23.6; VIII.14.12; 46.24; 49.1; 50.1;
65.12; 68.6; X.143.4.
In I.100.17, therefore, it is probably an epithet,

rather than the name, of one of RjrASva’s
companions; and as Sahadeva is already named
separately as one of the companions, the epithet
must be used here for his son Somaka, another
participant in the battle.
3. The VArSAgira battle clearly has historical links

with the earlier DASarAjña battle:
a. The protagonists in the battle

include Sahadeva and (as we have
seen) his son Somaka, both
descendants of SudAs, the
protagonist in the DASarAjña battle.
b. This battle hymn contains the

only reference (in I.100.18) in the
whole of the Rigveda outside the
DASarAjña hymns (VII.18.5) to the
Simyus, who figure as the enemies
in both the references.
c. The word Svitnyebhi occurs in

this hymn (I.100.18) in reference to
the protagonists of the hymns, in
the same sense as the word
Svityanca occurs in the DASarAjña
hymns (VII.33.1; 83.8).
(Incidentally, the only other
occurence of the word Svitnya in
the whole of the Rigveda is. in
VIII.46.31, in reference to the cows
gifted by the camel-donor,
PRthuSravas KAnIta, identified by
the scholars, as we have seen, as
an Iranian.)
And it is clear that this battle is between the Vedic

Aryans and the Iranians:
a. As we have seen, it has historical

links with the earlier DASarAjña
battle, which was between these
two peoples.
b. As we have also seen, the main

protagonists on both sides, in the
battle, are found referred to in both
the Rigveda and the Avesta.
c. The geography of the river-

names in the Rigveda shows a
westward thrust from the time of
SudAs, which culminates beyond
the Indus in the middle upa-
maNDalas and MaNDala IV.
d. The battle in the Avesta took

place in southern Afghanistan:
Gnoli points out that the Hilmand
delta region is “the scene of the
struggle between WiStAsp and
89
ArjAsp”.
In the Rigveda, the battle is referred to as taking

place “beyond the Sarayu” (Siritoi) (IV.30.18),
placing it squarely in southern Afghanistan.
4. The reference to the battle “beyond the

Sarayu” in IV.30.18 refers to ArNa and Citraratha,
“both Aryas”, who were killed in the battle by (the
grace of) Indra.
There are eight other verses in the Rigveda

(VI.22.10; 33.3; 60.6; VII.83.1; X.38.3; 69.6; 83.1;
102.3) which refer to Arya enemies; but in all
those cases, the references are general
references to both Arya and DAsa enemies, and
no specific persons identifiable as Aryas are
named as such. In this unique reference
(IV.30.18), however, we find two specific
individuals named as Arya enemies.
By the logic of the situation, these two persons

should then be two prominent Vedic Aryans
(PUrus) who had aligned with the enemy Iranians
(Anus) in this battle.
That the followers of ZarathuStra must have

included some Vedic Aryans is accepted by the
scholars: Gnoli points out that “there is no
evidence for thinking that the Zoroastrian
message was meant for the Iranians alone. On
the-contrary, history suggests that the exact
opposite is likely, and there are also indisputable
facts … which show clearly that Zoroaster’s
teaching was addressed, earlier on at least to all
men ... whether they were Iranians or not, Proto-
90
Indoaryans or otherwise…”
The Cambridge History of Iran, as we have seen,

refers to ManuSCithra (later ManUchIhr or
Minocher, the common Parsee name popularly
shortened to Minoo), and notes that his name
“means ‘from the race of Manu’, and refers to the
ancient mythical figure, Manu, son of Vivasvant,
who was regarded in India as the first man and
founder of the human race. He has no place in
Iranian tradition, where his role is played by Yima
91
and later GayOmard.”
The reference goes on to add that the word

Manusha is found in only one other place in the
Avesta: in YaSt 19.1 as “the name of a mountain”.
In later Pahlavi texts, the word is found only in two

contexts: firstly in the genealogies of ManUchIhr
and LuhrAsp, and secondly in the identification of
the Manusha of Yt.19.1 as the birthplace of
ManUchIhr.
ManuSCithra was therefore clearly a Vedic Aryan

born in the KurukSetra region. And the reason he
is held high in Zoroastrian tradition is also clear:
as The Cambridge History of Iran notes: “In the
Avesta, ManUchIhr is called Airyana, ‘helper of
92
the Aryans’…”
In short, ManuSCithra was a Vedic Aryan who

aligned with the Iranians in the great battle; and if
ManuS is his epithet (indicating his Indoaryan
identity) and Cithra is his name, he is clearly the
Citraratha of IV.30.18.
5. The main priestly enemies of the Iranians are

the Angras (ANgirases) who are condemned
throughout the Avesta right down from the
GAthAs of ZarathuStra.
Significantly, the Avesta does not refer to any of

the other Rigvedic families: neither the
ViSvAmitras and VasiSThas of the Early Period,
nor the GRtsamadas and KaSyapas of the later
Middle Period, nor the Atris, KaNvas and
Bharatas of the Late Period, nor the Agastyas.
And, of the three branches of ANgirases, it does

not refer even once to the BharadvAjas. The
Avesta, however, does refer to the two other
branches of ANgirases, the Usijs (AuSijas) and
Gaotemas (Gautamas), both of which originated
in and dominated the early Middle Period, and in
whose hymns alone we find references to the
conflict with the Zoroastrians:
a. The Usijs (AuSijas) are

mentioned by ZarathuStra himself
in the GAthAs (Y. 44.20) where
they are identified with the
Karapans (a derogatory word used
in the GAthAs in reference to
enemy priests).
b. NAdhyAongha Gaotema
(NodhAs Gautama) is mentioned in
the early YaSts (FarvardIn YaSt,
Yt.13.16) as a priest defeated by
ZarathuStra in debate. While many
scholars ignore or reject the
identification of the word
NAdhyAongha with NodhAs, the
identity of the second word as the
name of an enemy priest, (a)
Gaotema, is not disputed by
anyone.
In sum: any analysis of the Rigveda and Avesta

will make it clear that the main enemies of the
Iranians in the Avesta, at least at the time of
ZarathuStra, were the “Indoaryans”: i.e. the Vedic
Aryans or PUrus.
In later Indian tradition, the Iranians became the

asuras or demons of Indian mythology, who
ceased to bear even the faintest resemblance to
the original Iranian prototypes. Likewise, the
angras and other enemies of the time of
ZarathuStra were so mythologized in later Iranian
traditions (in the Pahlavi texts, and in the very
much later ShAhname; and even in later parts of
the Avesta itself) that they ceased to be
identifiable with the original Indoaryan
prototypes. Hence, later interpretations of the
Avestan words (e.g. the identification of the
tUiryas or Turanians with latter-day peoples like
the Turks, etc.) are untenable in any study of the
Zoroastrian period.
The Avesta does not appear to refer to the PUrus

or Bharatas by those names, but then it is not
necessary that they do so: the Rigveda refers to
the Iranians as the Anus (a term which does not
appear in the Avesta); and although SudAs and
his descendants are Bharatas, the DASarAjña
hymns refer to them as TRtsus, and the
VArSAgira hymn refers to them as VArSAgiras.
The Iranians must have had their own names for
the Indoaryans in the Avesta. And it is not
necessary that the names or epithets used by the
Iranians for the Indoaryans should be located in
the Rigveda.
However, we can speculate as follows:
a. The word TUrvayANa occurs four

times in the Rigveda, and in two of
the verses it refers to the person for
whom Indra conquered all the tribes
from east to west (i.e. Kutsa-Ayu-
Atithigva). About TUrvayANa,
Griffith notes in his footnote to
VI.18.13: “According to SAyaNa,
tUrvAyANa, ‘quickly going’ is an
epithet of DivodAsa.”
If this is correct, then it is possible

that this may have been a general
epithet of the Bharata kings,
descendants of DivodAsa,
particularly in conflict situations;
and the Avestan word tUirya for the
enemies of the Iranians may be
derived from this word as a contrast
to the word airya. It may be noted
that according to Skjærvø. the
“evidence is too tenuous to allow
any conclusions as to who the
Turas were or at what time the
93
conflict took place”.
b. ZarathuStra, in his GAthAs

(Y.32.12-14) refers to the grAhma
as the most powerful and persistent
of his enemies.
A similar, though not exactly

cognate, word grAma, in the
Rigveda, refers to the warrior troops
of the Bharatas in III.33.11 (where it
refers to these troops, under SudAs
and ViSvAmitra. crossing the
SutudrI and VipAS in their
expedition westwards), and in
I.100.10 (where it refers to the
troops of the VArSAgiras). These
are the only two occurences of this
word in the MaNDalas and upa-
maNDalas of the Early Period and
the early part of the Middle Period.
The word grAma occurs once in the

hymns of the later Middle Period, in
II.12.7, in its new and subsequent
meaning of “village”. It occurs many
times in the Late MaNDalas and
upa-maNDalas (I.44.10; 114.1;
V.54.8; X.27.19; 62.11; 90.8; 107.5;
127.5, 146.10 149.4) always
meaning “village” (except in I.
44.10, where it means “battle”, like
the later word saMgrAma).
While the early part of the Middle Period of the

Rigveda represents a continuation and
culmination of the Indo-Iranian conflicts of the
Early Period, the later part (MaNDala II and
corresponding parts of the upa-maNDalas) is a
period of peace in which the two people develop
their religions and cultures in their respective
areas. MaNDala II does not refer to any river
other than the sacred SarasvatI.
The first signs of a thaw taking place in Indo-

Iranian relations, in this period, are the
appearance in the Rigveda of an Avestan
personality Thrita, who is counted among the
important persons (Yt.13.113), and is primarily
associated with the Haoma (Soma) ritual (Y.9.10)
and with medicines (Vd.20).
Thrita (Rigvedic Trita) is a post-Zoroastrian figure:

he is not mentioned in the GAthAs, nor is he
mentioned even once in the MaNDalas and upa-
maNDalas of the Early Period and early Middle
Period (MaNDalas VI, III, VII, IV, and the early
and middle upa-maNDalas).
He first appears in the hymns of the later Middle

Period, i.e. in MaNDala II (II.11.19, 20; 31.6;
34.10, 14), and he is clearly a contemporary
figure here: II.11.19, even in the context of a
hostile reference to Dasyus (i.e. enemy priests, as
we shall see in the next chapter) in general, asks
Indra to ensure the friendship of Trita (Griffith
translates the verse as a reference to “Trita of our
party”), and the next verse refers to Trita offering
libations of Soma.
Trita appears in all the MaNDalas of the Late

Period as a mythical personality.
The later part of the Middle Period is thus a

transitional period between the earlier period of
Indo-Iranian conflicts, and the later period of
general peace and religious development.
IV.D. The Late Period of the Rigveda
In the Late Period of the Rigveda, the Iranians

were now spread out over the whole of
Afghanistan and southern Central Asia, and were
still present in northwestern Punjab. The late
VendidAd, as we have already seen, delineates
this area in its description of the sixteen Iranian
lands.
This period represents a new era in Indo-Iranian

relations, where the Vedic Aryans and the
Iranians, in their respective areas, developed their
religions independently of each other and yet
influencing each other, the hostilities of the past
rapidly turning into mythical and terminological
memories:
1. The BhRgus, as we have seen, are now

completely accepted into the Vedic mainstream in
MaNDala VIII, with their old hymns being included
in the MaNDala and the references to them
acquiring a friendly, respectful, and contemporary
air.
2. Iranian kings of the northwestern Punjab

(KaSu, PRthuSravas KAnIta, Tirindira ParSava,
RuSama), as we have also seen, now become
patrons of Vedic RSis.
3. Geographical names of the northwest now start

appearing in the Rigveda, as we have already
seen, and most of these are names which are
also found in the Avesta.
a. SuSoma/SuSomA, ArjIka/
ArjIkIyA, SaryaNAvat and MUjavat,
the four northwestern areas
associated with Soma (I.84.14 in
the middle upa-maNDalas; all the
rest in the hymns of the Late
Period: VIII.6.39; 7.29; 64.11;
IX.65.22, 23; 113.1, 2; X.34.1;
75.5). Of these MUjavat is found in
the Avesta: MuZA, Yt.8.125.
b. GandhArI and the Gandharvas

(III.38.6, a late interpolated hymn,
as we have already seen; all the
rest in the hymns of the Late
Period: 1.22.14; 126.7; 163.2;
VIII.1.11; 77.5; IX.83.4; 85.12;
86.36; 113.3; X.10.4; 11.2; 80.6.
85.40, 41; 123.4, 7-8;. 136.6; 139.4-
6; 177.2). Gandarewa is found in
the Avesta: Yt.5.38.
c. RasA (IV.43.6 in the Middle

Period at the westernmost point of
the westward thrust; all the rest in
the hymns of the Late Period:
I.112.12; V.41.15; 53.9; VIII.72.13;
IX.41.6; X.75.6; 108.1, 2; 121.4).
RaNhA is found in the Avesta:
Vd.1.19.
d. Sapta Sindhu (Sapta SindhUn in

the Middle Period: II.12.3, 12;
IV.28.1; and later as well: I.32.12;
35.8; X.67.12; crystallizing into
Sapta Sindhava only in the Late
Period: VIII.54.4; 69.12; 96.1;
IX.66.6; X.43.3). Hapta HAndu is
found in the Avesta: Vd.1.18.
4. Certain animals and persons common to the

Rigveda and the Avesta appear, or become
common, only in the hymns of the Late Period:
a. The camel uSTra (Avestan uStra,

found in the name of ZarathuStra
himself) appears only in 1.138.2;
VIII.5.37; 6.48; 46.22, 31.
b. The word varAha as a name for

the boar (Avestan varAza) appears
only in I.61.7; 88.5; 114.5; 121.11;
VIII.77.10; IX.97.7; X.28.4; 67.7;
86.4; 99.6.
c. Yima (Vedic Yama), first man of

the Avesta, is accepted into the
Rigveda only in the latest period
(although he is mentioned once, in
special circumstances, in VII.33.9,
12; and once, alongwith other
ancient BhRgus like AtharvaNa and
USanA KAvya, in I.83.5), when the
BhRgus gain in importance:
I. 38.5; 116.2; 163.2;

X. 10.7, 9, 13; 12.6; 13.4; 14.1-5, 7-
15; 15.8;
16.9; 17.1; 21.5; 51.3; 53.2; 58.1;
60.10; 64.3;
92.11; 97.16; 123.6; 135.1, 7;
154.4, 5; 165.4.
d. The Avestan hero associated

with Soma and medicines, Thrita
(Vedic Trita) becomes a popular
mythical figure in the Rigveda in the
Late Period. After his first
appearance in the Rigveda in
MaNDala II (II.11.19, 20; 31.6;
34.10, 14), he now appears
frequently in the Late MaNDalas
and upa-maNDalas:
I. 52.5; 105.9, 17; 163.2, 3; 187.1;
V. 9.5; 41.4, 10; 54.2; 86.1;
VIII. 7.24; 12.16; 41.6; 47.13-16;
52.1;
IX. 32.2; 34.4; 37.4; 38.2; 86.20;
95.4; 102.2, 3;
X. 8.7, 8; 46.3, 6; 48.2; 64.3; 99.6;
115.4.
ThraEtaona (Faridun of later texts) is an earlier

Avestan hero associated with the Indo-Iranian
conflicts, and hence he has already been
demonised in the Rigveda (I.158.5). Hence,
features associated with him in the Avesta are
transferred to Trita in the Rigveda: ThraEtaona’s
father Athwya is transformed in the Rigveda into
Aptya, a patronymic of Trita (I.105.9; V.41.1;
VIII.12.16; 15.17; 47.13, 14; X.8.8; 120.6).
ThraEtaona, in Avestan mythology, is mainly

associated with the killing of the three-headed
dragon, Azhi Dahaka; just as Indra, in Rigvedic
mythology, is mainly associated with the killing of
the dragon Ahi VRtra (hence his common epithet
VRtrahan, found in every single MaNDala of the
Rigveda, which also becomes VRtraghna in the
khila-sUktas and later SaMhitAs).
The Late Period sees a partial exchange of

dragon-killers between the Vedic Aryans and the
Iranians: while ThraEtaona is demonised in the
Rigveda, his dragon-killing feat is transferred to
Trita (X.87.8, where Trita kills the three-headed
dragon TriSiras), who consequently also appears
as a partner of Indra in the killing of VRtra
(VIII.7.24) or even as a killer of VRtra in his own
right (I.187.1).
Likewise, while Indra is demonised in the Avesta,

his epithet is adopted in the late Avestan texts as
the name of a special God of Victory,
Verethraghna (Yt.1.27; 2.5, 10; 10.70, 80; 14
whole; Vd.19.125; and in the Vispered and
Khordah Avesta. Verethraghna is the BehrAm of
later texts).
Scholars examining the Rigveda and the Avesta
cannot help noticing that the late parts of the
Rigveda represent a period of increasing contact
and mutual influence between the Vedic Aryans
and Iranians.
Michael Witzel, as we have already seen, clearly

sees MaNDala VIII as representing a period when
the Vedic Aryans seem to be entering into a new
environment, the environment of the northwest:
“Book 8 concentrates on the whole of the west: cf.
camels, mathra horses, wool, sheep. It frequently
mentions the Sindhu, but also the Seven
94
Streams, mountains and snow.” This MaNDala
“lists numerous tribes that are unknown to other
95
books”. In this MaNDala, “camels appear
(8.5.37-39) together with the Iranian name KaSu,
‘small’ (Hoffman 1975) or with the suspicious
name Tirindra and the ParSu (8.6.46). The
combination of camels (8.46.21, 31), Mathra
horses (8.46.23) and wool, sheep and dogs
(8.56.3) is also suggestive: the borderlands
(including GandhAra) have been famous for wool
and sheep, while dogs are treated well in
96
Zoroastrian Iran but not in South Asia.”
In fact, the period of MaNDala VIII is the period of

composition of the major part of the Avesta. That
is, to the original GAthAs and the core of the early
YaSts, which belong to the Middle Period of the
Rigveda, were now added the rest of the Yasna
(other than the GAthAs) and YaSts (late YaSts,
as well as post-Zoroastrian additions to the early
YaSts), and the VendidAd,
A very eminent Zoroastrian scholar, J.C. Tavadia,

had noted as long ago as in 1950: “Not only in
grammatical structure and vocabulary, but also in
literary form, in certain metres like the TriSTubh
and in a way GAyatrI, there is resemblance
between the Avesta and the Rgveda. The fact is
usually mentioned in good manuals. But there is
a peculiarity about these points of resemblance
which is not so commonly known: It is the eighth
MaNDala which bears the most striking similarity
to the Avesta. There and there only (and of
course partly in the related first MaNDala) do
some common words like uSTra and the strophic
structure called pragAtha occur. … Further
97
research in this direction is sure to be fruitful.”
That this correlation between the Avesta as a

whole and MaNDala VIII, is really a correlation
between the period of the Avesta proper and the
period of the later parts of the Rigveda, is not
acknowledged by either Witzel or Tavadia, since
neither of them admits that MaNDala VIII is
chronologically a late part of the Rigveda.
But the following conclusions of another eminent,

and recent, scholar may be noted. According to
Helmut Humbach: “It must be emphasised that
the process of polarisation of relations between
the Ahuras and the DaEvas is already complete in
the GAthAs, whereas, in the Rigveda, the reverse
process of polarisation between the Devas and
the Asuras, which does not begin before the later
parts of the Rigveda, develops as it were before
our very eyes, and is not completed until the later
Vedic period. Thus, it is not at all likely that the
origins of the polarisation are to be sought in the
prehistorical, the Proto-Aryan period. More likely,
ZarathuStra’s reform was the result of
interdependent developments, when Irano-Indian
contacts still persisted at the dawn of
history. With their Ahura-DaEva ideology, the
Mazdayasnians, guided by their prophet,
deliberately dissociated themselves from the
Deva-Asura concept which was being developed,
or had been developed, in India, and probably
also in the adjacent Iranian-speaking countries…
All this suggests a synchrony between the later
98
Vedic period and ZarathuStra’s reform in Iran.”
Thus, it is clear that the bulk of the Avesta is

contemporaneous with the Late Period of the
Rigveda, while the earliest part of the Avesta
(consisting of the GAthAs and the core of the
early YaSts) is contemporaneous with the Middle
Period.
In sum, the cold, hard facts lead inescapably to
only one logical conclusion about the location of
the Indo-Iranian homeland:
1. The concept of a common Indo-Iranian habitat

is based solely on the fact of a common Indo-
Iranian culture reconstructed from linguistic,
religious and cultural elements common to the
Rigveda and the Avesta.
2. The period of development of this common

Indo-Iranian culture is not, as Humbach aptly puts
it, “the prehistorical, the Proto-Aryan period”, but
“the later Vedic period”.
3. The location of this common Indo-Iranian

habitat must therefore be traced from the records
of “the later Vedic period” available jointly within
the hymns of the Rigveda and the Avesta.
4. The records of “the later Vedic period” show

that the Vedic Aryans and the Iranians were
located in an area stretching from (and including)
Uttar Pradesh in the east to (and including)
southern and eastern Afghanistan in the west.
This is the area which represents the common

“Indo-Iranian homeland”.
The scholars, however, are not accustomed to

deriving conclusions from facts; it is their practice
to arrive at conclusions beforehand (the
conclusion, in this particular case, being based on
an extraneous, and highly debatable, linguistic
theory about the location of the original Indo-
European homeland), and to twist or ignore all
facts which fail to lead to this predetermined
conclusion.
The three scholars in question, Witzel, Tavadia

and Humbach, to different degrees and in
different ways, note the facts as they are; but they
do not take these facts to their logical conclusion
about Indo-Iranian geography and prehistory: all
three scholars firmly believe in the theory that, in
“the prehistorical, the Proto-Aryan period”, the
Indo-Iranians were settled in Central Asia whence
they migrated to Iran and India.
This can lead to a ludicrously topsy-turvy

perspective, as will be evident, for example, from
the following observations by Humbach on the
subject:
Humbach clearly states that the facts suggest a

synchrony between “the later Vedic period and
ZarathuStra’s reform”, and that the GAthAs of
ZarathuStra were therefore composed at a time
when “the Deva-Asura concept was being
99
developed, or had been developed, in India”. In
short, Humbach concludes that the GAthAs, one
of the oldest parts of the Avesta, were composed
at a point of time when the Indoaryans were
settled, and had already been settled for some
time, in India.
But, when identifying the Hapta HAndu in the list

of sixteen Iranian lands named in the VendidAd
list, he chooses to identify it with the “upper
100
course of the Oxus River”. Now there is no
earthly reason why Hapta H?ndu should be
identified with the upper course of the Oxus rather
than with the plains of the Punjab (as very
correctly done, for example, by Darmetester,
Gnoli, etc.), and this identification was mooted by
scholars who sought to identify the sixteen lands
on the basis of the theory that the lands named in
the list refer to a period when the (Indo-)Iranians
were still in Central Asia, and the Indoaryans had
not yet migrated southeastwards as far as the
Punjab. In short, Humbach concludes that the
VendidAd, a late part of the Avesta, was
composed at a point of time when the Indoaryans
had not yet reached the Punjab in their journey
into India.
The incongruity between the two conclusions is

striking.
Clearly, the theory, that the Indo-Iranians were in

Central Asia in any “prehistorical, Proto-Aryan
period”, is not conducive to any logical
understanding of the Rigveda or the Avesta, or of
Indo-Iranian history.
The facts show a different picture from the one

assumed by these scholars:
1. The development of the common Indo-Iranian

culture, reconstructed from linguistic, religious,
and cultural elements in the Rigveda and the
Avesta, took place in the “later Vedic period”.
2. Therefore, details about the geographical

situation in “the prehistorical, the Proto-Aryan
period” must be looked for in the “earlier Vedic
period”, i.e. in the hymns of the Early Period of
the Rigveda.
3. The evidence of the hymns of the Early Period

of the Rigveda, as we have already seen, locates
the Indo-Iranians further east: i.e. in the area from
(and including) Uttar Pradesh in the east to (and
including) the Punjab in the west.
It is not, therefore, Central Asia, but India, which

is the original area from which the Iranians
migrated to their later historical habitats.
Footnotes:
1GPW, p.4.
2ibid., p.5.
3ibid., pp.114-15.
4ibid., p.120.
5ibid., p.127.
6ibid., pp.122-23.
7ibid., p.123.
8ibid., p.126.
9ibid, p.146.
10ibid.
11ibid.,p.125.
12IASA, p.116.
13ibid., p.110.
14ibid., p.155.
15ibid., p.156.
16ibid., p.157-58.
17ibid., p.163.
18ibid., p.164.
19ibid.
20ibid.
21ibid., p.165.
22ibid., p.164.
23ibid., p.160.
24ibid., pp.166-67.
25ibid., p.98.
26ibid., p.335, fn.82.
27ibid., p.324.
28ibid., p.331.
29ibid., p.333, fn.75
30ZTH, p.45.
31ibid.
32ibid., p.59.
33
ibid., p.161.
34
ibid., pp.25-26.
35
ibid., pp.63-64.
36
ibid., p.47.
37
ibid., p.63.
38
ibid., p.53.
39
ibid., p.110.
40
ibid., pp.84-85.
41
ibid., p.110.
42
ibid., p.89.
43
ibid., p.110.
44
ibid., p.88.
45
ibid..
46
ibid., p.102.
47
ibid., p.105.
48
ibid.
49
ibid.
50
ibid., pp.107-08.
51
ibid., p.111.
52
ibid., p.240.
53
ibid., p.141.
54
ibid., p.17.
55
ibid.
56
ibid.
57
ibid., p.227.
58
ibid., p.88.
59
ibid., p.87.
60
ibid., p.88.
61
ibid., p.7.
62
ibid., p.131.
63
ibid., p.133.
64
ibid., p.131.
65
ibid., p.132.
66
ibid., pp.134-35.
67
ibid., p.14.
68
ibid., p.135.
69
ibid., p.153.
70
ibid.
71
ibid., pp.153-54.
72
ibid., p.47.
73
ibid, p.50.
74
ibid, p.69.
75
ibid, p.47.
76
ibid, p.56.
77
AIHT, p.264.
78
IASA, pp.338-39.
79
IASA, p.110.
80
ibid., p.322.
81
GORI, p.26.
82
SBE, p.287.
83
CHI, p.433.
84
ZCR, pp.11-12.
85
ZCR, pp.12, 16.
86
ZCR, p.12-13.
87
ibid, p.13.
88
ibid, p.16.
89
ZTH, p.134.
90
ibid., pp.74-75.
91
CHI, P.433.
92
ibid.
93
IASA, p.171.
94
IASA, p.317.
95
ibid, p.319.
96
ibid., p.322.
97
IIS, pp.3-4.
98
GZ, p.23.
99
ibid.
100
ibid, p.34.
Back to Home
Chapter 7
The Indo-European Homeland
The evidence of the oldest literary records of the

Indo-European family of languages, the Rigveda
and the Avesta, as we have seen, clearly and
unambiguously depicts a movement of the “Indo-
Iranians” from the east to the west and northwest.
And Central Asia and Afghanistan, which,

according to the standard theory, is the route by
which the Indoaryans migrated into India, turns
out to be the route by which the Iranians migrated
westwards and northwards.
This deals a body-blow to a very vital aspect of

the theory which places the original Indo-
European homeland to the northwest of Central
Asia (ie. in and around South Russia), and it
lends strong support to the theory that the Indo-
European family of languages originated in India.
If, therefore, the scholars,, by and large, remain

strongly resistant to the Indian homeland theory, it
is not because the facts of the case rule out this
theory, but because a defence of the standard
theory has become a dogma with the scholars,
and any scholar, particularly an Indian one, who
pursues the Indian homeland theory is
automatically held suspect as a fundamentalist or
a chauvinistic nationalist.
So much so that any theoretical scenario which is

loaded against the Indian homeland theory gains
respectability; and some scholars go to the extent
of deliberately projecting a blatantly false picture
of the whole situation, calculated to place the
Indian geographical area as far out of the
geographical ambits of early Indo-European
history as possible.
An example of this is the clearly fraudulent case

presented by a Western scholar, Victor H. Mair, in
a compilation, edited by himself, of the papers
presented at the International Conference on the
Bronze Age and Iron Age Peoples that was held
at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of
Anthropology and Archaeology (April 19-21,
1996).
Mair prefaces his presentation with a sharp

diatribe against a wide range of what he calls
“extremists, chauvinists, and other types of
deranged - and possibly dangerous - persons (eg.
those who locate the Indo-European homeland in
such highly improbable, if not utterly impossible,
places as the Arctic, along the Indus Valley, in the
Tarim Basin, in China; nationalists and racists of
various stripes; kooks and crazies who attribute
the rise of Indo-Europeans to extraterritorial
1
visitations, etc.)”.
At the same time, he places himself in a beatific

light by announcing that he himself is impelled to
carry out “the search for the Indo-Europeans and
their homeland”, and to “pursue it with
enthusiasm”, because: “I perceive such an inquiry
to be (1) intrinsically compelling. (2) innately
worthwhile. (3) historically significant. (4)
humanistically important. (5) devoid of political
content. (6) scientifically solvable. (7) intellectually
satisfying”, and dismisses scholars of a lesser
breed with the pompous announcement: “If other
people want to distort or pervert the search for
2
their own purposes, that is their problem.”
Mair proceeds to present his thesis, in a quasi-

humorous vein, likening the spreading Indo-
European family to a spreading amoeba.
And he presents his final conclusions, about the

schedule of migrations and expansions of the
Indo-European family, in the form of a series of
nine maps, supposed to represent the situations
in 4200 BC, 3700 BC, 3200 BC, 3000 BC, 2500
BC, 2000 BC, 1500 BC, 1000 BC, and 100 BC
respectively.
We are concerned here only with his depiction of

the Indian geographical area in these maps:
incredible as it will seem to any scholar who is
even generally acquainted with the facts of the
Indo-Iranian case, Mair’s map for 1500 BC3
shows the undifferentiated Indo-Iranians still
located to the north and west of the Caspian Sea!
Which western academic scholar in his right

senses, and with any concern for his academic
credentials, will accept that this depiction of the
Indo-Iranian case in 1500 BC is even reasonably
honest, or deny that it represents a most blatantly
mischievous distortion of the facts?
It may be noted that Mair, pompously and

sweepingly, claims that his maps “are intended
isochronously to take into account the following
types of evidence: linguistic, historical,
archaeological, technological, cultural,
ethnological, geographical, climatological,
chronological and genetic-morpho-metric -
roughly in the order of precision with which I am
able to control the data, from greatest to least. I
have also endeavoured to take into consideration
types of data which subsume or bridge two or
more basic categories of evidence (eg. glotto-
chronology, dendrochronology, and linguistic
4
paleontology).”
An examination of the maps, even as a whole

(and not just in respect of the Indo-Iranians)
shows that Mair would be hard put to explain how
his arbitrarily, and even whimsically, drawn-out
schedule of migrations and expansions fulfils
even any one of the above academic criteria, let
alone all of them.
Mair claims to be interested, for a variety of noble

reasons, in “the search for the Indo-Europeans
and their homeland”; but it is clear that a “search”
of any kind is as far from his intentions as
possible, since his answer (South Russia) is
already determined (although he does let out that
his greater personal preference would have been
to locate the core of the homeland “in Southern
Germany, northern Austria, and the western part
5
of what is now the Czech Republic” , ie. in Hitler’s
home-grounds), and all those who advocate any
other solution automatically fall, in his opinion, in
the same category as “kooks and crazies who
attribute the rise of Indo-Europeans to extra-
territorial visitations”!
Mair’s presentation can certainly be classified, in

his own words, as among the presentations of
“extremists, chauvinists, and other types of
deranged - and possibly dangerous - persons”:
doubly dangerous since scholars like him function
on the strength of a monopolistic academic world
which grants respectability to their most blatantly
fraudulent efforts’ while shunning or condemning
genuinely factual studies, among which we
definitely count our own.
In such a situation, where any scholar, Indian or

Western, who finds that the facts indicate an
Indian homeland, has to struggle against a strong
tide of prejudice in Western academic circles (not
to mention the deeply entrenched leftist lobby in
Indian academic circles), it is clear that
establishing the truth about the original homeland
is, practically speaking, an uphill task.
And the fundamental obstacle is the widely held

belief that the science of LINGUISTICS has
proved conclusively that the Indo-European
homeland is located in and around South Russia,
and, equally conclusively, that this homeland
could not have been located in India: this belief,
as we shall see in our Appendix One (Chapter 8)
on misinterpretations of Rigvedic history, is so
deeply entrenched in the psyche of all scholars,
whatever their views, who examine the problem,
that it appears to overshadow and nullify, in their
perceptions, the effect of all other evidence to the
contrary.
We will, therefore, primarily be examining, in this

chapter, the linguistic evidence in respect of the
location of the Indo-European homeland, and it
will be clear that this evidence, wherever it
indicates any geographical location, invariably
points towards India.
We will examine the case for the Indo-European

homeland as follows:
I. Archaeology and Linguistics.

II. The Literary Evidence.
III. The Evidence of Linguistic Isoglosses.
IV. Inter-Familial Linguistics.
V. Linguistic Substrata in Indoaryan.
VI. Protolinguistic Studies.
I
ARCHAEOLOGY AND LINGUISTICS
The archaeological evidence has always been

against the theory that there was an Aryan influx
into India in the second millennium B.C., an influx
so significant that it was able to completely
transform the linguistic character and ethos of
almost the entire country.
Even D.D. Kosambi, for example, admitted the

fact even as he waxed eloquent on the Aryan
invasion: “Archaeologically, this period is still
blank… There is no special Aryan pottery… no
particular Aryan or Indo-Aryan technique is to be
identified by the archaeologists even at the close
6
of the second millennium.”
This is in sharp contrast to the situation so far as

Europe is concerned. Shan M.M. Winn, for
example, points out that “a ‘common European
horizon’ developed after 3000 BC, at about the
time of the Pit Grave expansion (Kurgan Wave
#3). Because of the particular style of ceramics
produced, it is usually known as the Corded Ware
horizon. However, some authors call it the Battle
Axe culture because stone battle axes were
frequently placed in burials… The expansion of
the Corded Ware cultural variants throughout
central, eastern and northern Europe has been
construed as the most likely scenario for the
origin and dispersal of PIE (Proto-Indo-European)
7
language and culture.”
After a detailed description of this archaeological

phenomenon, Winn notes: “Only one conclusion
seems reasonably certain: the territory inhabited
by the Corded Ware/ Battle Axe culture, after its
expansions, geographically qualifies it to be the
ancestor of the Western or European language
branches: Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Celtic and
8
Italic.”
However, this archaeological phenomenon “does

not… explain the presence of Indo-Europeans in
9
Asia, Greece and Anatolia”.
This Corded Ware/Battle Axe culture represented

the third wave of “the Pit Grave expansion
(Kurgan Wave #3)” in the westward direction.
Winn suggests that “an eastern expansion from
the Caspian Steppe also occured at this
10
time”, and tries to connect up the Tocharians
with “the culture… known as Afanasievo…
located in the Altai region… across the expanse
of the Central Asian steppe to its ragged eastern
11
boundary”, and the Indo-Iranians with the
Andronovo culture which “covers much of the
Central Asian steppe east of the Ural river and
12
Caspian Sea”.
However, he admits that these identifications are

purely hypothetical, and that, even in hypothesis,
and assuming the Andronovo culture to be Indo-
Iranian, “it is still a hazardous task to connect the
archaeological evidence… in the Central Asian
steppe with the appearance of Iranian (Aryan)
and Indic (Indo-Aryan) tribes in Iran, Afghanistan
13
and India”.
Consequently, he describes Indo-Iranian,

archaeologically, as an “Indo-European branch
which all the homeland theories we have
14
reviewed so far have failed to explain”.
The archaeological evidence for any Indo-

European (Aryan) influx into India is missing in
every respect:
a. There is no archaeological link

with any other Indo European
culture outside India.
b. There is no archaeological trail

leading from outside into India.
c. There is no internal evidence in

respect of any notable change in
the anthropological or material-
cultural situation in the
northwestern parts of India, in the
second millennium BC, which could
be attributed to an Aryan influx.
In fact, the situation is so clear that a majority of

archaeologists, both in India and in the West,
today summarily reject the idea that there was
any Aryan influx into India from outside in the
second millennium BC. They, in fact, go so far as
to reject even the very validity of Linguistics itself
as an academic discipline which could be
qualified to have any say in the matter.
This has created quite a piquant situation in

Western academic circles. In his preface to a
published volume (1995) of the papers presented
during a conference on Archaeological and
Linguistic Approaches to Ethnicity in Ancient
South Asia, held in Toronto on 4th-6th October
1991, George Erdosy notes that the Aryan
invasion theory “has recently been challenged by
archaeologists who - along with linguists - are
best qualified to evaluate its validity. Lack of
convincing material (or osteological) traces left
behind by the incoming Indo-Aryan speakers, the
possibility of explaining cultural change without
reference to external factors and - above all - an
altered world view (Shaffer 1984) have all
contributed to a questioning of assumptions long
taken for granted and buttressed by the
accumulated weight of two centuries of
15
scholarship.”
However, Erdosy points out, the perspective
offered by archaeology, “that of material culture…
is in direct conflict with the findings of the other
discipline claiming a key to the solution of the
‘Aryan problem’, linguistics… In the face of such
conflict, it may be difficult to find avenues of
cooperation, yet a satisfactory resolution of the
puzzles set by the distribution of Indo-Aryan
languages in South Asia demands it. The present
volume aims for the first step in that direction, by
removing mutual misconceptions regarding the
subject matter, aims, methods and limitations of
linguistics and archaeology which have greatly
contributed to the confusion currently surrounding
‘Aryans’. Given the debates raging on these
issues within as well as between the two
disciplines, a guide to the range of contemporary
opinion should be particularly valuable for anyone
wishing to bridge the disciplinary divide… indeed,
the volume neatly encapsulates the relationship
between two disciplines intimately involved in a
16
study of the past.”
The archaeologists and anthropologists whose

papers feature in the volume include Jim G.
Shaffer and Diane A. Lichtenstein, who “stress
the indigenous development of South Asian
civilization from the Neolithic onwards, and
downplay the role of language in the formation of
17
(pre-modern) ethnic identities”; J. Mark
Kenoyer, who “stresses that the cultural history of
South Asia in the 2nd millinnium B.C. may be
18
explained without reference to external agents”,
and Kenneth A.R. Kennedy, who 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 BC,
respectively, too early and too late to have any
19
connection with ‘Aryans’.”
Erdosy and Michael Witzel (a co-editor of the

volume, and a scholar whose writings we will be
examining in detail in Appendix Two: Chapter 9)
seek to counter the archaeologists in two ways:
1. By dismissing the negative archaeological
evidence.
2. By stressing the alleged linguistic evidence.
We will examine their efforts under the following

heads:
A. The Archaeological Evidence.

B. The Linguistic Evidence.
I.A. The Archaeological Evidence
According to Erdosy, “archaeology offers only one

20
perspective, that of material culture”. This limit
renders the archaeologists unable to understand
the basis of the linguistic theory.
Erdosy stresses that the theory of the spread of

the Indo-European languages cannot be
dispensed with: “The membership of Indic dialects
in the Indo-European family, based not only on
lexical but structural criteria, their particularly
close relationship to the Iranian branch, and
continuing satisfaction with a family-tree model to
express these links (Baldi, 1988) all support
migrations as the principal (albeit not sole) means
21
of language dispersal.”
But, according to him, the archaeologists fail to

understand the nature of these migrations: they
think that these migrations are alleged to be mass
migrations which led to cataclysmic invasions, all
of which would indeed have left behind
archaeological evidence.
But, these “images of mass migration… (which)

originated with 19th century linguists… exist today
principally in the minds of archaeologists and
22
polemicists”. Likewise, “the concept of
cataclysmic invasions, for which there is. little
evidence indeed… are principally held by
archaeologists nowadays, not by linguists who
postulate more gradual and complex
23
phenomena”.
It is this failure to realize that the “outmoded
24
models of language change” of the nineteenth
century linguists have now been replaced by
more refined linguistic models, that leads to
“overreactions to them (by denying the validity of
any migrationist model) by both archaeologists
25
and Hindu fundamentalists”.
Thus, Erdosy, at one stroke, attributes the

opposition of the archaeologists to the linguistic
theory to their ignorance of linguistics and clubs
them together with “polemicists” and “Hindu
fundamentalists” in one broad category of
ignoramuses.
But, it is not as easy to dismiss the views of the

archaeologists as it is to dismiss those of “Hindu
fundamentalists”.
It must be noted that the opposition of the

archaeologists is to the specific aspect of the
Aryan theory which states that there was an
Aryan influx into India in the second millennium B.
C., and not to the general theory that the Indo-
European language family (whose existence they
do not dispute) must have spread through
migrations of its speakers: obviously the
languages could not have spread through the air
like pollen seeds.
But Erdosy puts it as if the archaeologists are

irrationally opposed to the very idea of “the
membership of the Indic dialects in the Indo-
European family” or to the “family-tree model”. It
is as if a scientist were to reject the prescriptions
of a quack doctor, and the quack doctor were to
retaliate by accusing the scientist of rejecting the
very science of medicine itself.
The linguistic answer to the total lack of

archaeological evidence of any Aryan influx into
India in the second millennium BC, is to “postulate
more gradual and complex phenomena”.
But, apart from the fact that this sounds very
sophisticated and scientific, not to mention
superior and patronising, does the phrase really
mean anything? What “gradual and complex
phenomena” could account for the linguistic
transformation of an entire subcontinent which
leaves no perceptible archaeological traces
behind?
And it is not just linguistic transformation. Witzel

admits that while “there have been cases where
dominant languages succeeded in replacing
(almost) all the local languages... what is
relatively rare is the adoption of complete systems
of belief, mythology and language… yet in South
Asia we are dealing precisely with the absorption
of not only new languages but also an
entire complex of material and spiritual culture
ranging from chariotry and horsemanship to Indo-
Iranian poetry whose complicated conventions
are still used in the Rgveda. The old Indo-Iranian
religion… was also adopted, alongwith the Indo-
26
European systems of ancestor worship.”
In keeping with a pattern which will be familiar to

anyone studying the writings of supporters of the
Aryan invasion theory, such unnatural or
anomalous phenomena do not make these
scholars rethink their theory; it only makes them
try to think of ways to maintain their theory in the
face of inconvenient facts.
Witzel tries to suggest an explanation which he

hopes will suffice to explain away the lack of
archaeological-anthropological evidence:
according to him, the original Indic racial stock
had settled down in Central Asia, and had “even
before their immigration into South Asia,
completely ‘Aryanised’ a local population, for
example, in the highly developed Turkmenian-
Bactrian area… involving both their language and
culture. This is only imaginable as the result of
the complete acculturation of both groups… the
local Bactrians would have appeared as a
27
typically ‘Vedic’ people with a Vedic civilization.”
These new “Vedic people” (ie. people belonging
to the racial stock of the original non-Aryan
inhabitants of Bactria, but with language,
mythology and culture of the Indic people who
had earlier migrated into Bactria from further
outside) “later on… moved into the Panjab,
28
assimilating (‘Aryanising’) the local population”.
“By the time they reached the Subcontinent…

they may have had the typical somatic
characteristics of the ancient population of the
Turanian/Iranian/Afghan areas, and may not have
looked very different from the modem inhabitants
of the Indo-Iranian Boderlands. Their genetic
impact would have been negligible, and… would
have been ‘lost’ in a few generations in the much
larger gene pool of the Indus people. One should
not, therefore, be surprised that ‘Aryan bones’
have not been found so far (Kennedy, this
29
volume; Hemphill, Lukas and Kennedy, 1991).”
What Witzel, like other scholars who suggest

similar scenarios, is doing, is suggesting that the
Aryans who migrated into India were not the
original Indoaryans, but groups of people native
to the areas further northwest, who were
“completely Aryanised” in “language and culture”,
and further that they were so few in number that
“their genetic impact would have been negligible”
and “would have been ‘lost’ in a few generations
in the much larger gene pool of the Indus people”.
The scholars thus try to explain away the lack of

archaeological-anthropological evidence by
postulating a fantastic scenario which is totally
incompatible with the one piece of solid evidence
which is available to us today: THE RIGVEDA.
The Rigveda represents a language, religion and

culture which is the most archaic in the Indo-
European world. As Griffith puts it in his preface
to his translation: “As in its original language, we
see the roots and shoots of the languages of
Greek and Latin, of Celt, Teuton and Slavonian,
so the deities, the myths and the religious beliefs
and practices of the Veda throw a flood of light
upon the religions of all European countries
before the introduction of Christianity. As the
science of comparative philology could hardly
have existed without the study of Sanskrit, so the
comparative history of the religions of the world
would have been impossible without the study of
the Veda.”
Vedic mythology represents the most primitive

form of Indo-European mythology: as Macdonell
puts it, the Vedic Gods “are nearer to the physical
phenomena which they represent, than the gods
30
of any other Indo-European mythology”. Vedic
mythology not only bears links with every single
other Indo-European mythology, but is often the
only link between any two of them (as we will see
in Appendix Three, Chapter 10)
Does it appear that the Rigveda could be the end-

product of a long process of migration in which
the Indoaryans not only lost contact with the other
Indo-European branches countless generations
earlier in extremely distant regions, and then
migrated over long periods through different
areas, and finally settled down for so long a
period in the area of composition of the Rigveda
that even Witzel admits that “in contrast to its
close relatives in Iran (Avestan, Old Persian),
31
Vedic Sanskrit is already an Indian language”;
but in which the people who composed the
Rigveda were in fact not the original Indoaryans
at all, but a completely new set of people who
bore no racial connections at all with the original
Indoaryans, and were merely the last in a long
line of racial groups in a “gradual and complex”
process in which the Vedic language and culture
was passed from one completely different racial
group to another completely different racial group
like a baton in an “Aryanising” relay race from
South Russia to India?
Clearly, the explanation offered by Witzel is totally

inadequate, and even untenable, as an argument
against the negative archaeological evidence.
I.B. The Linguistic Evidence

Erdosy speaks of the “disciplinary divide” between
linguistics and archaeology.
And it is Michael Witzel whom Erdosy pits against

the archaeologists whose papers are included in
the volume: “Placed against Witzel’s contribution,
the paper by J.Shaffer and D. Lichtenstein will
illustrate the gulf still separating archaeology and
32
linguistics.”
We will not assume that Witzel’s papers in this

particular volume represent the sum total of the
linguistic evidence, but, since the volume does pit
him against the archaeologists, let us examine the
linguistic evidence stressed by him.
According to Erdosy, “M. Witzel begins by

stressing the quality of linguistic (and historical)
data obtainable from the Rgveda, along with the
potential of a study of linguistic
stratification, contact and convergence. Next, the
evidence of place-names, above all hydronomy, is
scrutinised, followed by an evaluation of some of
the most frequently invoked models of language
33
change in light of this analysis.”
We have already examined Witzel’s “models of

language change” by which he seeks to explain
away the lack of archaeological evidence. We will
now examine “the evidence of place-names,
above all hydronomy”, on the basis of which
Witzel apparently contests the claims of the
archaeologists and proves the Aryan invasion.
Witzel does not have much to say about place-

names. He points out that most of the place-
names in England (all names ending in -don, -
chester, -ton, -ham, -ey, -wick, etc., like London,
Winchester, Uppington, Downham, Westrey,
Lerwick, etc.) and in America (like
Massachussetts, Wachussetts, Mississippi,
Missouri, Chicago, etc) are remnants of older
languages which were spoken in these areas.
But, far from finding similar evidence in respect of
India, Witzel is compelled to admit: “In South
Asia, relatively few pre-Indo-Aryan place-names
survive in the North; however, many more in
central and southern India. Indo-Aryan place-
names are generally not very old, since the towns
34
themselves are relatively late.”
Witzel clearly evades the issue: he refers to

“relatively few pre-Indo-Aryan place names” in the
North, but judiciously refrains from going into any
specifics about these names, or the number of
such names.
He insinuates that there are “many more” pre-

Indoaryan place-names in Central and South
India, but this is clearly a misleading statement:
by Central India, he obviously means the Austric-
language speaking areas, and by South India, he
definitely means the Dravidian-language speaking
areas, and perhaps other areas close to these.
So, if these areas have Austric or Dravidian place-
names respectively, does it prove anything?
And, finally, he suggests that the paucity (or

rather absence) of any “pre-Indo-Aryan” place-
names in the North is because the towns
concerned “are relatively late” (ie. came into being
after the Aryan influx). This excuse is rather
strange: the Indus people, alleged to be “pre-Indo-
Aryans” did have towns and cities, but no alleged
earlier place-names have survived, while the
American Indians (in the U.S.A.) did not have
large towns and cities, but their place-names
have survived in large numbers.
Witzel goes into more detail in respect of the

hydronomes (ie. names of rivers), but the results
of his investigation, and even his own comments
on them, are intriguing.
According to Witzel: “A better case for the early

linguistic and ethnic history of South Asia can be
made by investigating the names of rivers. In
Europe river-names were found to reflect the
languages spoken before the influx of Indo-
European speaking populations. They are thus
older than c. 4500-2500 BC (depending on the
date of the spread of Indo-European languages in
various parts of Europe). It would be fascinating
to gain a similar vantage point for the prehistory of
35
South Asia.”
It is indeed fascinating. Witzel finds, to his

chagrin, that “in northern India, rivers in general
have early Sanskrit names from the Vedic period,
and names derived from the daughter languages
36
of Sanskrit later on.”
Witzel tries to introduce the non-Aryan element

into the picture: “River names in northern India
are thus principally Sanskrit, with few indications
of Dravidian, MuNDa or Tibeto-Burmese names.
However, Kosala, with its uncharacteristic -s- after
-o- may be Tibeto-Burmese (Sanskrit rules would
demand KoSala or KoSala, a corrected form that
37
is indeed adopted in the Epics).” Likewise,
“there has been an almost complete Indo-
Aryanisation in northern India; this has
progressed much less in southern India and in the
often inaccessible parts of central India. In the
northwest there are only a few exceptions, such
as the names of the rivers GangA, SutudrI and
38
perhaps KubhA (Mayrhofer, 1956-1976).”
Thus, there are four river-names which he tries to

connect with “pre-Indo-Aryan” languages. But
three of them, Kosala, SutudrI and KubhA are
clearly Indo-European names (the hairsplitting
about the letter -s- in Kosala is a typical
“linguistic” ploy which we will refer to later on in
our examination of linguistic substrata), and only
GaNgA is generally accepted as a possible non-
Indo-European name.
But the answer to this is given by Witzel himself:

“Rivers often carry different names, sometimes
more than two, along their courses. Even in a
homogenous, monolingual country, such as
Japan, this can be the case as names change as
soon as the river passes through a major
mountain range. In South Asia, to quote one well-
known example, the BhAgIrathI and AlaknandA
become the GaNgA. This increases the
probability of multiple names from various
languages for one and the same river of which
39
only one may have survived in our sources.” (It
may be noted that the Rigveda itself refers to the
river as both GaNgA and JahnAvI).
Witzel cannot escape the “evidence of

hydronomy” as he calls it, and he tries to explain it
away by suggesting that “there has been an
40
almost complete Indo-Aryanisation” of the river-
names in northern India.
But his explanation rings hollow: “The Indo-Aryan

influence, whether due to actual settlement,
acculturation, or, if one prefers, the substitution of
Indo-Aryan names for local ones, was powerful
enough from early on to replace local names, in
spite of the well-known conservatism of river-
names. This is especially surprising in the area
once occupied by the Indus civilization, where
one would have expected the survival of earlier
names, as has been the case in Europe and the
Near East. At the least, one would expect a
palimpsest, as found in New England, with the
name of the State of Massachussetts next to the
Charles River formerly called the Massachussetts
River, and such new adaptations as Stony Brook,
Muddy Creek, Red River, etc. next to the
adaptations of Indian names such as the
Mississippi and the Missouri. The failure to
preserve old hydronomes even in the Indus Valley
(with a few exceptions noted above) indicates the
extent of the social and political collapse
41
experienced by the local population.”
Apart from anything else, does this last bit at all

harmonize with the claim made elsewhere in the
same volume (to explain the lack of
archaeological-anthropological evidence of any
invasion) that the “Indo-Aryanisation” of the
northwest was a “gradual and complex” rather
than a “cataclysmic” event?
Witzel starts out with the intention of pitting the
linguistic evidence of place-names and river-
names against the evidence of archaeology; and
he ends up having to try and argue against, or
explain away, this linguistic evidence, since it only
confirms the archaeological evidence.
The long and short of the evidence of place-

names and river-names is as follows:
The place-names and river-names in Europe, to

this day, represent pre-Indo-European languages
spoken in Europe before 2500 BC. The same is
the case with Armenia: “among the numerous
personal and place-names handed down to us
from Armenia up to the end of the Assyrian age,
42
there is absolutely nothing Indo-European.” And
with Greece and Anatolia: “numerous place-
names… show that Indo-Europeans did not
originate in Greece. The same can be said for
43
Italy and Anatolia.”
On the other hand, northern India is the only

place where place-names and river-names are
Indo-European right from the period of the
Rigveda (a text which Max Müller refers to as “the
first word spoken by the Aryan man”) with no
traces of any alleged earlier non-Indo-European
names.
Witzel’s attitude towards this evidence is typical of

the generally cavalier attitude of Western scholars
towards inconvenient evidence in the matter of
Indo-European origins: he notes that the evidence
is negative, finds it “surprising” that it should be
so, makes an offhand effort to explain it away,
and then moves on.
And, later on, in his second paper included in the

volume, he actually refers complacently to the
whole matter: “in view of the discussion of
hydronomy and place-names in the previous
paper, it is also interesting that the Indo-Aryans
44
could not, apparently, pronounce local names.”
But, like it or not, the evidence of place-names
and river-names is a very important factor in
locating the Indo-European homeland in any
particular area. And India, and India alone,
passes this test with flying colours.
II
THE LITERARY EVIDENCE
We have already examined the evidence in the

Rigveda which clearly proves that the original
Indo-Iranian habitat was in India and that the
Iranians migrated westwards and northwestwards
from India.
We will now examine further literary evidence

regarding the location of the original Indo-
European homeland in India, under the following
heads:
A. Tribes and Priests.

B. The Three Priestly Classes.
C. The Anu-Druhyu Migrations.
II.A. Tribes and Priests
The political history of the Vedic period is centred

around the division of the various peoples who fall
within its ambit into five major tribal groupings (not
counting the TRkSis, who fall outside this tribal
spectrum): the Yadus, TurvaSas, Anus, Druhyus
and PUrus.
As we have seen, it is only one of these five tribal

groupings, the PUrus, who represent the various
branches of the Vedic Aryans, and it is only the
PUrus who are referred to as Aryas in the
Rigveda.
This brings us to the second division of the

various peoples who fall within the ambit of the
Rigveda: the division into Aryas (the PUrus) and
Others (the Yadus, TurvaSas, Anus, Druhyus,
etc.)
But there are two distinct words by which the
Rigveda refers to these Others:
a. DAsas
b. Dasyus
It is necessary to understand the distinction

between the two words.
The word DAsa is found in 54 hymns (63 verses):
I. 32.11; 92.8; 103.3; 104.2; 158.5;

174.7;
II. 11.2, 4; 12.4; 13.8; 20.6, 7;
III. 12.6; 34.1;
IV. 18.9; 28.4; 30.14, 15, 21; 32.10;
V. 30.5, 7-9; 33.4; 34.6;
VI. 20.6, 10; 22.10; 25.2; 26.5;
33.3;
47.21; 60.6;
VII. 19.2; 83.1; 86.7; 99.4;
VIII. 5.31; 24.27; 32.2; 40.6; 46.32;
51.9;
56.3, 70.10, 96.18;
X. 22.8; 23.2; 38.3; 49.6, 7; 54.1;
62.10; 69.6;
73.7; 83.1; 86.19; 99.6; 102.3;
120.2;
138.3; 148.2.
The word Dasyu is found in 65 hymns (80

verses):
I. 33.4, 7, 9; 36.18; 51.5, 6, 8; 53.4;

59.6;
63.4; 78.4; 100.18; 101.5; 103.3,
4; 104.5;
117.3, 21; 175.3.
II. 11.18, 19; 12.10; 13.9: 15.9;
20.8;
III. 29.9; 34.6, 9; 49.2
IV. 16.9, 10, 12; 28.3, 4; 38.1;
V. 4.6; 7.10; 14.4; 29.10; 30.9; 31.5,
7; 70.3;
VI. 14.3; 16.15; 18.3; 23.2; 24.8;
29.6; 31.4;
45.24;
VII. 5.6; 6.3; 19.4;
VIII. 6.14; 14.14; 39.8; 50.8; 70.11;
76.11; 77.3;
98.6;
IX. 41.2; 47.2; 88.4; 92.5;
X. 22.8; 47.4; 48.2; 49.3; 55.8; 73.5;
83.3, 6;
95.7; 99.7, 8; 105.7, 11; 170.2.
There are two distinct differences between the

DAsas and Dasyus:
1. The first difference is that the term DAsa clearly

refers to other tribes (ie. non-PUru tribes) while
the term Dasyu refers to their priestly classes (ie.
non-Vedic priestly classes).
[This is apart from the fact that both the terms are
freely used to refer to the atmospheric demons as
much as to the human enemies to whom they
basically refer.]:
a. According to IV. 28.4, the Dasyus

are a section among the DAsas.
b. The Dasyus are referred to in

terms which clearly show that the
causes of hostility are religious:
ayajña (worshipless): VII.6.3.
ayajvan (worshipless): I.33.4;
VIII.70.11.
avrata (riteless): I.51.8; 175.3;
VI.14.3; IX.41.2.
akarmA (riteless): X.22.8.
adeva (godless): VIII.70.11.
aSraddha (faithless): VII.6.3.
amanyamAna (faithless): I.33.9;
11.22.10.
anyavrata (followers of different
rites): VIII.70.11; X.22.8.
abrahma (prayerless): IV.16.9.
Not one of these abuses is used even once in
reference to DAsas.
c. The family-wise pattern of

references to them also shows that
the Dasyus are priestly rivals while
the DAsas are secular rivals.
The Dasyus are referred to by all the nine priestly

families of RSis, but not by the one non-priestly
family of RSis (the Bharatas).
The DAsas are referred to by the Bharatas

(X.69.6; 102.3) also; but not by the most purely
ritualistic family of RSis, the KaSyapas, nor in the
most purely ritualistic of MaNDalas, MaNDala IX.
d. The Dasyus, being priestly

entities, do not figure as powerful
persons or persons to be feared,
but the DAsas, being secular
entities (tribes, tribal warriors, kings,
etc.) do figure as powerful persons
or persons to be feared:
In three references (VIII.5.31; 46.32; 51.9), the

DAsas are rich patrons.
In seven references, the DAsas are powerful

enemies from whose fury and powerful weapons
the composers ask the Gods for protection
(I.104.2; VIII.24.27; X.22.8; 54.1; 69.6; 102.3) or
from whom the Gods rescue the RSis (I.158.5). In
three others, the word DAsa refers to powerful
atmospheric demons who hold the celestial
waters in their thrall (I.32.11; V.30.5; VIII.96.18).
In contrast, Dasyus never figure as rich or

powerful enemies. They are depicted as sly
enemies who incite others into acts of boldness
(VI.24.8).
e. While both DAsas and Dasyus

are referred to as enemies of the
Aryas, it is only the DAsas, and
never the Dasyus, who are
sometimes bracketed together with
the Aryas.
Seven verses refer to both Aryas and DAsas as

enemies (VI.22.10; 33.3; 60.6; VII.83.1; X.38.3;
69.6; 83.1; 102.3) and one verse refers to both
Aryas and DAsas together in friendly terms
(VIII.51.9).
This is because both, the word DAsa and the

word Arya, refer to broad secular or tribal entities,
while the word Dasyu refers to priestly entities:
thus, one would generally say “both Christians
and Muslims”, or “both padres and mullahs”, but
not “both Christians and mullahs” or “both
Muslims and padres”.
2. The second difference is in the degree of

hostility towards the two. The Dasyus are clearly
regarded with uncompromising hostility, while the
hostility towards the DAsas is relatively mild and
tempered:
a. The word Dasyu has a purely hostile

connotation even when it occurs in the name or
title of heroes:
Trasadasyu = “tormentor of the

Dasyus”.
DasyavevRka = “a wolf towards the
Dasyus”.
On the other hand, the word DAsa has an

etymological meaning beyond the identity of the
DAsas. When it occurs in the name or title of a
hero, it has a benevolent connotation:
DivodAsa = “light of Heaven” or

“slave of Heaven”.
b. All the 80 verses which refer to Dasyus are

uncompromisingly hostile.
On the other hand, of the 63 verses which refer to
DAsas, 3 are friendly references (VIII.5.31; 46.32;
51.9); and in one more, the word means “slave” in
a benevolent sense (VII.86.7: “slave-like, may I do
service to the Bounteous”, ie. to VaruNa).
c. Of the 80 verses which refer to Dasyus, 76

verses talk of direct, violent, physical action
against them, ie. they talk of killing, subduing or
driving away the Dasyus.
On the other hand, of the 63 verses which refer to

DAsas, only 38 talk of such direct physical action
against them.
The importance of this analysis is that it brings to

the fore two basic points about the rivalries and
hostilities in the Rigvedic period:
a. The rivalries or hostilities were on

two levels: the secular level and the
priestly level.
b. The rivalries on the priestly level

were more sharp and
uncompromising.
Hence, any analysis of the political history of the

Rigvedic period must pay at least as much
attention, if not more, to the priestly categories as
to secular or tribal categories.
II.B. The Three Priestly Classes
The basic tribal spectrum of the Rigveda includes

the five tribal groupings of Yadus, TurvaSas,
Anus, Druhyus and PUrus, and of these the
PUrus alone represent the Vedic Aryans, while
the other four represent the Others.
But among these four it is clear that the Yadus

and TurvaSas represent more distant tribes (they
are, as we have seen earlier, mostly referred to in
tandem, and are also referred to as residing far
away from the Vedic Aryans), while the Anus and
Druhyus fall into a closer cultural spectrum with
the PUrus:
a. In the PurANas, the Yadus and

TurvaSas are classified together as
descendants of sons of DevayAnI,
and the Anus, Druhyus and PUrus
are classified together as
descendants of sons of SarmiSThA.
b. The geographical descriptions of

the five tribes, as described in the
PurANas, place the Yadus and
TurvaSas together in the more
southern parts (of northern India),
and the Anus, Druhyus and PUrus
together in the more northern parts.
c. The Rigveda itself, where it

refers to the five tribes together
(I.108.8) refers to the Yadus and
the TurvaSas in one breath, and the
Druhyus, Anus and PUrus in
another: “yad IndrAgni YaduSu
TurvaSeSu, yad DruhyuSu AnuSu
PUruSu sthaH”.
But, the PUrus represent the various branches of

the Vedic Aryans, and the Anus represent various
branches of Iranians. It is clear, therefore, that
the Druhyus represent the third entity in this
cultural spectrum, and that it is mainly the
Druhyus who will take us beyond the Indo-Iranian
arena into the wider Indo-European one:
appropriately, while the PUrus are located in the
heartland of North India (U.P.-Delhi-Haryana) and
the Anus in the northwest (Punjab), the Druhyus
are located beyond the Indian frontiers, in
Afghanistan and beyond.
The priestly categories, as we have seen, play a

more important role in the rivalries and hostilities
in the Rigvedic period than the secular categories.
In the earliest period, the only two families of RSis

(from among the families who figure as
composers in the Rigveda) were the ANgirases
and the BhRgus, who were the priests of the
PUrus and the Anus respectively. Logically, there
must have been a priestly class among the
Druhyus as well, but no such priestly class figures
among the composers in the Rigveda.
The explanation for this is simple: the Druhyus

were a rival and non-PUru (DAsa) tribe, hence
their priests do not figure as composers in the
Rigveda. Of course, the BhRgus, who were also
the priests of a rival and non-PUru tribe, do figure
as composers in the Rigveda, but that is because,
as we have seen in the previous chapter, a
section of BhRgus (after Jamadagni) aligned
themselves with the Vedic Aryans and joined the
Vedic mainstream (where, in fact, they later
superseded all the other priestly families in
importance, and became the dominant priests of
Vedic tradition).
But since the Druhyus figure in the Rigveda, the

name of their priestly class must also be found in
the text, even if not as the name of a family of
composers.
Since no such name appears, it seems logical

that the name Druhyu itself must originally have
been the name of this third priestly class: since
priestly categories were more important for the
composers of the Rigveda than the secular
categories, and since the tribes for whom the
Druhyus functioned as priests were an
amorphous lot located far out on the frontiers of
India and beyond, the name of the priestly
classes became a general appellation for the
tribes themselves.
Therefore, there were three tribal groupings with

their three priestly classes:
PUrus - Angirases.
Anus - BhRgus/AtharvaNas.
Druhyus - Druhyus.
This trinary situation tallies with the Indo-

European situation: outside of the Vedic and
Iranian cultures, the only other priestly class of a
similar kind is found among the Celts and the
related Italics. While the Italics called their priests
by the general name flAmen (cognate to Sanskrit
brAhmaNa, “priest”), the priests of the Celts were
called Drui (genitive Druad, hence Druids).
Shan M.M. Winn notes that “India, Rome, Ireland

and Iran” are the “areas in which priesthoods are
45
known to have been significant”; and he
describes this phenomenon as follows: “Long
after the dispersion of Indo-Europeans, we find a
priestly class in Britain in the west, in Italy to the
South, and in India and Iran to the east. Though
these cultures are geographically distant from one
another... they have striking similarities in priestly
ritual, and even in religious terminology. For
example, taboos pertaining to the Roman flAmen
(priest) closely correspond to the taboos observed
46
by the Brahmans, the priests of India.” Like the
Indian priesthood, the curriculum of the “Celtic
Druids … involved years of instruction and the
memorization of innumerable verses, as the
47
sacred tradition was an oral one”.
After noting, in some detail, the similarities in their

priestly systems, rituals, and religious and legal
terminology, Winn concludes that the “Celts,
Romans and Indo-Iranians shared a religious
heritage dating to an early Indo-European
48
period…”
While the three priesthoods flourished only in

these areas, they must originally have been the
priests of all the branches of Indo-Europeans in
the early Indo-European period. While the
priesthoods themselves did not survive
elsewhere, the names of the three priesthoods
did survive in different ways. An examination of
these words helps us to classify the various Indo-
European branches into three groups:
1. PURUS: Indoaryan.
In the Rigveda, hymn VII.18, the DASarAjña
battle hymn, refers to the enemy confederation
once in secular (tribal) terms as “Anus and
Druhyus” (VII.18.14), and once in what is clearly
priestly terms as “BhRgus and Druhyus” (VII.18.6:
the only reference in the whole of the Rigveda
which directly refers to the BhRgus as enemies).
Once, it may be noted, it also refers to the kings
of the two tribal groupings as “KavaSa and the
Druhyu” (VII. 1.8.12. Thus, even here, the general
appellation “Druhyu” is used instead of the
specific name of the king of the Druhyus).
The words Druh/Drugh/Drogha occur throughout

the Rigveda in the sense of “demon” or “enemy”.
(The word BhRgu, for obvious reasons, does not
suffer the same fate.)
2. ANUS: Iranian, Thraco-Phrygian, Hellenic.
a. Iranian: In the Avesta, in Fargard

19 of the VendidAd, it is an Angra
(ANgiras) and a Druj (Druhyu) who
try to tempt Zarathushtra away from
the path of Ahura Mazda.
The priests of the Iranians were the Athravans

(AtharvaNas = BhRgus), and the words Angra
and Druj occur throughout the Avesta as epithets
for the demon enemies of Ahura Mazda and
Zarathushtra.
b. Thraco-Phrygian: While the

Armenians, the only surviving
members of this branch, have not
retained any tradition about any of
these priestly classes, it is
significant that one of the most
prominent groups, belonging to this
branch, were known as the Phryge
(BhRgu).
c. Hellenic: The fire-.priests of the

Greeks were known as the
Phleguai (BhRgu).
What is more, Greek mythology
retains memories of both the other
priestly classes, though not in a
hostile sense, as the names of
mythical beings: Angelos (ANgiras)
or divine messengers, and Dryad
(Druhyu) or tree-nymphs.
3. DRUHYUS: Baltic and Slavonic, Italic and

Celtic, Germanic.
a. Baltic and Slavonic: The word

Druhyu occurs in the languages of
these two branches in exactly the
opposite sense of the Vedic Druh/
Drugh/Drogha and the Iranian Druj.
In Baltic (eg. Lithuanan Draugas)
and Slavonic (eg. Russian Drug)
the word means “friend”.
b. Italic and Celtic: While the Italic

people did not retain the name of
the priestly class (and called their
priests flAmen = BrAhmaNa), the
Celtic priests, as we have seen,
were called the Drui (genitive
Druad, hence Druid).
A significant factor, showing that

the Celtic priests must have
separated from the other priestly
classes before the priestly hostilities
became intense, is that the BhRgus
appear to be indirectly remembered
in Celtic mythology in a friendly
sense.
The Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology notes:

“whereas the Celtic Gods were specifically
Celtic… the goddesses were restatements of an
49
age-old theme”. And two of the three Great
Goddesses of the Celts were named Anu and
Brigit (Anu and BhRgu?). And while all the
Goddesses in general were associated with
fertility cults, “Brigit, however, had additional
functions as a tutelary deity of learning, culture
50
and skills”.
The main activity of the Drui, as we have seen,

was to undergo “years of instruction and the
memorization of innumerable verses, as the
51
sacred tradition was an oral one”. The fact that
the Goddess of learning was named Brigit would
appear to suggest that the Drui remembered the
ancient BhRgus, in a mythical sense, as the
persons who originally introduced various priestly
rituals among them (a debt which, as we have
seen in the previous chapter, is also remembered
by the. ANgirases in the MaNDalas of the Early
Period of the Rigveda). The BhRgus, by the joint
testimony of Vedic and Celtic mythology, would
thus appear to have been the oldest or most
dominant and innovative of the three priestly
classes.
c. Germanic: The word Druhyu

occurs in the Germanic branch as
well. However the meaning
52
(although the words are cognate
to the Russian Drug and Lithuanian
Draugas) is more militant: Gothic
driugan, “do military service” and ga-
drauhts, “soldier”; and Old Norse
(Icelandic) drOtt, Old English dryht
and Old German truht, all meaning
“multitude, people, army”.
The meanings of the word Druhyu as it occurs in

the Celtic branch (“priest”), the Germanic branch
(“soldier”, etc. or “people”) and the Baltic-Slavonic
branches (“friend”) clearly correspond with the
word in the Rigveda and Avesta, where Druhyu/
Druh/Drugh/Drogha and Druj represent enemy
priests, soldiers or people.
Thus, to sum up:
1. PUru (priests ANgirases):

Indoaryan.
2. Anu (priests BhRgus/

AtharvaNas): Iranian, Thraco-
Phrygian, Hellenic.
3. Druhyu (priests Druhyus): Celtic-

Italic, Baltic-Slavonic, Germanic.
II.C. The Anu-Druhyu Migrations
The evidence of the Rigveda, and Indian tradition,

clearly shows that the Anus and Druhyus were
Indian tribes.
If they were also the ancestors of the Indo-

European branches outside India, as is indicated
by the evidence of the names of their priestly
classes, then it is clear that the Rigveda and
Indian tradition should retain memories of the
migrations of these two groups from India.
Significantly, this is exactly the case: the Rigveda

and the PurANas, between them, record two
great historical events which led to the emigration
of precisely these two tribes from India:
1. The first historical emigration recorded is that of

the Druhyus. This emigration is recorded in the
PurANas, and it is so historically and
geographically specific that no honest, student of
the Puranic tradition has been able to ignore
either this event or its implications for Indo-
European history (even without arriving at the
equation PUrus = Vedic Aryans):
The PurANas (VAyu 99.11-12; BrahmANDa

III.74.11-12; Matsya 48.9; ViSNu IV.17.5;
BhAgavata IX.23.15-16) record: PracetasaH putra-
Satam rAjAnAH sarva eva te, mleccha-
rASTrAdhipAH sarve hyudIcIm diSam ASritAH.
As Pargiter points out: “Indian tradition knows

nothing of any Aila or Aryan invasion of India from
Afghanistan, nor of any gradual advance from
53
thence eastwards.” On the contrary, “Indian
tradition distinctly asserts that there was an Aila
outflow of the Druhyus through the northwest into
the countries beyond where they founded various
54
kingdoms.”
P.L. Bhargava also notes this reference to the

Druhyu emigration: “Five PurANas add that
Pracetas’ descendants spread out into the
mleccha countries to the north beyond India and
55
founded kingdoms there.”
This incident is considered to be the earliest

prominent historical event in traditional memory:
The Druhyus, inhabitants of the Punjab, started
conquering eastwards and southwards, and their
conquest brought them into conflict with all the
other tribes and peoples: the Anus, PUrus,
Yadus. TurvaSas, and even the IkSvAkus.
This led to a concerted attempt by the other tribes

against the Druhyus. AD Pusalker records: “As a
result of the successful campaigns of SaSabindu,
YuvanASva, MAndhAtRI and Sibi, the Druhyus
were pushed back from RAjputAna and were
cornered into the northwestern portion of the
Punjab. MAndhAtRI killed their king ANgAra, and
the Druhyu settlements in the Punjab came to be
known as GAndhAra after the name of one of
ANgAra’s successors. After a time, being
overpopulated, the Druhyus crossed the borders
of India and founded many principalities in the
Mleccha territories in the north, and probably
carried the Aryan culture beyond the frontiers of
56
India.”
This first historical emigration represents an

outflow of the Druhyus into the areas to the north
of Afghanistan (ie. into Central Asia and beyond).
2. The second historical emigration recorded is

that of the Anus and the residual Druhyus, which
took place after the DASarAjña battle in the Early
Period of the Rigveda.
As we have already seen in our chapter on the

Indo-Iranian homeland, the hymns record the
names of ten tribes (from among the two main
tribal groupings of Anus and Druhyus) who took
part in the confederacy against SudAs.
Six of these are clearly purely Iranian peoples:
a. PRthus or PArthavas (VII.83.1):

Parthians.
b. ParSus or ParSavas (VII.83.1):
Persians.
c. Pakthas (VII.18.7): Pakhtoons.
d. BhalAnas (VII.18.7): Baluchis.
e. Sivas (VII.18.7): Khivas.
f. ViSANins (VII.18.7): Pishachas
(Dards).
One more Anu tribe, not named in the Rigveda, is

that of the Madras: Medes.
All these Iranian peoples are found in later

historical times in the historical Iranian areas
proper: Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia.
Two of the other tribes named in the hymns are

Iranian peoples who are found in later historical
times, on the northwestern periphery of the
Iranian areas, ie. in the Caucasus area:
a. Simyus (VII.18.5): Sarmatians

(Avesta = Sairimas).
b. Alinas (VII.18.7): Alans.
And the name of one more tribe is clearly the

name of another branch of Indo-Europeans - non-
Iranians, but closely associated with the Iranians -
found in later historical times in the area to the
west of the Iranians, ie. in Anatolia or Turkey: the
BhRgus (VII.18.6): Phrygians.
Significantly, the names of the two tribes found on

the northwestern periphery of the Iranian area are
also identifiable (as we have noted in our earlier
book) with the names of two other branches of
Indo-Europeans, found to the west of Anatolia or
Turkey.
a. Simyus (VII.18.5): Sirmios

(ancient Albanians).
b. Alinas (VII.18.7): Hellenes
(ancient Greeks).
The DASarAjña battle hymns record the

emigration of these tribes westward from the
Punjab after their defeat in the battle.
Taken together, the two emigrations provide us

with a very logical and plausible scenario of the
expansions and migrations of the Indo-European
family of languages from an original homeland in
India:
1. The two tribal groupings of Anus and Druhyus

were located more or less in the Punjab and
Afghanistan respectively after the Druhyu versus
non-Druhyu wars in the earliest pre-Rigvedic
period.
2. The first series of migrations, of the Druhyus,

took plate shortly afterwards, with major sections
of Druhyus migrating northwards from
Afghanistan into Central Asia in different waves.
From Central Asia many Druhyu tribes, in the
course of time, migrated westwards, reaching as
far as western Europe.
These migrations must have included the

ancestors of the following branches (which are
not mentioned in the DASarAjña battle hymns):
a. Hittite.
b. Tocharian.
c. Italic.
d. Celtic.
e. Germanic.
f. Baltic.
g. Slavonic.
3. The second series of migrations of Anus and

Druhyus, took place much later, in the Early
Period of the Rigveda, with various tribes
migrating westwards from the Punjab into
Afghanistan, many later on migrating further
westwards as far as West Asia and southwestern
Europe.
These migrations must have included the

ancestors of the following branches (which are
mentioned in the DASrAjña battle hymns):
a. Iranian.
b. Thraco-Phrygian (Armenian).
c. Illyrian (Albanian).
d. Hellenic.
The whole process gives a clear picture of the

ebb-and-flow of migratory movements, where
remnants of migrating groups, which remain
behind, get slowly absorbed into the linguistic and
cultural mainstream of the other groups among
whom they continue to live, retaining only, at the
most, their separate names and distinctive
identities:
1. The Druhyus, by and large, spread out

northwards from northwestern Punjab and
Afghanistan into Central Asia (and beyond) in the
first Great Migration.
A few sections of them, who remained behind,

retained their distinctive names and identities (as
Druhyus), but were linguistically and culturally
absorbed into the Anu mainstream.
2. The Anus (including the remnants of the

Druhyus), by and large, spread out westwards
from the Punjab into Afghanistan in the second
Great Migration after the DASarAjña battle.
A few sections of them, who remained behind,

retained their distinctive names and identities (as
Anus), but linguistically and culturally, they were
absorbed into the PUru mainstream and they
remained on the northwestern periphery of the
Indoaryan cultural world as the Madras (remnants
of the Madas or Medes), Kekayas, etc.
3. Further migrations took place from among the

Anus in Afghanistan, with non-Iranian Anu
groups, such as the BhRgus (Phryges, Thraco-
Phrygians), Alinas (Hellenes, Greeks) and Simyus
(Sirmios, Illyrians or Albanians) migrating
westwards from Afghanistan as far as Anatolia
and southeastern Europe.
A few sections of these non-Iranian Anus, who

remained behind, retained their distinctive names
and identities, but, linguistically and culturally,
they were absorbed into the Iranian mainstream,
and remained on the northwestern periphery of
the Iranian cultural world as the Armenians (who,
however, retained much of their original language,
though greatly influenced by Iranian), and the
Alans (remnants of the Hellenes or Greeks) and
Sarmations (remnants of the Sirmios or
Albanians).
The literary evidence of the Rigveda, thus,

provides us with a very logical and plausible
scenario of the schedule and process of
migrations of the various Indo-European branches
from India.
At this point, we may recall the archaeological

evidence in respect of Europe, already noted by
us. As we have seen, the Corded Ware culture
(Kurgan Wave # 3) expanded from the east into
northern and central Europe, and the “territory
inhabited by the Corded Ware/Battle Axe culture,
after its expansions, qualifies it to be the ancestor
of the Western or European language branches:
57
Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Celtic and Italic”.
The origins of the Kurgan culture have been

traced as far east as Turkmenistan in 4500 BC.
This fits in perfectly with our theory that the seven

branches of Indo-Europeans, not mentioned in
the DASarAjña hymns, migrated northwards into
Central Asia during the first Great Migration. Five
of these, the five European branches mentioned
above, later migrated westwards into Europe,
while the other two, Hittite and Tocharian,
remained behind in parts of Central Asia till the
Hittites, at a much later date, migrated
southwestwards into Anatolia.
These two branches, which remained behind in

Central Asia, it is possible, retained contact with
the Indoaryans and Iranians further south: the fact
that Hittite mythology is the only mythology,
outside the Indo-Iranian cultural world, which
mentions Indra (as Inar) may be evidence of such
contacts.
Even more significant, from the viewpoint of

literary evidence, is the fact that Indian tradition
remembers two important peoples located to the
north of the Himalayas who are called the
Uttarakurus and the Uttaramadras: “The
Uttarakurus alongwith the Uttaramadras, are
located beyond the HimAlayas. Though regarded
as mythical in the epic and later literature, the
Uttarakurus still appear as a historical people in
58
the Aitareya BrAhmaNa (VII.23).”
It is possible that the Uttarakurus and the

Uttaramadras were the Tocharian (Uttarakuru =
Tokhri) and Hittite branches of Indo-Europeans
located to the north of the Himalayas.
The scenario we have reconstructed from the

literary evidence in the Rigveda fits in perfectly
with the linguistic scenario of the migration
schedule of the various Indo-European branches,
as reconstructed by the linguists from the
evidence of isoglosses, which we will now be
examining.
III
THE EVIDENCE OF LINGUISTIC ISOGLOSSES
One linguistic phenomenon which is of great help

to linguists in their efforts to chalk out the likely
scenario of the migration schedule of the various
Indo-European branches from the original
homeland, is the phenomenon of linguistic
isoglosses.
A linguistic isogloss is a linguistic feature which is

found in some of the branches of the family, and
is not found in the others.
This feature may, of course, be either an original

feature of the parent Proto-Indo-European
language which has been lost in some of the
daughter branches but retained in others, or a
linguistic innovation, not found in the parent Proto-
Indo-European language, which developed in
some of the daughter branches but not in the
others. But this feature is useful in establishing
early historico-geographical links between
branches which share the same isogloss.
We will examine the evidence of the isoglosses

as follows:
A. The Isoglosses
B. The Homeland Indicated by the
Isoglosses
III.A. The Isoglosses
There are, as Winn points out, “ten ‘living

branches’… Two branches, Indic (Indo-Aryan)
and Iranian dominate the eastern cluster.
Because of the close links between their classical
forms - Sanskrit and Avestan respectively - these
languages are often grouped together as a single
59
Indo-Iranian branch.” But Meillet notes: “It
remains quite clear, however, that Indic and
Iranian evolved from different Indo-European
dialects whose period of common development
60
was not long enough to effect total fusion.”
Besides these ten living branches, there are two

extinct branches, Anatolian (Hittite) and
Tocharian.
Of these twelve branches, one branch, Illyrian
(Albanian), is of little use in this study of
isoglosses: “Albanian… has undergone so many
influences that it is difficult to be certain of its
relationships to the other Indo-European
61
languages.”
An examination of the isoglosses which cover the

other eleven branches (living and extinct) gives a
more or less clear picture of the schedule of
migrations of the different Indo-European
branches from the original homeland.
Whatever the dispute about the exact order in

which the different branches migrated away from
the homeland, the linguists are generally agreed
on two important points:
1. Anatolian (Hittite) was the first branch to leave

the homeland: “The Anatolian languages, of
which Hittite is the best known, display many
archaic features that distinguish them from other
Indo-European languages. They apparently
represent an earlier stage of Indo-European, and
are regarded by many as the first group to break
62
away from the proto-language.”
2. Four branches, Indic, Iranian, Hellenic (Greek)

and Thraco-Phrygian (Armenian) were the last
branches remaining behind in the original
homeland after the other branches had dispersed:
“After the dispersals of the early PIE dialects,…

there were still those who remained… Among
them were the ancestors of the Greeks and Indo-
63
Iranians…
“Greek and Sanskrit share many complex

grammatical features: this is why many earlier
linguists were misled into regarding them as
examples of the most archaic stage of Proto-Indo-
European. However, the similarities between the
two languages are now regarded as innovations
that took place during a late period of PIE , which
we call stage III. One of these Indo-Greek
innovations was also shared by Armenian; all
these languages it seems, existed in an area of
64
mutual interaction.”
Thus we get: “Greek Armenian, Phrygian,

Thracian and Indo-Iranian. These languages may
represent a comparatively late form of Indo-
European, including linguistic innovations not
present in earlier stages. In particular, Greek and
Indic share a number of distinctive grammatical
65
features……”
The following are some of the innovations shared

only by Indic, Iranian, Greek and Armenian
(Thraco-Phrygian); features which distinguish
them from the other branches, particularly the
other living branches:
a. “The prohibitive negation *mE is

attested only in Indo-Iranian (mA),
Greek (mE) and Armenian (mi);
elsewhere, it is totally lacking… and
there is no difference in this respect
between the ancient and modern
stages of Greek, Armenian or
66
Persian”; or, for that matter,
sections of Indic (eg. the prohibitive
negation mat in Hindi).
b. “In the formation of the Perfect

also, there is a clear ‘distinction’
between Indo-Iranian and Armenian
and Greek on the one hand, and all
of the other languages on the
67
other.”
c. The “Indo-European voiceless

aspirated stops are completely
attested only in Indo-Iranian and
Armenian… Greek… clearly
preserves two of the three voiceless
aspirated stops whose existence is
established by the correspondence
68
of Indo-Iranian and Armenian.” All
the other branches show “complete
69
fusion” of these voiceless
aspirated stops.
d. “The suffix *-tero-, *-toro-, *-tro-

serves in bell Indo-European
languages to mark the opposition of
two qualities, but only in two
languages, Greek and Indo-Iranian,
is the use of the suffix extended to
include the formation of secondary
adjectival comparatives… This
development, by its very difference,
points to the significance of the
Greek and Indo-Iranian
convergence… Armenian, which
has a completely new formation, is
70
not instructive in this regard.” But,
“Latin, Irish, Germanic, Lithuanian
and Slavic, on the other hand,
borrow their secondary comparative
71
from the original primary type.”
e. “The augment is attested only in

Indo-Iranian, Armenian and Greek;
72
it is found nowhere else.” And it is
“significant that the augment is not
found in any of the other Indo-
European languages… The total
absence of the augment in even the
earliest texts, and in all the dialects
of Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic
73
and Slavic, is characteristic.”
Hence, “the manner in which Italic,

Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and Slavic
eliminated the imperfect and came
to express the preterite
presupposes an original, Indo-
European, absence of the augment
throughout this group of
languages. We thus have grounds
for positing two distinct Indo-
74
European dialect groups.”
f. The division of the Indo-European

branches into two distinct groups is
confirmed by what Meillet calls the
Vocabulary of the Northwest:
“There is quite a large group of
words that appear in the dialects of
the North and West (Slavic, Baltic,
Germanic, Celtic and Italic) but are
not found in the others (Indic,
Iranian, Armenian and Greek)…
their occurrence in the dialects of
the North and West would indicate
a cultural development peculiar to
the peoples who spread these
75
dialects.”
While Anatolian (Hittite) was “the
first group to break away from the
protolanguage”, and Indic, Iranian,
Armenian and Greek were “those
who remained” after “the dispersals
of the early PIE dialects”, the other
branches share isoglosses which
can help in placing them between
these two extremes:
1. “Hittite, the first to separate itself, shares many

76
isoglosses with Germanic and Tocharian.”
2. “Celtic, Italic, Hittite, Tocharian and (probably)

Phrygian share an interesting isogloss: the use of
‘r’ to indicate the passive forms of verbs. This
feature… does not occur in any other Indo-
77
European language.”
3. Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and Slavonic, as

we have seen, constitute one distinct group (in
contradistinction to another distinct group
consisting of Indic, Iranian, Armenian and Greek).
However, within themselves, these five branches

link together as follows:
a. Italic and Celtic: “Comparative

linguists have long been aware of
the links between Italic and Celtic,
which share a number of archaic
features. These links suggest that
the two branches developed
78
together.” Among other things:
“Vocabulary is identical in parts; this
is true of some very important
words, particularly prepositions and
79
preverbs.”
b. Baltic and Slavonic: “The general

resemblance of Baltic and Slavic is
so apparent that no-one challenges
the notion of a period of common
development… Baltic and Slavic
are the descendants of almost
identical Indo-European
dialects. No important isogloss
divides Baltic from Slavic… the
vocabularies of Slavic and Baltic
show numerous cognates - more
precisely, cognates that are found
nowhere else or cognates that in
Baltic and Slavic have a form
different from their form in other
80
languages.”
c. Italic, Celtic and Germanic: “The

Germanic, Celtic and Italic idioms
present… certain common
81
innovational tendencies.” But,
Italic apparently separated from the
other two earlier: “Germanic, Celtic
and Italic underwent similar
influences. After the Italic-Celtic
period, Italic ceased undergoing
these influences and underwent
others… Germanic and Celtic,
remaining in adjacent regions,
developed in part along parallel
82
lines.”
d. Germanic, Baltic and Slavonic:

“Because Germanic shares certain
important features with Baltic and
Slavic, we may speculate that the
history of the three groups is linked
83
in some way.”
To go into more precise detail: “The difference

between a dative plural with *-bh-, eg. Skr.-
bhyah, Av. -byO, Lat. -bus, O.Osc. -fs, O.Ir.-ib,
Gr. -fi(n), and one with *-m-, eg. Goth. -m, O.Lith.
-mus, Ol.Sl. -mU, is one of the first things to have
drawn attention to the problem of Indo-European
dialectology. Since it has been established,
principally by A. Leskien, that there was no unity
of Germanic, Baltic and Slavic postdating the
period of Indo-European unity, the very striking
similarity of Germanic, Baltic and Slavic which we
observe here cannot… be explained except by a
dialectical variation within common Indo-
84
European.” It is, therefore, clear “that these
three languages arose from Indo-European
85
dialects exhibiting certain common features.”
To sum up, we get two distinct groups of

branches:
Group A: Hittite, Tocharian, Italic, Celtic,

Germanic, Baltic, Slavonic.
Group B: Indic, Iranian, Thraco-Phrygian

(Armenian), Hellenic (Greek).
No major isogloss cuts across the dividing line

between the two groups to suggest any
alternative grouping: the phenomenon of
palatalization appears to do so, but it is now
recognized as “a late phenomenon” which took
place in “a post-PIE era in which whatever unity
that once existed had broken down and most of
86
the dialect groups had dispersed”, and we will
examine the importance of this phenomenon later
on.
Other similarities between languages or branches

which lie on opposite sides of the above dividing
line are recognizable as phenomena which took
place after the concerned branches had reached
their historical habitats, and do not, therefore,
throw any light on the location of the original
homeland or the migration-schedule of the
branches.
The following are two examples of such

similarities:
1. The Phrygian language appears to share the “r-

isogloss” which is found only in the Hittite,
Tocharian, Italic and Celtic branches. However:
a. The Phrygian language is known

only from fragments, and many of
the linguistic features attributed to it
are speculative. About the “r-
isogloss”, it may be noted, Winn
points out that it is shared by
“Celtic, Italic, Hittite, Tocharian and
87
(probably) Phrygian”.
b. Armenian, the only living

member of the Thraco-Phrygian
branch, does not share the “r-
isogloss”, and nor did the ancient
Thracian language.
c. The seeming presence of this

isogloss in Phrygian is clearly due
to the influence of Hittite, with which
it shared its historical habitat:
“Phrygian later replaced Hittite as
the dominant language of Central
88
Anatolia.”
2. Greek and Italic alone share the change of

Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirated stops (bh,
dh, gh) into voiceless aspirated stops (ph, th, kh).
Sanskrit is the only language to have retained the
original voiced aspirated stops, while all the other
branches, except Greek and Italic, converted
them into unaspirated stops (b, d, g).
But this similarity between Greek and Italic is

because “when Indo-European languages were
brought to Mediterranean people unfamiliar with
voiced aspirated stops, this element brought
89
about the process of unvoicing”, and this
change took place in the two branches “both
90
independently and along parallel lines”. Hence,
this is not an isogloss linking the two branches.
Therefore, it is clear that the two groups represent

two distinct divisions of the Indo-European family.
III. B. The Homeland Indicated by the

Isoglosses
The pattern of isoglosses shows the following

order of migration of the branches of Group A:
1. Hittite.
2. Tocharian.
3. Italic-Celtic.
4. Germanic.
5. Baltic-Slavonic.
Some of these branches share certain isoglosses

among themselves which represent innovations
which they must have developed in common after
their departure from the original homeland, since
the remaining branches (Indic, Iranian, Armenian
and Greek) do not share these isoglosses.
This clearly indicates the presence of a secondary

homeland, outside the exit-point from the original
homeland, which must have functioned as an
area of settlement and common development for
the migrating branches.
The only homeland theory which fits in with the

evidence of the isoglosses is the Indian homeland
theory:
The exit-point for the migrating branches was

Afghanistan, and these branches migrated
towards the north from Afghanistan into Central
Asia, which clearly functioned as the secondary
homeland for emigrating branches.
As Winn points out: “Evidence from isoglosses…

shows that the dispersal cannot be traced to one
particular event; rather it seems to have occured
91
in bursts or stages.”
Hittite was the first to emigrate from Afghanistan

into Central Asia, followed by Tocharian.
Italic-Celtic represented the next stage of

emigration. The four branches developed the “r-
isogloss” in common.
Germanic was the next branch to enter the

secondary homeland, and it developed some
isoglosses in common with Hittite and Tocharian.
The Baltic-Slavonic movement apparently

represented the last major emigration. And its
sojourn in the secondary homeland was
apparently not long enough for it to develop any
isoglosses in common with Hittite or Tocharian.
The five branches (Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic

and Slavonic, in that order) later moved further
off, north-westwards, into the area to the north of
the Caspian Sea, and subsequently formed part
of the Kurgan III migrations into Europe. The
Slavonic and Baltic branches settled down in the
eastern parts of Europe, while the other three
proceeded further into Europe. Later, the Italic
branch moved towards the south, while the
Germanic and Celtic branches moved to the north
and west.
Meanwhile, the other branches (barring Indic),

Greek Armenian and Iranian, as also, perhaps,
the one branch (Illyrian or Albanian) which we
have not taken into consideration so far, migrated
westwards from India by a different and southern
route.
The scholars, now, generally accept the evidence

of the isoglosses, so far as it concerns the
schedule of migrations of the different Indo-
European branches from the original homeland,
or the interrelationships between different
branches. However, when it comes to
determining the actual location of the original
homeland, on the basis of this evidence, they
abandon their objective approach and try to make
it appear as if the evidence fits in with the
particular homeland theory advocated by them,
even when it is as clear as daylight that they are
trying to fit a round peg into a square hole.
The homeland theory generally advocated by the

scholars is the South Russian homeland theory.
Shan M.M. Winn advocates the “Pontic-Caspian
area” within this region as the particular location
of the homeland.
An examination shows that the South Russian

homeland theory (“Pontic-Caspian” or otherwise)
is totally incompatible with the evidence of the
isoglosses:
1. To begin with, it is clear that we have two

distinct groups of branches, which we have
already classified as Group A and Group B.
As per the evidence of the isoglosses, the

branches in Group A are the branches which
migrated away from the original homeland, and
those in Group B are the branches which
remained behind in the homeland after the other
branches had departed.
At the same time, all the branches in Group A are

found to the north of the Eurasian mountain chain
(except for Hittite in Anatolia, but this branch is
known to have migrated into Anatolia from the
north-east), while all the branches in Group B are
found to the south of the Eurasian mountain chain
(the northernmost, Greek, is known to have
migrated into southeastern Europe from the south-
east).
The logical corollary should have been that the

original homeland is also to the south of the
Eurasian mountain chain, and that it is located in
the historical habitat of one of the branches in
Group B.
However, the scholars regularly advocate
homeland theories which place the homeland in
the area of one or the other of the branches in
Group A.
2. The branches in Group A developed certain

isoglosses in common after they had migrated
away from the homeland. As we have pointed
out, this makes it likely that there was a
secondary homeland where they must have
developed these isoglosses.
However, any homeland theory which locates the

homeland in a central area, like South Russia or
any area around it, makes the location of this
secondary homeland a problem: the Tocharian
branch is historically located well to the east of
South Russia, the Hittite branch is located well to
the south of South Russia, and the Germanic and
Italic-Celtic branches are located well to the west
of South Russia. It is difficult to think of a way in
which all these branches could have moved
together in one direction from South Russia
before parting from each other and moving off in
totally opposite directions.
It is perhaps to avoid this problem that Winn

suggests that the isoglosses shared in common
by these branches are not innovations developed
by these branches in common, but archaic
features which have been retained by otherwise
separately migrating branches.
In respect of the r-isogloss, for example, Winn

puts it as follows: “Celtic, Italic, Hittite, Tocharian,
and (probably) Phrygian share an interesting
isogloss: the use of ‘r’ to indicate the passive
forms of verbs. This feature, which does not
occur in any other Indo-European language, is
probably an example of the ‘archaism of the
fringe’ phenomenon. When a language is spread
over a large territory, speakers at the fringe of that
territory are likely to be detached from what goes
on at the core. Linguistic innovations that take
place at the core may never find their way out to
peripheral areas; hence dialects .spoken on the
fringe tend to preserve archaic features that have
long since disappeared from the mainstream…
Tocharian… was so remote from the center that it
could hardly have taken part in any
92
innovations.”
However, it is more logical to treat this isogloss as

an innovation developed in common by a few
branches after their departure from the homeland,
than to postulate that all the other, otherwise
disparate, branches eliminated an original “use of
‘r’ to indicate the passive forms of verbs”.
3. What is indeed an example of the “archaism of

the fringe” phenomenon is the phenomenon of
palatalization.
Winn describes it as follows: “Palatalization must

have been a late phenomenon; that is, we date it
to a post-PIE era, in which whatever unity that
once existed had now broken down, and most of
the dialect groups had dispersed: looking at the
geographical distribution of this isogloss, we may
note its absence from the peripheral languages:
Germanic (at the northwest limit of Indo-European
language distribution); Celtic (western limit); Italic,
Greek and Hittite (southern limit); and Tocharian
(eastern limit). It is the languages at the center
that have changed. Here, at the core, a trend
towards palatalization started; then gradually
spread outward. It never reached far enough to
93
have any effect on the outlying languages.”
Note that Winn calls it a “post-PIE era, in which

whatever unity that once existed had now broken
down, and most of the dialect groups had
dispersed”, and that he locates every single other
branch (except Indic and Iranian), including
Greek, in its historical habitat. He does not
specifically name Baltic-Slavonic and Armenian,
but it is understood that they are also located in
their historical habitats, since he implies that they
are “the languages at the centre” (ie. languages in
and around South Russia, which is, anyway, the
historical habitat of these branches).
Indic and Iranian alone are not located by him in
their historical habitats, since that would clearly
characterize them as the most “peripheral” or
“outlying” branches of all, being located at the
extreme southern as well as extreme eastern limit
of the Indo-European language distribution. And
this would completely upset his pretty picture of
an evolving “center” with archaic “outlying
languages”, since the most outlying of the
branches would turn out to be the most
palatalized of them all. Hence, Winn without
expressly saying so, but with such a location
being implicit in his argument, locates all the other
branches, including Greek, in their historical
habitats, but only the Indic and Iranian branches
well outside their historical habitats and still in
South Russia, and keeps his fingers crossed over
the possibility of the anomaly being noticed.
Here we see, once again, how the manipulation

required to locate the Indo-European homeland in
South Russia compels the scholars, again and
again, to postulate weird and unnatural schedules
of migrations which make the Indo-Iranians the
last to leave South Russia, and which locate them
in South Russia long after all the other branches,
including Greek, are already settled in their
historical habitats: a picture which clashes sharply
with, among other things, the extremely
representative nature of the Rigvedic language
and mythology, the purely Indian geographical
milieu of the Rigveda (and the movement
depicted in it from east to west, as we have seen
in this book), and the evidence of the names of
places and rivers in northern India right from the
period of the Rigveda itself.
The “late phenomenon” of a “trend towards

palatalization” which started “at the core” and
“then gradually -spread outward”, and “never
reached far enough to have any effect on the
outlying languages”, can be explained naturally
only on the basis of the Indian homeland theory:
the trend started in the “core area”, in north and
northwest India, and spread outwards as far as
the innermost of the branches in Group A: Baltic
and Slavonic, but not as far as the outermost of
the branches in Group B: Greek.
94
Incidentally, here is how Meillet depicts the
interrelationships between the various extant
branches (he does not include Hittite and
Tocharian in the picture, but it is clear that they
will fall in the same group as Germanic, Celtic and
Italic). (Figure on next page.)
While the north-south axis clearly divides the non-

palatalized branches in the west from the
palatalized branches in the east (where we must
locate the “core” area where palatalization
started), the northeast-southwest axes neatly
divide the branches into the three tribal groupings
testified by Indian literary records, (click on next
link).
Click Here
Click Here
4. More than anything else, the one aspect of the

evidence of the isoglosses, which disproves the
South Russian theory, is the close relationship
between Indic or Indo-Iranian and Greek, which is
not satisfactorily explained by any homeland
theory other than the Indian homeland theory.
In dismissing Colin Renfrew’s Anatolian homeland

theory, Winn cites this as the single most
important factor in disproving the theory: “All the
migrations postulated by Renfrew ultimately stem
from a single catalyst: the crossing of Anatolian
farmers into Greece… For all practical purposes,
Renfrew’s hypothesis disregards Tocharian and
95
Indo-Iranian.”
Supporters of Renfrew’s theory, Winn points out,

“have tried to render the Indo-Iranian problem
moot. They argue that the Indo-Iranian branch
was somehow divided from the main body of
Proto-Indo-European before the colonists brought
agriculture to the Balkans. Greek and Indic are
thus separated by millenniums of linguistic
change - despite the close grammatical
correspondences between them (as we saw in
Chapter 12, these correspondences probably
represent shared innovations from the last stage
96
of PIE).”
Winn’s very valid argument against the Anatolian

theory is just as applicable to the South Russian
homeland theory, or any other theory which seeks
to bring Indic and Iranian into their historical
habitats through Central Asia: this involves an
extremely long period of separation from Greek,
which does not fit into the evidence of the
isoglosses which shows that Indic and Greek
have many “shared innovations from the last
stage of PIE”.
Archaeology, for one, completely rules out any

links between the alleged Proto-Indo-Iranians
located by these scholars in Central Asia, and the
Greeks: Winn, as we saw, tries to identify the
Andronovo culture which “covers much of the
Central Asian Steppe east of the Ural river and
97
Caspian Sea”, with the “Proto-Indo-Iranians”
during their alleged sojourn in Central Asia.
However, not only does he admit that “it is still a

hazardous task to connect (this) archaeological
evidence of Indo-Iranians in the Central Asian
Steppe with the appearance of Iranian
(Aryan) and Indic (Indo-Aryan) tribes in Iran,
98
Afghanistan and India,” but he also accepts that
these so-called Proto-Indo-Iranians in Central
Asia have “no links with… south-eastern
99
Europe”, ie. with the Greeks.
It is only the Indian homeland theory which fits in

with the evidence of the isoglosses. It may be
noted again that:
a. The evidence of the isoglosses

suggests that the Indic, Iranian,
Armenian and Greek branches, as
well as the Albanian branch, were
the last to remain behind in the
original homeland after the
departure of the other branches.
b. These (naturally, barring Indic)

are also the same branches which
show connections with the BhRgus/
AtharvaNas, while those which
departed show connections with the
Druhyus.
c. Again, all these branches form a

long belt to the south of the
Eurasian mountain chain, while the
other (departed) branches are
found to its north.
d. And, finally, these are the only

branches which are actually
recorded in the DASarAjña hymns
as being present in the Punjab area
during the time of SudAs.
IV
INTER-FAMILIAL LINGUISTICS
We have, in our earlier book, examined the

question of the historico-linguistic connections
between Indo-European and other language
families like Uralic and Semitic. These
connections are projected by many scholars as
linguistic evidence for the origin of the Indo-
European family in or around South Russia, but
the evidence, as we saw, fails to prove their point.
However, a more complex and scientific analysis

of the linguistic connections between Indo-
European and other families forms the subject of
a paper by Johanna Nichols, entitled, significantly,
The Epicentre of the Indo-European Linguistic
Spread, which is part of a more detailed study
contained in the two volumes of Archaeology and
Language (of which the particular paper under
discussion constitutes Chapter 8 of the first
volume).
Nichols determines the location of “the epicentre
of the Indo-European linguistic spread” primarily
on the basis of an examination of loan-words from
Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent of West
Asia.
As she points out, loan-words from this region

must have spread out via three trajectories (or
routes):
“To Central Europe via the Bosporus and the

Balkans, to the western steppe via the
Caucasus... and eastward via Iran to western
100
Central Asia…”
“The first step in specifying a locus for the IE

homeland is to narrow it down to one of these
three trajectories, and that can be done by
comparing areal Wanderwörter in the IE cultural
vocabulary to those of other language families
that can be located relative to one or another
101
trajectory in ancient times.”
Therefore, Nichols examines loan-words from

West Asia (Semitic and Sumerian) found in Indo-
European and in other families like Caucasian
(separately Kartvelian, Abkhaz-Circassian and
Nakh-Daghestanian), and the mode and form of
transmission of these loan-words into the Indo-
European family as a whole as well as into
particular branches; and combines this with the
evidence of the spread of Uralic and its
connections with Indo-European.
After a detailed examination, her final conclusions

about the locus or epicentre of the Indo-European
linguistic spread are as follows: “Several kinds of
evidence for the PIE locus have been presented
here. Ancient loanwords point to a locus along
the desert trajectory, not particularly close to
Mesopotamia and probably far out in the eastern
hinterlands. The structure of the family tree, the
accumulation of genetic diversity at the western
periphery of the range, the location of Tocharian
and its implications for early dialect geography,
the early attestation of Anatolian in Asia Minor,
and the geography of the centum-satem split all
point in the same direction: a locus in western
central Asia. Evidence presented in Volume II
supports the same conclusion: the long-standing
westward trajectories of languages point to an
eastward locus, and the spread of IE along all
three trajectories points to a locus well to the east
of the Caspian Sea. The satem shift also spread
from a locus to the south-east of the Caspian,
with satem languages showing up as later
entrants along all three trajectory terminals. (The
satem shift is a post-PIE but very early IE
development). The locus of the IE spread was
therefore somewhere in the vicinity of ancient
102
Bactria-Sogdiana.”
This linguistic evidence thus fits in perfectly with

the literary and other evidence examined by us in
this book, and with the theory outlined by us.
Nichols’ analysis lovers three concepts:
1. The Spread Zone: “The vast interior of Eurasia

is a linguistic spread zone - a genetic and
typological bottleneck where many genetic lines
go extinct, structural types tend to converge, a
single language or language family spreads out
over a broad territorial range, and one language
family replaces another over a large range every
103
few millennia…”
2. The Locus: “The locus is a smallish part of the

range which functions in the same way as a
dialect-geographical centre: an epicentre of sorts
from which innovations spread to other regions
and dialects, and a catchpoint at which cultural
borrowings and linguistic loanwords entered from
prestigious or economically important foreign
societies to spread (along with native linguistic
innovations) to the distant dialects. If an
innovation arose in the vicinity of the locus, or a
loanword entered, it spread to all or most of the
family; otherwise, it remained a regionalism.
Diversification of daughter dialects in a spread
zone takes place far from the locus at the
periphery, giving the family tree a distinctive
shape with many major early branches, and
creating a distinctive dialect map where genetic
diversity piles up at the periphery. These
principles make it possible to pinpoint the locus in
space more or less accurately even for a
language family as old as IE. Here it will be
shown that the locus accounting for the
distribution of loanwords, internal innovations and
genetic diversity within IE could only have lain
104
well to the east of the Caspian Sea.”
As we have already seen, the specific location is

105
“in the vicinity of Bactria-Sogdiana”.
“The central Eurasian spread zone (Figure 8.4),

as described in Volume II, was part of a standing
pattern whereby languages were drawn into the
spread zone, spread westward, and were
eventually succeeded by the next spreading
family. The dispersal for each entering family
occurred after entry into the spread zone. The
point of dispersal for each family is the locus of its
proto-homeland, and this locus eventually is
engulfed by the next entering language. Hence in
a spread zone the locus cannot, by definition, be
the point of present greatest diversity (except
possibly for the most recent family to enter the
spread zone). On the contrary, the locus is one
of the earliest points to be overtaken by the next
106
spread.”
Further, “the Caspian Sea divides westward

spreads into steppe versus desert trajectories
quite close to the locus and hence quite early in
107
the spread.”
3. The Original Homeland: “Central Eurasia is a

linguistic bottleneck, spread zone, and extinction
chamber, but its languages had to come from
somewhere. The locus of the IE spread is a
theoretical point representing a linguistic
epicentre, not a literal place of ethnic or linguistic
origin, so the ultimate origin of PIE need not be in
the same place as the locus. There are several
linguistically plausible possibilities for the origin of
Pre-PIE. It could have spread eastward from the
Black Sea steppe (as proposed by Mallory 1989
and by Anthony 1991, 1995), so that the locus
formed only after this spread but still very early in
the history of disintegrating PIE… It could have
come into the spread zone from the east as
Mongolian, Turkic, and probably Indo-Iranian did.
Or it could have been a language of the early
108
urban oases of southern central Asia.”
Thus, the linguistic evidence fully confirms our

theory of an original homeland in India, an exit-
point in Afghanistan, and two streams of
westward emigration or expansion.
Nichols does not advocate an Indian homeland,

but:
a. She does accept that the Pre-PIE

language could have come from
any direction (east or west), or
could have been native to south
Central Asia (Bactria-Sogdiana)
itself, since the linguistic data only
accounts for the later part of the
movement, and not the earlier one.
b. The later part of the movement,

indicated by the linguistic data, is in
the opposite direction (ie. away
from India).
c. The literary evidence, as we

have seen in this book, provides the
evidence for the earlier part of the
movement.
Nichols’ analysis of the linguistic data, moreover,

produces a picture which is more natural, and
more compatible with what may be called
“linguistic migration theory”:
“As defined by Dyen (1956), a homeland is a

continuous area and a migration is any movement
causing that area to become non-continuous
(while a movement that simply changes its shape
or area is an expansion or expansive intrusion).
The linguistic population of the homeland is a set
of intermediate protolanguages, the first-order
daughters of the original protolanguage (in Dyen’s
terms, a chain of coordinate languages). The
homeland is the same as (or overlaps) the area of
the largest chain of such co-ordinates, i.e. the
area where the greatest number of highest-level
branches occur. Homelands are to be
reconstructed in such a way as to minimize the
number of migrations, and the number of
migrating daughter branches, required to get from
them to attested distributions (Dyen 1956:
109
613).”
The theories which place the original homeland in

South Russia postulate a great number of
separate emigrations of individual branches in
different directions: Hittite and Tocharian would
be the earliest emigrants in two different and
opposite directions, and Indo-Iranian, Armenian
and Greek would be the last emigrants, again, in
three different and opposite directions.
But the picture produced by the evidence

analysed by Nichols is different: “no major
migrations are required to explain the distribution
of IE languages at any stage in their history up to
the colonial period of the last few centuries. All
movements of languages (or more precisely all
viable movements - that is, all movements that
produced natural speech communities that lasted
for generations and branched into dialects) were
expansions, and all geographically isolated
languages (eg. Tocharian, Ossetic in the
Caucasus, ancestral Armenian, perhaps ancestral
Anatolian) appear to be remnants of formerly
continuous distributions. They were stranded by
subsequent expansions of other language
110
families, chiefly Turkic in historical times.”
It must be noted that the picture produced by the

linguistic evidence analysed by Nichols fits in
perfectly with the Indian homeland theory derived
from our analysis of the literary evidence, but
Nichols is not herself a supporter of the Indian
homeland theory, and this makes her testimony
all the more valuable.
Nichols suggests that there was a point of time

during the expansion of the Indo-Europeans when
“ancestral Proto-Indo-Aryan was spreading into
111
northern India,” and that “the Indo-Iranian
distribution is the result of a later, post-PIE
112
spread”.
How far does this fit in with the evidence analysed

by Nichols?
The evidence primarily shows two things:
a. “The long-standing westward

trajectories of languages point to an
eastward locus, and the spread of
IE along all these trajectories point
to a locus well to the east of the
113
Caspian Sea.”
b. “The locus of the IE spread was

therefore somewhere in the vicinity
114
of ancient Bactria-Sogdiana.”
The evidence shows “westward trajectories of

languages” from a locus “in the vicinity of ancient
Bactria-Sogdiana,” it does not show eastward or
southward trajectories of languages from this
locus.
Therefore, while Nichols’ conclusion, that the Indo-

European languages found to the west of Bactria-
Sogdiana, were the results of expansions from
Bactria-Sogdiana are based on linguistic
evidence, her conclusion that the Indo-European
languages found to the south and east of Bactria-
Sogdiana were also the results of expansions
from Bactria-Sogdiana, are not based on linguistic
evidence, but on a routine application of the
dictum “what is sauce for the goose is sauce for
the gander”. Also, perhaps, Nichols, who has no
particular reason to believe that India could be the
original homeland, finds no reason to go much
further than is absolutely necessary in challenging
established notions: as it is, she is conscious that
the locus indicated by the linguistic evidence “is
115
unlike any other proposed homeland”, and,
therefore, she probably sees no reason to make it
so unlike as to be provocative.
But the Indian homeland theory fits in perfectly

with Nichols’ conclusion that the homeland lay
along the easternmost of the three trajectories,
the one which led “eastward via Iran to western
116
central Asia,” since this same trajectory also
led to India.
While Nichols’ detailed linguistic analysis brings

into focus the geographical location of the original
homeland as indicated by the relationship of Indo-
European with certain western families of
languages, some other scholars have also noted
the relationship of Indo-European with certain
eastern families of languages: we refer, in
particular, to two studies conducted, respectively,
by Tsung-tung Chang in respect of the Chinese
language, and Isidore Dyen, in respect of the
Austronesian family of languages.
A. The Chinese Language
Tsung-tung Chang, a scholar of Chinese

(Taiwanese,) origin, has shown, on the basis of a
study of the relationship between the vocabulary
of Old Chinese, as reconstructed by Bernard
Karlgren (Grammata Serica, 1940, etc.), and the
etymological roots of Proto-Indo-European
vocabulary, as reconstructed by Julius Pokorny
(Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch,
1959), that there was a strong Indo-European
influence on the formative vocabulary of Old
Chinese.
He provides a long list of words common to Indo-

European and Old Chinese, and adds: “In the last
four years, I have traced out about 1500 cognate
words, which would constitute roughly two-thirds
of the basic vocabulary in Old Chinese. The
common words are to, be found in all spheres of
life including kinship, animals, plants,
hydrography, landscape, parts of the body,
actions, emotional expressions, politics and
religion, and even function words such as
pronouns and prepositions, as partly shown in the
117
lists of this paper.”
This Indo-European influence on Old Chinese,

according to him, took place at the time of the
founding of the first Chinese empire in about 2400
BC. He calls this the “Chinese Empire
118
established by Indo-European conquerors,”
and identifies Huang-ti (the “Yellow Emperor”),
traditional Chinese founder of this first empire, as
an Indo-European (suggesting that his name
should actually be interpreted as “blond heavenly
god”, in view of his identity).
About Huang-ti, he tells us that he was a nomadic

king who “ordered roads to be built, and was
perpetually on the move with treks of carriages.
At night he slept in a barricade of wagons. He
had no interest in walled towns… All of this
indicates his origin from a stock-breeding tribe in
Inner Mongolia. With introduction of horse- or
oxen-pulled wagons, transport and traffic in
northern China was revolutionized. Only on this
new technical basis did the founding of a state
with central government become feasible and
119
functional.”
Further, “Huang-ti is mentioned also as the

founder of Chinese language in the Li-Chi (Book
of Rites). In the Chapter 23 chi-fa (Rules of
Sacrifices),… we read: ‘Huang-ti gave hundreds
of things their right names, in order to illumine the
120
people about the common goods……’”
In this way: “The aboriginal people had thus to

learn new foreign words from the emperors.
Probably thereby the Proto-Indo-European
121
vocabulary became dominant in Old Chinese.”
What Tsung attempts to do to Chinese civilization

is more or less what invasionist scholars have
tried to do to Indian civilization, and we can take
his insistence that the first Chinese civilization
was established by “Indo-European conquerors”
with a fistful of salt. The logical explanation for
the similarity in vocabulary is simply that there
was a mutual influence between Old Chinese and
certain Indo-European branches which were
located in Central Asia in the third millennium BC
or slightly earlier.
Basically, that is what his own hypothesis also

actually suggests. According to Tsung: “Among
Indo-European dialects, Germanic languages
seem to have been mostly akin to Old Chinese…
Germanic preserved the largest number of
cognate words also to be found in Chinese…
Germanic and Chinese belong to the group of so-
called centum languages... The initial /h/ in
Germanic corresponds mostly to /h/ and /H/ in Old
Chinese.... Chinese and Northern Germanic
languages are poor in grammatical categories
such as case, gender, number, tense, mood,
122
etc…”
It is unlikely that this relationship between

Germanic and Old Chinese developed in Europe,
and nor does Tsung himself make such a claim.
He accepts that “Indo-Europeans had coexisted
for thousands of years in Central Asia… (before)
123
they emigrated into Europe”.
The influence on the Chinese language probably,

according to Tsung, spread to other related
languages later on: “Sino-Thai common
vocabulary, too, bristles with Indo-European
stems. In my opinion, these southern tribes were
once the aborigines of Northern China, who
immigrated to the south… Nevertheless they
could not escape since then the influence of
124
Chinese languages and civilization.”
How far Tsung’s hypothesis will find acceptance
is not clear. It is, however, a scholarly work by a
Western academician (albeit one of Taiwanese
origin) established in Germany, and it is being
seriously studied in the West.
Such as it is, it constitutes further linguistic

support for our theory that Central Asia was the
secondary homeland for various Indo-European
branches on their route from India to Europe.
B. The Austronesian Family of Languages
Isidore Dyen, in his paper, The Case of the

Austronesian Languages, presented at the 3rd
Indo-European Conference at the University of
Pennsylvania in 1966, has made out a case
showing the similarities between many basic
words reconstructed in the Proto-Indo-European
and Proto-Austronesian languages, as we have
seen in our earlier book.
They include such basic words as the very first

four numerals, many of the personal pronouns,
the words for “water” and “land”, etc. And Dyen
points out that “the number of comparisons could
be increased at least slightly, perhaps even
125
substantially, without a severe loss of quality”.
Dyen is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a

supporter of the Indian homeland theory; and in
fact such a theory does not strike him even after
he notes these similarities, since he points out
that the distribution of the two families, and their
respective homelands as understood by him, do
not explain the situation. In his own words: “The
hypothesis to be dealt with is not favoured by
considerations of the distribution of the two
families… The probable homelands of the
respective families appear to be very distant; that
of the Indo-European is probably in Europe,
whereas that of the Austronesian is no farther
west than the longitude of the Malay Peninsula in
any reasonable hypothesis, and has been placed
considerably farther east in at least one
hypothesis. The hypothesis suggested by
linguistic evidence is not thus facilitated by a
126
single homeland hypothesis.”
Dyen feels that the Indo-European homeland is

“probably in Europe” and the Austronesian
homeland “no farther west than the longitude of
the Malay Peninsula”, and hence he finds that the
“linguistic evidence is not… facilitated by a single
homeland hypothesis”.
But, apart from the Indian homeland theory for the

Indo-European family of languages, which Dyen
ignores, there is also an Indian homeland theory
for the ultimate origins of the Austronesian family
of languages: S.K. Chatterji, an invasionist
scholar, suggests that “India was the centre from
which the Austric race spread into the lands and
127
islands of the east and Pacific”, and that “the
Austric speech… in its original form (as the
ultimate source of both the Austro-Asiatic and
Austronesian branches)… could very well have
128
been characterised within India”.
Therefore the linguistic evidence is “facilitated by

a single homeland hypothesis” in the prehistoric
past: the Indian homeland hypothesis.
Thus, any linguistic evidence there is, in respect

of connections between Indo-European and other
families in the Proto-Indo-European period, all
point towards an Indian homeland for the Indo-
European family of languages.
V
LINGUISTIC SUBSTRATA IN INDOARYAN
As we have seen, there is plenty of linguistic

evidence which clearly shows that the Indo-
European family of languages originated in India.
We will now examine the linguistic “evidence” on

the basis of which the linguists usually dismiss the
Indian homeland theory, and in the name of which
archaeologists are classified together with “Hindu
fundamentalists”. Entire schools of scholars (as
we shall see in our Appendix on
Misinterpretations of Rigvedic History) are
mesmerised into treating the external (to India)
homeland and the Aryan invasion of India as
linguistically established facts.
There are two main fields of linguistic study which

have contributed to this misrepresentation of the
linguistic situation:
a. The study of the so-called non-

Aryan substrata in Indoaryan
languages.
b. The study of the reconstructed

Proto-Indo-European language,
society and culture.
In this section of the chapter, we will examine the

first of the two above aspects: ie. the so-called
non-Aryan linguistic substrata in Indoaryan
languages.
According to many linguists, the Indoaryan

languages contain a large number of non-Aryan
words, as well as grammatical and syntactical
features, which appear to be Dravidian, or
occasionally Austric - words and features which
are missing in Indo-European languages outside
India, and which therefore show that the
Indoaryan languages were intruders into an area
(North India) formerly occupied by speakers of
Dravidian and Austric languages, who, in the
course of time, adopted the Indoaryan speech
forms. A special aspect of this argument is that
names of Indian animals and plants, in Indoaryan
languages, are alleged to be adopted from non-
Aryan (Dravidian or Austric), thereby showing that
the original Indoaryan speakers were not
acquainted with the flora and fauna of India.
We have examined these claims at some length

in our earlier book, and we will only summaries
here our arguments given therein against them:
1. In respect of the grammatical and syntactical
features common to Indoaryan and Dravidian,
most of these features are also found in different
Indo-European branches or languages outside
India, so that the features in Indoaryan are not
foreign to Indo-European and are more likely to
be internal developments. And the modern
Indoaryan languages do not necessarily
represent a change from an originally Vedic like
structure, since these modem Indoaryan
languages are not, as popularly believed,
descendants of the Vedic language, but
descendants of other Indo-European dialects
which we have called Inner-Indo-European
dialects, whose grammatical and syntactical
features may have been different from that of the
dialects of the northwest and northernmost India,
which produced Vedic and the ancestors of the
extra-Indian Indo-European languages, and
similar to the other non-Indo-European families
within India (Dravidian, Austric), from pre-Vedic
times.
2. The linguists classify words as non-Aryan not

because they are recognizable loan-words from
Dravidian or Austric (ie. words which have a clear
Dravidian or Austric etymology and no Indo-
European or Sanskrit etymology), but simply
because they are words for which, in the
subjective opinions of these scholars (who, in any
case, are on a mission to hunt out non-Aryan
words in the Indoaryan languages), the Indo-
European or Sanskrit etymologies are “not
satisfactory”.
In most cases, these words, or equivalent forms,

are not even found in the Dravidian or Austric
languages, and the scholars are therefore
compelled to invent the “possibility of non-Aryan
speeches (other than Dravidian, Kol and the later
Tibeto-Burman), speeches now extinct, being
129
present in India”, and being the source for
these words. There is thus a clear predisposition
to brand these words as “non-Aryan” by hook or
by crook.
3. Most of the non-Aryan (Dravidian or Austric)
etymological derivations sought to be postulated
by the linguists for particular words are
challenged or refuted by other linguists, who give
clear Indo-European or Sanskrit etymological
derivations for the same words; and it is clear that
there is no consistency or consensus in the
assertions of the linguists, beyond the basic
dogma that there must be non-Aryan words in the
Indoaryan languages.
4. Many of the derivations which the scholars try

to assert from Dravidian or Austric are basically
impossible ones, since, even apart from other
considerations, these words contain phonetic
characteristics which are inconsistent with those
of the alleged source-languages. Thus words
original to the Dravidian languages could not start
with an initial cerebral or liquid (T, D, r, l), did not
contain aspirate sounds (h, kh, gh, ch, jh, Th, Dh,
th, dh, ph, bh) and sibilants (s, S), could not start
with initial voiced stops (g, j, D, d, b) or have
intervocalic voiceless obstruents (k, c, T, t, p), and
did not contain obstruents + liquids (kr, pi, pr, tr,
etc). And yet, the linguists regularly postulate a
Dravidian origin for large numbers of words which
contain these phonetic characteristics.
5. In the case of names of Indian plants and

animals, the majority of them have been given
Sanskrit etymologies, not only by ancient Sanskrit
grammarians and etymologists, but even by
modern Western Sanskritists like Sir Monier-
Williams, etc. Linguists who are predisposed to
reject these etymologies, without being able to
give definite and indisputable alternatives, cannot
be taken seriously.
6. Names of plants and animals which appear to

have no clear or credible Indo-European or
Sanskrit etymologies cannot be automatically
treated as non-Aryan words (unless they have
clear and indisputable Dravidian or Austric
etymologies) purely on that ground, since the
situation is identical in the case of words which
are very clearly and definitely inherited Indo-
European words.
Thus, Carl D. Buck points out: “In the inherited

names of animals there is little to be said about
their semantic nature, for in most of them, the root-
130
connection is wholly obscure.” Likewise, in the
few inherited names of plants common to various
Indo-European branches, he points out that “the
root connections are mostly
131
obscure”. Specifically, even a universal Indo-
European word like *kuon (dog) has a “root
132
connection much disputed and dubious”; and
the equally universal word *ekwo (horse) has a
133
“root connection wholly obscure”.
Therefore, unless it is to be assumed that the

Proto-Indo-Europeans were totally unacquainted
with any plants and animals at all, it must be
accepted that the names of plants and animals in
any language need not necessarily be derivable
from the etymological roots of that language:
these names are more likely to have been “at first
134
colloquial or even slang words” which rose up
from common speech into the standard
vocabulary.
7. When the names of certain plants or animals in

the Indoaryan languages are demonstrably
Dravidian or Austric, this will be because the
plants or animals concerned are native to those
parts of India where Dravidian or Austric
languages are spoken. Thus the Sanskrit word
ela is certainly derived from the Dravidian word
yela, since the plant concerned (cardamom) is
native to Kerala, which is in the heart of the
Dravidian language area. The South Indian plant
was borrowed, alongwith its name, by the people
of North India.
In such cases, it need not even be necessary that

the plant must not be found in the area of the
borrowers. If a plant which is native to both North
and South India was first cultivated and
popularised in the South, then it is possible that
the South Indian name would stick to the
cultivated plant, even in the North. Thus, the tea
plant is native to both China and India (Assam,
etc.), and the cultivated varieties of tea today
include both Chinese tea and Assamese tea. But
China was the first to cultivate and popularise the
beverage, and even today, the plant is known
everywhere, including in India (and Assam) by its
Chinese names (cA/cAy, tea).
Therefore, when there is any Dravidian or Austric

name for any plant in Indoaryan languages, it is
due to the geographical origin or historical
cultivation of the plant in a Dravidian or Austric
area, and not because the original Indoaryan
speakers came from outside into an originally
Dravidian or Austric India.
8. The names of plants and animals which are

native to North India are of Indo-European or
Sanskrit origin even in the Dravidian languages of
South India and the Austric languages of eastern
India. Thus, the words for camel (Sanskrit
uSTra), lion (Sanskrit siMha) and rhinoceros
(Sanskrit khaDgI or gaNDa) are derived from
purely Indo-European roots: the word uSTra, in
fact, is found in Iranian (uStra).
But, the Dravidian words for camel (Tamil-

Malayalam oTTagam, Kannada-Telugu oNTe,
Toda oTTe, Brahui huch, etc.), lion (Tamil
cingam, Telugu siMhamu, Kannada siMha, etc.)
and rhinoceros (Tamil kANDAmirugam, Telugu,
khaDga-mRgamu, Kannada khaDgamRga; note
also the Sanskrit word mRga, animal, necessarily
added to the basic name), are all derived from the
Sanskrit words. Likewise, the Austric words for
camel (Santali Ut, Khasi ut) and lion (Santali
sinho, Sora sinam-kidan, etc.).
This would clearly not have been the case if the

northwestern areas, native to the camel, lion, and
(at least in the Indus Valley period) the
rhinoceros, had originally been Dravidian or
Austric, or any other non-Aryan language areas
before the alleged advent of the Indoaryans.
9. In addition (this is a point not made in our
earlier book), it must be noted that the linguists
often reject the Sanskrit or Indo-European origins
of words in Indoaryan languages, or they reject
correspondences between Indoaryan words and
words in other branches of Indo-European, on the
flimsiest of grounds: even a single vowel or
consonant in a word which, according to them, is
not what it should have been according to the
strict and regular rules of Sanskrit or Indo-
European derivations, is sufficient for them to
brand the word as probably or definitely non-
Aryan.
Thus, the connection between Vedic VaruNa,

Greek Ouranos and Teutonic Woden is rejected,
inspite of the fact that the close similarity of the
names is backed by close correspondences in the
mythical nature and characteristics of the three
Gods, on the ground that the derivations are
irregular. Likewise, the connection between
Vedic PaNi/VaNi, Greek Pan and Teutonic Vanir
will also be rejected on similar flimsy grounds,
although, as we will see in Chapter 10 of this
book, the three are definitely cognate names.
On the other hand, linguists connecting up

Indoaryan words with Dravidian or Austric words
have no compunctioris about linguistic regularity
or accuracy: thus T. Burrow (‘Some-Dravidian
Words in Sanskrit’, in Transactions of the
Philological Society-1945, London, 1946) derives
Sanskrit paN (to negotiate, bargain) and paNa
(wager) from “Tamil puNai, to tie; tie, bond,
pledge, security, surety, Kannada poNe, bond,
bail…” etc. If these are Dravidian words in
Sanskrit, then the related Greek Pan and
Teutonic Vanir are also Dravidian words in these
languages.
It is not only in respect of Indoaryan words that

the linguists indulge in such hairsplitting: even in
respect of the Greek word theós (God), instead of
accepting that the word is an irregular derivation
from Indo-European *deiwos, the linguists insist
that theós is unrelated to *deiwos, and try to
suggest alternative etymologies for it, eg. “from
*thesós (cf. théspharos, ‘spoken by god,
ordained’), but root connection much disputed
135
and still dubious”. Some linguists go
further: “Mr. Hopkins… rejects all the proposed
etymologies and suggests that… théos itself is a
136
loanword from pre-Greek sources.” However,
while this kind of hairsplitting is occasional in
respect of Greek, it is a regular feature in respect
of Indoaryan.
We have seen, earlier on in this chapter, how

Michael Witzel, while admitting to the fact that the
rivers in North India have Sanskrit names from
the earliest recorded (Rigvedic) period itself, tries
to suggest that at least three river names, KubhA,
SutudrI and KoSala, are non-Aryan, on grounds
of the suggested Sanskrit etymologies being
irregular.
But this kind of argument is basically untenable:

while there can be no doubt that there is such a
thing as regular derivations according to definite
phonetic rules of etymology and phonetic change,
there can be irregular derivations also, since
human speech in its historical evolution has not
evolved strictly according to rules. Thus, the Latin
word canis (dog) is definitely derived from Indo-
European *kuon: according to Buck, the “phonetic
development is peculiar, but connection not to be
137
questioned”. Likewise, the modern Greek ikkos
(horse) is definitely derived from Indo-European
*ekwo, although, as Buck points out, “with some
138
unexplained phonetic features”.
Hence, it is clear that linguists seeking to reject

Indo-European correspondences, or Sanskrit
etymologies, of Indoaryan words, on the grounds
of irregular phonetic features, are not being
strictly honest, and their opinions cannot be
considered conclusive in any sense of the term.
This was a brief summary of our main arguments

in our earlier book.
An examination of the writings of the various

linguists who have written on this subject, as part
of the sustained effort to produce long lists of
“non-Aryan” words which form a “substratum” in
Indoaryan languages, shows that logic and
objectivity play no part in this exercise: any word
in Sanskrit or in the modern Indoaryan languages,
which appears to be similar in sound to any
Dravidian word with even a vaguely similar
meaning, automatically represents a Dravidian
word adopted by Indoaryan in the eyes of these
scholars, even when most of such words have
clear Sanskrit etymologies, and many of them, or
similar words, are found in other Indo-European
languages outside India as well.
An examination or comparative study of the works

of these linguists has been undertaken by an
American scholar, Edwin F. Bryant, in his paper
Linguistic Substrata and the Indigenous Aryan
Debate. The quotations to follow are based on the
rough draft of the above paper, the final version of
which was presented at the October 1996
Michigan-Laussane International Seminar on
Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia: Evidence,
Interpretation and Ideology. (Bryant is currently on
the faculty of the Department of History, Harvard
University, Cambridge, USA.)
Bryant finds that “all these linguists are operating

on the assumption, based on other criteria, that
the Aryans ‘must have’ invaded India where there
could not have been a ‘linguistic vacuum’”, and
that, beyond this shared predisposition, there is
no consensus among them on any specific point.
His examination of the works of different linguists
shows “that they are not internally consistent,
since the opinions of the principal linguists in this
area have differed quite considerably. This
problematizes the value of this method as a
significant determinant in the Indo-Aryan
debate…”.
The extent to which these linguists (all of whom

are otherwise in agreement in the belief that the
Indoaryans are immigrants into India from an
original homeland in South Russia) differ in the
matter is made clear by Bryant:
1. About the grammatical and syntactical features
common to both Dravidian and Indoaryan, Robert
Caldwell (1856) was the first to draw attention to
many of them; but he rejected the idea that these
features constituted originally Dravidian
grammatical and syntactical elements (which
surfaced in Indoaryan as a substratum):
“whatever the ethnological evidence of their
identity may be supposed to exist… when we
view the question philologically, and with
reference to the evidence furnished by their
languages alone, the hypothesis of their identity
does not appear to me to have been established.”
But, a hundred years later, M.B. Emeneau (1956)

drew up a whole list of such grammatical and
syntactical features, and added to them in his
later studies (1969, 1974). F.B.J. Kuiper (1967)
and Massica (1976) also added to the list. These
linguists concluded that these features were
definitely evidence of a Dravidian substratum.
However, H. Hock (1975, 1984) strongly rejected

the idea that these features are due to a
Dravidian substratum. He pointed out that most
of these features actually have parallels in other
Indo-European languages outside India, and
therefore they were more likely to be internal
developments in Indoaryan. Since then, several
other linguists, all otherwise staunch believers in
the Aryan invasion theory, have rejected the idea
that these features are Dravidian features.
F.B.J Kuiper (1974), a staunch protagonist of the

substratum theory, admits that “we cannot
compare the syntax of the Rigveda with
contemporaneous Dravidian texts. The oldest
Dravidian texts that we know are those of old
Tamil. They probably date from about the second
century AD and are, accordingly, at least a
thousand years later than the Rgveda.”
M.B. Emeneau himself, although he sticks to the

claim that a Dravidian substratum explains the
situation better, admits (1980) that it is not as
easy as that: “Is the whole Indo-Aryan history one
of self-development, and the complex Dravidian
development triggered by Indo-Aryan, perhaps
even New Indo-Aryan, influence, or, in the case of
Kurukh, borrowed from New Indo-Aryan?… no
easy solution is yet at hand.”
2. F.B.J. Kuiper (1991) produced a list of 380

words from the Rigveda, constituting four percent
of the Rigvedic vocabulary, which he claimed
were of non-Aryan (primarily Dravidian) origin.
Earlier linguists were more cautious in the matter
of Rigvedic vocabulary. M.B. Emeneau (1980),
for example, hoped that the linguists would agree
at least on one word mayUra, as a borrowing from
Dravidian: “I can only hope that the evidence for
mayuura as a RV borrowing from Dr. is
convincing to scholars in general.”
But P. Thieme (1994) examined and rejected

Kuiper’s list in toto, gave Indoaryan or Sanskrit
etymologies for most of these words, and
characterized Kuiper’s exercise as an example of
a misplaced “zeal for hunting up Dravidian loans
in Sanskrit”. In general, Thieme sharply rejects
the tendency to force Dravidian or Austric
etymologies onto Indoaryan words, and insists
(1992) that “if a word can be explained easily from
material extant in Sanskrit itself, there is little
chance for such a hypothesis”.
Rahul Peter Das (a believer in the Aryan invasion

theory), likewise rejects (1994) Kuiper’s list, and
emphasises that there is “not a single case in
which a communis opinio has been found
confirming the foreign origin of a Rgvedic (and
probably Vedic in general) word”.
Therefore, it is clear that claims regarding

Dravidian loan-words in Vedic Sanskrit are totally
baseless.
3. So far as the modern Indoaryan languages are

concerned, also, the untenability of the whole
exercise of hunting down non-Aryan words in
Indoaryan can be illustrated by an examination of
a detailed study conducted by Massica (1991), a
staunch believer in the Aryan invasion theory (and
who, in fact, concludes that his study confirms the
theory), who examined a complete list of names
of plants and agricultural terms in Hindi.
Massica’s study found that only 4.5% of the words

have Austric etymologies, and 7.6% of the words
have Dravidian etymologies, and, even here, “a
significant portion of the suggested Dravidian and
Austroasiatic etymologies is uncertain”. When we
consider that the few words where an Austric or a
Dravidian etymology can be proved probably refer
to plants and agricultural processes native to
South India or Eastern India, Massica’s study
clearly contradicts his conclusions.
Massica, however, classifies 55% of the words as

non-Aryan (other than Dravidian and Austric, and
other than non-Indian names for non-Indian
plants), but of “unknown origin”.
It is words of this kind which, as we have already

seen, have led the linguists to postulate extinct
indigenous families of non-Aryan, non-Dravidian
and non-Austric languages in ancient India, which
have disappeared without a trace, but which
constitute the main non-Aryan substrata in
Indoaryan. As T. Burrow notes, even the most
liberal Dravidian and Austric etymologising may
not serve in explaining words which (in his
opinion) are non-Aryan, since “it may very well
turn out that the number of such words which
cannot be explained will outnumber those which
can be. This is the impression one gets, for
example, from the field of plant names, since so
far only a minority of this section of the non-Aryan
words has been explained from these two
linguistic families.”
However, although the linguists are compelled to

resort to these stratagems, they are not very
comfortable with them. Emeneau (1980), for
example, admits: “it hardly seems useful to take
into account the possibilities of another language,
or language family, totally lost to the record, as
the source” for the supposedly non-Aryan words.
Massica himself, although he brands the words as

non-Aryan on the ground that there are no
acceptable Sanskrit etymologies, admits that “it is
not a requirement that the word be connected
with a root, of course: there are many native
words in Sanskrit as in all languages that cannot
be analysed”.
Bloch and Thieme emphasize the point that the

names of plants need not be analysable from
etymological roots, since most of them will be
slang or colloquial words derived from the “low
culture” vernaculars of the same language.
4. It is in Classical Sanskrit word-lists that we find

many words which can be, or have been,
assigned Dravidian or Austric origins. This has
led the linguists to emphasise a theory first
mooted by Burrow (1968), according to which
there was a very small number of Dravidian and
Austric words (or none at all) in the Rigveda,
which grew in the later Vedic literature, reached a
peak in the Epics and PurANas, and in the
Classical Sanskrit word-lists, and finally dwindled
in the Prakrits, and even more so in the modern
Indoaryan languages. This situation, according to
Burrow, depicts a scenario where the Aryan
immigrants into India were new arrivals at the
time of composition of the hymns, and hence
hardly any indigenous words had infiltrated into
the vocabulary of the Rigveda. As the process of
bilingualism developed (involving both the local
inhabitants of the North preserving some of their
original non-Aryan vocabulary as they adopted
the Aryan speech-forms, as well as post-first
generation Aryans inheriting non-Aryan words as
they merged with the local people), the number of
such words increased in the language of the
Epics and PurANas, and the Classical Sanskrit
word-lists. Finally, when there were no more
bilingual speakers left in the North, since
everyone had adopted the Aryan speech-forms,
the appearance of non-Aryan words in the
Indoaryan languages ceased, hence the modem
Indoaryan languages have few such words.
However, Caldwell (1856), who was the first to
produce lists of words “probably” borrowed by
Sanskrit from Dravidian, rejected this substratum
theory. He noted that the words did not include
the essential aspects of vocabulary (such as
actions, pronouns, body parts, etc.), and
consisted almost exclusively of words “remote
from ordinary use”, and hence concluded that the
Dravidian languages could not possibly have
been spoken in North India at the time of the
alleged Aryan invasion.
Bloch (1929), who rejected the substratum theory

completely, pointed out that the Dravidian
languages of the South, even at the level of
common speech, contain a massive amount of
borrowed Sanskrit vocabulary covering every
aspect of life. But this is not explained as an
Aryan substratum in South India. The natural
explanation for these borrowings is that a
relatively small number of Sanskrit-speaking
individuals were responsible for them. Likewise,
the Dravidian words in Sanskrit were reverse
borrowings, being introductions of Dravidian
words into literary Sanskrit by similar Sanskrit-
speaking individuals from the South. Such words
were only part of the Classical Sanskrit lexicon,
and few of them percolated to the Indoaryan
vernaculars. Thus, even popular Sanskrit words
like nIra (water, Tamil nIr), mIna (fish, Tamil mIn),
heramba (buffalo, Tamil erumai), etc. are not
used in the modem Indoaryan languages, which
use, instead, derivatives of the Sanskrit words
pAnIyam, matsya and mahiSa respectively. Such
words, as Bloch points out, were artificial and
temporary introductions into literary Sanskrit,
most of which (although it is likely that some of
them became so popular that they replaced, or
accompanied, original Sanskrit words, and
percolated down into modern Indoaryan) either
died out completely, or remained purely literary
words which did not become a part of naturally
spoken Indoaryan speech.
Massica, in his recent study (1991) already

referred to, also notes that Dravidian words in
Sanskrit are not found in present-day Indoaryan
languages like Hindi. Clearly, these words do not
represent a Dravidian substratum in Sanskrit, but
a process of artificial adoption of vocabulary from
regional speech-forms, both Aryan and non-
Aryan.
5. Many linguists question the idea that there

could be a Dravidian or Austric substratum in the
Indoaryan languages of North India, even on the
grounds of the likely geographical distribution of
these two families in ancient times. In respect of
the Austric languages, even a staunch supporter
of the non-Aryan substratum theory like Burrow
(1968) admits that the possibility of an Austric
substratum is remote since “the evidence as it is
so far established would suggest that these
languages in ancient times as well as now were
situated only in eastern India”. Massica (1979)
and Southworth (1979) also reiterate this point.
R.P. Das (1994) points out that there is “not a

single bit of uncontroversial evidence on the
actual spread of Dravidian and Austro-Asiatic in
prehistoric times, so that any statement on
Dravidian and Austric in Rgvedic times is nothing
but speculation”.
6. In fact, when words are similar in both

Indoaryan and Dravidian, it is more natural to
conclude that the Indoaryan words are the
original ones. According to Thieme, “all the
Dravidian languages known to us fairly bristle with
loans from Sanskrit and the Aryan vernaculars.
Dravidian literature in South India came into
existence under the impulse and influence of
Sanskrit literature and speech. Wherever there is
a correspondence in the vocabularies of Sanskrit
and Dravidian, there is a presumption, to be
removed only by specific argument, that Sanskrit
has been the lender, Dravidian the borrower.”
While Thieme is, of course, an opponent of the

substratum theory, even so staunch a supporter
of the substratum theory as Emeneau (1980)
admits that it is “always possible, eg. to counter a
suggestion of borrowing from one of the
indigenous language families by suggesting that
there has been borrowing in the other direction”.
7. Ultimately, therefore, the whole question of a

Dravidian, or non-Aryan, substratum in the
Indoaryan languages is a matter of dogma rather
than scientific study.
R.P. Das (1994), for example, points out that

there is little linguistic logic involved in the debate
about the Dravidian or Austric origins of
Indoaryan words: “Many of the arguments for (or
against) such foreign origin are often not the
results of impartial and thorough research, but
rather of (often wistful) statements of faith.”
Bloch (1929), likewise, had earlier dismissed the

Dravidian derivations which many linguists sought
to force on Sanskrit words, as being not “self-
evident” but “a matter of probability and to a
certain extent of faith”.
While both Das and Bloch are opponents of the

substratum theory (though believers in the Aryan
invasion theory in general), Emeneau (1980), a
staunch supporter of the substratum theory,
himself admits that these derivations are “in fact
all merely ‘suggestions’. Unfortunately, all areal
etymologies are in the last analysis unprovable,
are ‘acts of faith’.”
The “faith” in all these cases is the faith in the

external (to India) origin of the Indoaryans (and
Indo-Europeans), which Emeneau (1980)
describes as “our linguistic doctrine which has
been held now for more than a century and a
half”.
Hence, after his examination of the claims and

counterclaims of the linguists, Bryant reaches the
logical conclusion that “the theory of Aryan
migrations must be established without doubt on
other grounds for research into pre-Aryan
linguistic substrata to become meaningful.
However, the ‘evidence’ of a linguistic substratum
in Indo-Aryan, in and of itself, due to its
inconclusive nature, cannot be presented in
isolation as decisive proof in support of the theory
of Aryan invasions or migrations into the Indian
subcontinent.”
VI
PROTOLINGUISTIC STUDIES
Finally, we come to that aspect of linguistic

studies which first led the linguists to dismiss the
idea of India being the original homeland, and
which first created the impression, which persists
to this day, even after this aspect of linguistic
studies has now been recognized by serious
linguists as a method which cannot be relied upon
for arriving at any conclusions on the subject, that
linguistics has “proved” the non-Indian origin of
the Indo-Europeans. We refer to the study of the
proto-language and of its geographical
implications for the original homeland of the Indo-
The linguists have reconstructed the Proto-Indo-

European language on the basis of definite
phonetic rules of sound-change and
development, applied to the words common to
different Indo-European branches. Allowing for
the fact that most linguists often tend to adopt a
rigid and dogmatic approach to the subject
(which, as we have already seen, leads them to
indulge in hairsplitting, and to reject many obvious
cognate forms, like Greek theos, or to only
grudgingly accept some others, like Latin canis
and modern Greek ikkos), and that it is often
difficult to explain changes in vocabulary, which
makes it necessary to be cautious in postulating
original words (as has often been pointed out, as
an example, all the modem Italic languages have
words for “horse” derived from a Latin word
caballus: eg. Italian cavallo, French cheval,
Spanish caballo, Rumanian cal; while the actual
Latin word for the horse was equus. If Latin had
been an unrecorded language, and it had been
required to reconstruct it on the basis of words
common to its present day descendants, the word
equus would never be reconstructed), the
reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European
language may generally be accepted as a
reasonably valid one, with some natural
limitations.
However, this reconstruction has not been treated

as a purely academic exercise, but as a means of
pinpointing the geographical location of the
original homeland. There have been two main
methods by which the linguists have sought to
use the exercise as a means of rejecting the idea
of an Indian homeland. and, since their
endeavours appear to have been so successful in
mesmerising all and sundry and in effectively
derailing all rational inquiry into the subject, it is
necessary for us to examine these two methods:
A. Linguistic Paleontology.
B. Archaic Dialectology.
VI. A. Linguistic Paleontology
Linguistic Paleontology is a method devised by

nineteenth century linguists, by which they sought
to reconstruct the geographical and socio-cultural
environment of the Proto-Indo-European people
on the basis of words common to different Indo-
European branches.
On the basis of the few names of animals, birds

and plants, and words indicating climate, common
to different Indo-European branches, the linguists
concluded that the Proto-Indo-Europeans lived in
a cold environment, and were acquainted with a
few plants/trees like barley, birch, pine and oak,
and animals like horses, cattle, goats, sheep,
deer, bears, wolves, dogs, foxes and otters.
The names of these plants and animals do not

really pinpoint a specific area, since they are all
found in a large area ranging from Europe to
North India, covering almost the entire Indo-
European belt. But the linguists concluded that
the evidence of these names clearly excluded
India from being the location of the original
homeland, since the common names did not
include names of plants/trees and animals which
are specifically found in India (such as the
elephant, etc).
However, this argument is clearly illogical: if the

Indo-European languages outside India do not
appear to have names for plants and animals
which are found in India, but not found in the
areas where these languages are spoken; then
the Indoaryan languages also do not have names
for plants and animals which are found in Indo-
European areas outside India, but not found in
India. The conclusion that can be derived from
this is simply that Indo-European languages
generally (but not always) retained Proto-Indo-
European names only for those plants and
animals which were also found in their new
habitats: they generally lost the names for plants
and animals which were found in former habitats
but not in newer ones. This would naturally be
the case, when we consider that the speakers of
most Indo-European languages would generally
be natives of their respective areas, who adopted
the Indo-European speech from immigrant Indo-
Europeans, and who would therefore be ignorant
of, and unconcerned with, plants and animals
native to the former habitats of the immigrants.
Therefore, linguistic paleontology stands largely

discredited today as a method of reconstruction of
the original geographical environment of the Indo-
Europeans, or at least as a method on the
negative testimony of which certain areas like
India could be excluded from being the original
homeland. As the eminent linguist Stefan Zimmer
puts it: “The long dispute about the reliability of
this ‘linguistic paleontology’ is not yet finished, but
approaching its inevitable end - with a negative
139
result, of course.”
But, as a matter of fact, such evidence as there

is, far from disproving the Indian homeland
theory, actually proves this theory.
140
T. Gamkrelidze and V. Ivanov, two linguists
who are supporters of the Anatolian homeland
theory, have recently examined words in the Indo-
European languages which were largely ignored
or missed by the linguists in general, and they
have arrived at the conclusion that Proto-Indo-
European names definitely existed for some more
animals such as the leopard (Sanskrit pRdAku,
Greek pardos, Hittite parsana) and the monkey
(Sanskrit kapi, Greek kepos, which they also link,
with k/mute alteration, with Germanic and Celtic
words like Old Norse api, Old English apa, Old
High German affo, Welsh epa and Irish apa,
“ape”), and even more significantly, the camel and
the elephant:
1. The camel is native to West Asia and to Central

Asia. There are cognate words for the camel in
Tokharian *alpi, Old Church Slavonic velibadu,
Baltic (Lithuanian) verbliudas, and Germanic
words like Old Norse ulfaldi, Old English olfend,
Old High German olbanta and Gothic ulbandus.
A related word in Hittite, according to C.D. Buck,
is ulupantas or ulpantas which appears to be
141
used for “ox”.
The word is similar to the Greek word elephas for

elephant, which is the source for all the European
names for the elephant. Buck suggests that this
word is “based upon… Egyptian words… to be
analysed as el-ephas, the second part, like Lat.
ebur, ‘ivory’, from Egypt. Ab, ‘elephant, ivory’, but
142
first part disputed”. He adds: “Hence also
(though disputed by some) with shift to ‘camel’,
Goth. ulbandus, ON ulfaldi, OE olfend, OHG
143
olbanta……”
The evidence of the Tokharian word, however,

conclusively proves that this word cannot be a
borrowing by Greek from Egyptian. A word so
borrowed could never have been transmitted to
Tokharian in Central Asia by any manipulation of
any known theory of Indo-European origins and
migrations; and the Tocharian word is clearly a
related one since it contains both the elements,
the “second part” of the word as well as the
“disputed” first part.
Therefore, while it is very likely that there was a
“shift” from an original meaning “elephant” to a
new meaning “camel”, this shift took place in
Central Asia and not in Greece. The cognate
words for camel in Tocharian, Germanic, Slavonic
and Baltic (and also Hittite, where there has been
a second shift in meaning to “ox”) clearly prove
that all these branches shared a sojourn in the
camel lands of Central Asia.
2. The Greek word el-ephas is exactly cognate

(again, only the second part of the word) with the
Rigvedic ibhas. As we have already seen in our
chapter on the Geography of the Rigveda, ibhas
is just one of the four purely “Aryan” names
(ibhas, sRNI, hastin and vAraNa) for the elephant
in the Rigveda. Gamkrelidze and Ivanov point out
that the Latin word ebur, “ivory”, is also cognate to
the Sanskrit ibhas.
We thus have the evidence of three different

branches of Indo-European languages for the
elephant as an animal known to the Proto-Indo-
Europeans. As the Proto-Indo-Europeans were
not native to Africa, African elephants (not being
domesticated) could not have been directly known
to them (even as an imported animal) in any other
proposed homeland, and the Asiatic elephant is
not native to any area north or west of India, the
implications of this evidence are loud and clear.
Incidentally, it is possible that the Egyptian word

Ab for “elephant” or “ivory” is itself derived from
Sanskrit ibhas. We have it on the testimony of
the Old Testament of the Bible (I Kings 22.10; II
Chronicles 9.21) that apes, ivory and peacocks
were imported from India (the peacocks confirm
that the land referred to is India, or a transit port
on the way from India) into Palestine, and
doubtless the same was the case in Egypt as
well.
The Hebrew word for “ape” in the above

references is qoph which is derived by linguists
from the Sanskrit kapi; and, likewise, Buck
accepts kapi as the “probable source of Egyptian
144
qephi”. Significantly, the words for elephant in
Arabic and Hebrew, fil and pil respectively, are
clearly derived from the Sanskrit word pIlu for a
male elephant, thereby indicating that it was the
Indian elephant rather than the African one which
was known in this region.
3. An animal whose name is common to almost

all the Indo-European branches is the cow
(Sanskrit go, Avestan gao, German kuh, Latin
bOs, Irish bo, Lettish guovs, Greek boûs, Old
Church Slavonic krava, etc), for whom the
reconstructed Proto-Indo-European word is
*gwou. It is clear that the cow was a very intrinsic
part of the life of the Indo-Europeans, as is
proved also by its dominant status in the culture,
idiom and imagery of the oldest Indo-European
texts, the Rigveda and the Avesta.
Significantly, different ancient civilizations

(Sumerian gu, Ancient Chinese gou) appear to
have borrowed the word from the Indo-
Europeans. It is, therefore, quite likely that the
Proto-Indo-European homeland was a primary
centre of diffusion of cattle breeding.
It may be noted in this context that recent

research by scientists at the Trinity College in
Dublin has revolutionised ideas about the origins
of the domestication of cattle. It was formerly
believed that cattle domestication first took place
in Anatolia, and then spread to the rest of the
world; and the humped breeds of Indian cattle,
known in the West as Zebu or Brahmin cattle,
were believed to be descended from these
Anatolian cattle.
However, the scientists “who examined the DNA

of 13 breeds of modern cattle found that all the
European and African cattle breeds shared the
same genetic lineage. But the eastern types
came from an entirely different source. By
backtracking the number of mutations that must
have occured, the scientists have also deduced
that the two lines split more than 200,000 years
ago; and since the two lines are still distinct, the
simplest interpretation of the research was that
there were two separate domestication
145
events.”
Thus, India, the centre of domestication of other

species of bovids, like the buffalo and the gayal,
was also the centre of domestication of the
eastern or humped cattle.
And, to howsoever great or small an extent, this

appears to strengthen the claims of India to be
the location of the original homeland of the Indo-
This is corroborated by the fact that Sanskrit

retains a distinctly different root word for “milk”,
which appears to be older, and closer to the
original Indo-European ethos, than the common
word for “milk” found in almost all the other
branches of Indo-European languages.
Many of the other branches have related words

for “milk”: German milch, Irish mlicht, Russian
moloko, etc. And even where they appear to
differ in the noun form, they share a common
word for the verb “to milk”: Latin mulgere, Old
High German melchan, Greek amèlgo, Old
Church Slavonic mlešti, Lithuanian milZti,
Albanian mjellë, Irish bligim, etc.
Only Sanskrit and Iranian stand out in not having

any word related to the above. Instead, we have
Sanskrit dugdha, “milk”, derived from the root
duh-, “to milk”, with related verbal forms duxtan,
dušidan, “to milk” in modern Persian (though not
in the Avesta).
The root duh-, found directly only in Sanskrit, and

only secondarily in Iranian, appears to have
deeper roots in the Indo-European languages.
According to many linguists (although many
others dismiss the derivation as simplistic), the
Indo-European words for “daughter” (Sanskrit
duhitar, Persian dukhtar, Gothic dauhtar,
Lithuanian dukte, Old Church Slavonic dUšti,
Greek thugater, etc.) are derived from the same
root, so that the word basically means “milkmaid”,
indicating that cattle-breeding was a primary
occupation among the Proto-Indo-Europeans.
VI.B. Archaic Dialectology
The second significant aspect of the study of the

protolanguage, on the basis of which an Indian
homeland was rejected by the linguists, was that
Sanskrit, in some respects, represents a
phonetically highly evolved form of the original
Proto-Indo-European: thus, for example, to quote
the most common factor cited, Sanskrit is a
“Satem” language, and in fact, alongwith Avestan,
the most highly palatalized of the Satem
languages. The original Proto-Indo-European
language was a “Kentum” language, and some
branches evolved into Satem branches by a
process of palatalization of original velars (k, g)
into palatals (c, j) and into sibilants (s, S). The
Kentum branches thus represent an older form of
Indo-European, and all the Kentum branches are
found only in Europe - or so it was thought until
the discovery of Tokharian in Chinese Turkestan;
but this discovery was quickly sought to be
absorbed into the western homeland theory by
postulating an early migration of the Tokharians
from the west into the east,
However, as we have already seen earlier on in

this chapter, the phenomenon of palatalization, as
also various other features which represent
phonetic evolutions from the Indo-European
original, are now accepted as innovations which
took place in the heartland of the Proto-Indo-
European homeland after the migrations of early
branches which retained the original features.
As Winn puts it: “Linguistic innovations that take

place at the core may never find their way out to
peripheral areas, hence dialects spoken on the
fringe tend to preserve archaic features that have
146
long since disappeared from the mainstream.”
Therefore, the fact that Sanskrit represents a
phonetically evolved form of the Proto-Indo-
European language, far from being a negative
factor in respect of the idea of an Indian
homeland, is a positive one.
In fact, there are three factors, in respect of

archaisms, which add up to make a strong case
for an Indian homeland:
1. Various evolved phonetic features in Sanskrit,

as we have seen, particularly in the matter of
palatalization of original velars, definitely point
towards India as the original homeland.
2. At the same time, in respect of vocabulary,

Sanskrit is the most archaic or representative
language in the entire Indo-European family. As
Griffith puts it in his preface to his translation of
the Rigveda, in the language of the Rigveda “we
see the roots and shoots of the languages of
Greek and Latin, of Kelt, Teuton and Slavonian…
the science of comparative philology could hardly
have existed without the study of Sanskrit…”
As we have pointed out in some detail in our

earlier book, the fact that Sanskrit has retained
the largest number of Proto-Indo-European
words, even when its phonetic and grammatical
features continued to evolve, is strong evidence
of an Indian homeland: the language of a
migrating group may retain many of its original
phonetic or grammatical features, even when
these features are lost or evolved away in the
language still spoken in the original area, but it is
likely to lose or replace a substantial part of its
original vocabulary (though it may retain many
telltale archaic words) as compared to the
language still spoken back home.
Warren Cowgill, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica,

points out that this was the case with most of the
ancient Indo-European languages: “In prehistoric
times, most branches of Indo-European were
carried into territories presumably or certainly
occupied by speakers of non-Indo-European
languages… it is reasonable to suppose that
these languages had some effect on the speech
of the newcomers. For the lexicon, this is indeed
demonstrable in Hittite and Greek, at least. It is
much less clear, however, that these non-Indo-
European languages affected significantly the
sounds and grammar of the Indo-European
147
languages that replaced them.” The same was
the case with the modern languages: “When Indo-
European languages have been carried within
historical times into areas occupied by speakers
of other languages, they have generally taken
over a number of loan-words… however, there
has been very little effect on sounds and
148
grammar.”
3. Finally, and most significant of all, we have the

fact that within India itself, certain isolated
languages have retained archaisms already lost
even in Vedic Sanskrit. There is no way in which
the presence of these languages, which definitely
represent remnants of extinct branches of Indo-
European other than Indoaryan or even the
hypothetical “Indo-Iranian”, can be incorporated
into any theory of migration of the Indoaryans
from South Russia to India.
There are two such languages, one of which is

now accepted by the linguists as a remnant of an
extinct Kentum branch of Indo-European
languages, but in respect of the other, detailed
research is necessary from a point of view
hitherto unsuspected:
a. The BangANI language, spoken

in the Garhwal region in the
western Himalayas (in Uttar
Pradesh) was brought into dramatic
highlight by Clans Peter Zoller, a
German linguist, in 1987 (as
reported in our earlier book) when
he announced the discovery of the
remnants of an ancient Kentum
language in the older layers of this
language.
Zoller pointed out that BangANI contained three

historical layers: “The youngest and most
extensive layer is where BangANI shares many
similarities with the Indo-Aryan languages of
Himachal Pradesh and Garhwal. The second is
an older layer of Sanskrit words where one can
observe a strikingly large number of words that
belongs to the oldest layer of Sanskrit, the
Sanskrit of the Vedas. The third and the oldest
layer in BangANI is formed by words that have no
connection with Sanskrit but with the Kentum
149
branch of Indo-European languages.”
By 1989, Zoller had presented a full-fledged case,

which created a furore in linguistic circles. An
immediate reaction to it was a joint project, by an
Indian linguist Suhnu Ram Sharma and a Dutch
linguist George van Driem, which examined
Zoller’s claims. According to these scholars,
“Zoller’s BangANI findings not only had far-
reaching implications for our understanding of the
prehistoric migrations of ancient Indo-Europeans,
they also appeared to violate much of what is
received knowledge in historical
150
linguistics.” Hence: “In 1994, we conducted
fieldwork in order to verify these remarkable
findings. The results of our investigation are
presented here. On the basis of these results, it
is our contention that no Kentum Indo-European
151
remnants exist in the BangANI language.”
Not only did these linguists reject Zoller’s findings,

but they also levelled serious allegations
regarding Zoller’s professional integrity: “In view
of our findings, and in view of the manner in
which Zoller presented his, the question which
remains for the reader to resolve in his own mind
is whether Zoller has fallen prey to the wishful
etymologizing of transcriptional errors or whether
he has deliberately perpetrated a hoax upon the
academic community. In other words, was the
152
joke on Zoller, or was the joke on us?”
The above is an example of the vicious reactions

evoked among scholars inimical to the Indian
homeland theory, to any serious scholarly study
which tends to, directly or indirectly, support, or
even appear to support, this theory.
The matter did not end there. Zoller took up the

challenge and issued a strong and detailed
rejoinder to the allegations of van Driem and
Sharma. Even more significant was a detailed
counter study by Anvita Abbi and Hans Hock
which not only conclusively demolished their
“refutation” of Zoller’s findings, and conclusively
proved that BangANI does indeed contain the
remnants of an extinct Kentum language, but also
clearly showed that it was Suhnu Ram Sharma
and George van Driem who had attempted to
deliberately perpetrate a hoax on the academic
community.
The long and short of it is that BangANI is now

accepted by linguists all over the world as a
language whose oldest layers contain remnants
of an archaic Kentum language, a circumstance
which is totally incongruous with any theory of
Indoaryan immigrations into India.
b. The Sinhalese language of Sri

Lanka is generally accepted as a
regular, if long separated and
isolated, member of the “Indoaryan”
branch of Indo-European
languages; and no linguist studying
Sinhalese appears, so far, to have
suggested any other status for the
language.
However, apart from the fact that Sinhalese has

been heavily influenced not only by Sanskrit and
(due to the predominance of Buddhism in Sri
Lanka) Pali, but also by Dravidian and the near-
extinct Vedda, the language contains many
features which are not easily explainable on the
basis of Indoaryan.
Wilhelm Geiger, in his preface to his study of

Sinhalese, points out that the phonology of the
language “is full of intricacies… We sometimes
meet with a long vowel when we expect a short
153
one and vice versa”, and, further: “In
morphology there are formations, chiefly in the
verbal inflexion, which seem to be peculiar to
Sinhalese and to have no parallels in other Indo-
Aryan dialects… and I must frankly avow that I
am unable to solve all the riddles arising out of
154
the grammar of the Sinhalese language.”
However, not having any particular reason to

suspect that Sinhalese could be anything but an
“Indoaryan” language descended from Sanskrit,
Geiger does not carry out any detailed research
to ascertain whether or not Sinhalese is indeed in
a class with the “other Indo-Aryan dialects”. In
fact, referring to an attempt by an earlier scholar,
Gnana Prakasar, to connect the Sinhalese word
eLi (light) with the Greek hElios (sun), Geiger
rejects the suggestion as “the old practice of
comparing two or more words of the most distant
languages merely on the basis of similar sounds,
without any consideration for chronology, for
phonological principles, or for the historical
155
development of words and forms…”
However, there are words in Sinhalese, of which

we can cite only one here, which cannot be so
easily dismissed: the Sinhalese word watura,
“water”, is not only closely cognate to the
Germanic words (which includes English “water”)
and Hittite water, but it represents a form which is
impossible to explain on the basis of Sanskrit or
Indoaryan etymologies. Geiger himself,
elsewhere, rejects an attempt by an earlier
scholar, Wickremasinghe, to derive the word
from Sanskrit vartarUka as “improbable”; and
although he accepts the suggestion of another
scholar, B. Gunasekara, that the “original
meaning is ‘spread, extension, flood’ (M. vithar)…
156
Pk. vitthAra, Sk. vistAra,” he notes that
157
“vocalism a.u. in vatura is irregular, cf. vitura”.
M.W.S. de Silva, in his detailed study of

Sinhalese, points out that “Indo-Aryan (or Indic)
research began with an effort devoted primarily to
classifying Indian languages and tracing their
phonological antecedents historically back to
Vedic and Classical Sanskrit… Early Sinhalese
158
studies have followed the same tradition.”
However, Sinhalese “presents a linguistic make-
up which, for various reasons, distinguishes itself
from the related languages in North India… there
are features in Sinhalese which are not known in
any other Indo-Aryan language, but these
features, which make the story of Sinhalese all
the more exciting, had not received much
159
attention in the earlier studies.”
He also points out: “Another area of uncertainty is

the source of the small but high-frequency
segment of the Sinhalese vocabulary, especially
words for parts of the body and the like: eg. oluva
‘head’, bella ‘neck’, kakula ‘leg’, kalava ‘thigh’, etc.
which are neither Sanskritic nor Tamil in
origin. The native grammarians of the past have
recognized that there are three categories of
words - (a) loanwords, (b) historically derived
words and (c) indigenous words… No serious
enquiry has been made into these so-called
160
indigenous words”.
In his preface, de Silva notes that “there is a

growing awareness of the significance of
Sinhalese as a test case for the prevailing
linguistic theories; more than one linguist has
commented on the oddities that Sinhalese
presents and the fact… that Sinhalese is ‘unlike
161
any language I have seen’.” Further, he quotes
Geiger: “It is extremely difficult, and perhaps
impossible, to assign it a definite place among the
162
modern Indo-Aryan dialects.”
But, it does not strike de Silva, any more than

Geiger, that the reason for all this confusion
among linguists could be their failure to recognize
the possibility that Sinhalese is not an Indoaryan
language (in the sense in which the term is used)
at all, but a descendant of another branch of Indo-
European languages.
From the historical point of view, “a vast body of

material has been gathered together by way of
lithic and other records to portray the continuous
history of Sinhalese from as early as the third
163
century BC.” in Sri Lanka, and “attempts have
been made to trace the origins of the earliest
Sinhalese people and their language either to the
eastern parts of North India or to the western
164
parts”.
But de Silva quotes Geiger as well as S.

Paranavitana, and agrees with their view that “the
band of immigrants who gave their name Simhala
to the composite people, their language and the
island, seems to have come from northwestern
India… their original habitat was on the upper
reaches of the Indus river… in what is now the
borderland between Pakistan and
165
Afghanistan”, and quotes Paranavitana’s
summary of the evidence, and his conclusion: “All
this evidence goes to establish that the original
Sinhalese migrated to Gujarat from the lands of
the Upper Indus, and were settled in LATa for
166
some time before they colonised Ceylon.”
A thorough examination, with an open mind, of

the vocabulary and grammar of Sinhalese, will
establish that Sinhalese represents a remnant of
an archaic branch of Indo-European languages.
The evidence of BangANI and Sinhalese (the one

word watura itself) constitutes a strong case for
an Indian homeland since it clashes sharply with
any theory of Indoaryan migrations into India.
Basically, the confusion that we see in respect of

Sinhalese studies is also found in the study of
Indoaryan languages in general. And the root of
all this confusion is the general theory which
maintains that:
a. The “Indo-Iranians” represented

a branch of Indo-Europeans who
separated from the other branches
in distant regions and migrated to
Central Asia, and shared a joint
“Indo-Iranian” phase there, before
separating and migrating into India
and Iran respectively.
b. The “Indoaryans” represented

that section of the “Indo-Iranians”
who entered India and composed
the Rigveda during the earliest
period of their sojourn in the
northwestern parts of India, before
expanding into the rest of India and
giving birth to the ancestral forms of
the present-day Indoaryan
languages.
The linguistic evidence (even apart from the

archaic evidence of BangANI and Sinhalese)
totally fails to fit in with this theory:
1. “Indoaryan” and Iranian do not constitute one

branch, but at least two distinct branches: Winn
points out that there are “ten ‘living
branches’... Two branches, Indic (Indo-Aryan) and
Iranian dominate the eastern cluster. Because of
the close links between their classical forms -
Sanskrit and Avestan respectively - these
languages are often grouped together as a single
167
Indo-Iranian branch”. And he notes that these
close links came about due to “a period of close
contact between Indic and Iranian people (which)
brought about linguistic convergence, thus
making the two languages appear misleadingly
168
similar”.
As Meillet had long ago pointed out: “It remains

quite clear, however, that Indic and Iranian
developed from different Indo-European dialects,
whose period of common development was not
169
long enough to effect total fusion.”
The evidence of comparative mythology (see

Chapter 10) also disproves the common Indo-
Iranian hypothesis. Rigvedic mythology is often
the only connecting link between different other
Indo-European mythologies, while Avestan
mythology appears to have no links with any other
Indo-European mythology other than that of the
Rigveda itself.
The “period of common development” which

brought about the “close links between… Sanskrit
and Avestan” was of course the “period of close
contact between Indic and Iranian people” in the
Late Period of the Rigveda, as we have already
seen in the previous chapter.
2. The Indo-Iranian hypothesis is also disproved

by the fact that Iranian shares at least one
isogloss with Greek and Armenian (fitting in with
our classification of these three branches as
constituting. the Anu confederation of the Early
Period of the Rigveda) which is not shared by
Sanskrit: “In three Indo-European languages,
whose grouping is significant - Greek, Armenian
and Iranian - the shift from s to h occured, not, as
in Brythonic, at a relatively recent date, but before
the date of the oldest texts. Moreover, in all
three, the distribution pattern is exactly the same:
h develops from initial *s before a vowel, from
intervocalic *s and from some occurences of *s
before and after sonants; *s remains before and
170
after a stop.”
This shift, which is universal in the three

branches, is not found in Sanskrit and a majority
of the Indoaryan languages, although a similar
shift took place “at a relatively recent date” in
some modem Indoaryan dialects of the northwest
and west (Gujarati, etc.) and, significantly, in
Sinhalese.
Another, minor, point where Greek, Armenian and

Iranian share a common development, distinct
from Sanskrit, is in “those cases in which a
morphological element ends with a dental
consonant and the following element begins with
171
a t”. All the three branches show st while
172
“Sanskrit regularly shows tt”.
3. There is one isogloss which is found only in the

three branches referred to above (Greek,
Armenian and Iranian) and in Sanskrit, and in
some modern Indoaryan dialects of the north and
northwest (as far as the western dialects of Hindi),
but not in the majority of modern Indoaryan
languages: “the prohibitive negation *mE is
attested only in Indo-Iranian (mA), Greek (mE)
and Armenian (mI), elsewhere it is totally
lacking… and there is no difference in this respect
between the ancient and modern stages of
173
Greek, Armenian or Persian.”
But there is a difference in this respect between

the ancient stage (Sanskrit) and a majority of the
languages in the modem stage of what the
linguists classify as the “Indoaryan” branch
(except for modem western Hindi mat, etc.).
This could be because most of the Indoaryan

languages lost this word; but it could also be
because most of the modern Indoaryan
languages are descendants of Indo-European
dialects which never had this word, and were not
directly part of the common culture developed by
the PUrus (the Vedic Aryans) and the Anus
(Iranians, Armenians, Greeks) in the northern and
northwestern parts of North India, after the
departure of the Druhyus. Their ancestral dialects
were what we have (in our earlier book) called the
“Inner Indo-European” dialects spoken in the
interior of India.
4. This, at any rate, is certainly clearly

demonstrated in the development of Indo-
European l in “Indo-Iranian”: “all of Indo-Iranian
tended to confuse r and l …. Every IE l becomes r
in Iranian. This same occurence is to be
observed in the Northwest of India, and,
consequently, in the Rigveda, which is based on
174
idioms of the Northwest.”
So, is this an “Indo-Iranian” phenomenon?

Apparently not: “On the other hand, initial and
intervocalic l was present in Indic dialects of other
regions. Numerous elements of these dialects
were gradually introduced into the literary
language, which became fixed in Classical
Sanskrit. This explains the appearance of l in
more recent parts of the Rigveda and its
175
subsequent rise in frequency.”
Meillet correctly observes that this is “an instance

of concordance of Iranian with the Indic idioms
closest to the area of Iranian and discordance
176
with Indic idioms further to the East”.
The concept of an “Indo-Iranian” branch is based

on “the close links between their classical forms -
177
Sanskrit and Avestan respectively”, which is
the result of a “period of common
178
development”, as we have already seen. This
period of common development was before the
separation of the Vedic and Iranian people.
But this conversion of the original Indo-European l

into r is a phenomenon pertaining to this period of
common development, and it is not shared by the
ancient “Indoaryan” dialects to the east of the
Rigvedic area. These dialects, therefore,
represent a pre-“Indo-Iranian” phase of Indo-
European, which is incompatible with any theory
of an Indo-Iranian phase in Central Asia and
Afghanistan before the separation of the
Indoaryans and Iranians and the consequent
migration of Indoaryans into India.
It is also incompatible with any theory of the origin

of the “Indoaryan” languages from the Vedic
language which forms part of this joint “Indo-
Iranian” phase. Therefore, while the word
“Indoaryan” may be used in the sense of “Aryan
or Indo-European languages historically native to
India”, it cannot and should not be used in the
sense in which it is generally used: ie. to mean
languages descended from a language (Vedic
Sanskrit) which, or whose proto-form, shared a
joint “Indo-Iranian” phase with Proto-Iranian.
5. The theory that the Indoaryan languages are

descended from Vedic Sanskrit is not really
corroborated by linguistic factors. As we have
pointed out in our earlier book, S.K. Chatterji
makes the following remarks about the Old,
Middle and New phases of Indoaryan:
“The Aryan came to India, assuredly not as a

single, uniform or standardised speech, but rather
as a group or groups of dialects… only one of
these dialects or dialect-groups has mainly been
represented in the language of the Vedas - other
dialects… (might) have been ultimately
transformed into one or the other of the various
New Indo-Aryan languages and dialects. The
mutual relationship of these Old Indo-Aryan
dialects, their individual traits and number as well
as location, will perhaps never be settled… The
true significance of the various Prakrits as
preserved in literary and other records, their origin
and interrelations, and their true connection with
the modern languages, forms one of the most
baffling problems of Indo-Aryan linguistics… and
there has been admixture among the various
dialects to an extent which has completely
changed their original appearance, and which
makes their affiliation to forms of Middle Indo-
Aryan as in our records at times rather
179
problematical.”
Thus S.K. Chatterji unwillingly admits (although

he tries to explain it within the framework of the
invasion theory) that:
a. There were many different

dialects, of which the language of
the Rigveda was only one, and that
the modern Indoaryan languages
may well be descended from these
other non-Vedic dialects.
b. The relations (within each

chronological group: Old, Middle or
New; as well as between different
chronological groups) between Old
Indoaryan (Rigvedic and Classical
Sanskrit, as well as the “other”
dialects or dialect groups) and
Middle Indoaryan (Prakrits) and the
present-day New Indoaryan
languages are “baffling” and
“problematical” and “will perhaps
never be settled”.
The problem will certainly “never be settled” if

examined from the viewpoint of an Aryan invasion
of India which treats the Indoaryan languages as
descended from the languages of people who
migrated into India from the northwest after an
“Indo-Iranian” phase in Central Asia and an Indo-
European phase in South Russia.
As per our theory, Proto-Indo-European, and its

earlier forms, developed in the interior of North
India. In ancient times, it developed into various
dialects, many of which expanded into the
northwest and Afghanistan. The divisions of
these dialects can be conveniently classified in
Puranic terms (howsoever unpalatable it may
sound to modern ears) with the dialects of the
extreme northwest (which included the ancestral
forms of most of the European languages, as well
as Hittite and Tocharian) being the Druhyu
dialects, the dialects further to their east (mainly
the ancestral forms of Iranian, as also Armenian
and Greek) being the Anu dialects, and the
dialects in the northern parts of North India (Uttar
Pradesh, Haryana, and nearby areas) being the
PUru dialects (including Vedic). In the interior
were other dialects which represented other
Puranic groups: Yadus, TurvaSas, IkSvAkus, etc.
With the emigration of the Druhyus, and later the

Anus, and the predominant position which the
Rigvedic language came to occupy (after the
Vedic cult spread all over India, incorporated all
the religious systems of the land in the course of
time, and became itself the elite layer of an all-
inclusive Pan-Indian religious system) in India,
began the phase of Indian history which the
linguists and historians have interpreted as the
“Indoaryan” phase.
The Rigvedic language heavily influenced all the

other languages of India, including the languages
descended from the remnants of the Outer
dialects (Druhyu, Anu), those descended from the
Inner dialects (Yadu, TurvaSa, IkSvAku, etc), and
also the Dravidian and Austric languages in the
South and East.
In turn, the literary forms which developed from

the Rigvedic language, Epic and Classical
Sanskrit, were heavily influenced by all the other
languages (Indo-European, Dravidian and
Austric). As Meillet, in a different context (already
referred to), puts it: “Numerous elements of these
dialects were gradually introduced into the literary
language which became fixed in Classical
180
Sanskrit.”
And finally, as Chatterji correctly puts it: “there

has been admixture among the various dialects to
an extent which has completely changed their
181
original appearance.”
To sum up the whole question of the Indo-

European homeland:
1. The evidence of archaeology completely

disproves, or, at the very least, completely fails to
prove, the non-Indian origin of the Indo-
Europeans.
2. The evidence of the oldest literary records (the

Rigveda and the Avesta) proves the Indian
homeland theory from three distinct angles:
a. The evidence of comparative

mythology.
b. The evidence of the internal

chronology and geography of the
Rigveda.
c. The direct evidence in the

Rigveda about the emigration of
identifiable Indo-European groups
from India.
3. The evidence of linguistics, in some matters, is

either ambiguous or neutral, and , in some others,
definitely confirms the evidence of the literary
records which indicate that India was the original
homeland.
It is, of course, natural that entrenched

scholarship, both in India and in the West, will find
it hard to swallow all this evidence, and the
conclusions which inevitably and unavoidably
arise from it. Especially such scholars as have
spent all their lives in ridiculing and rejecting the
Indian homeland theory, or in “proving” or
corroborating the theory of Aryan invasion or
migrations into India.
And it will be particularly hard to swallow because

it comes from an Indian - the type of Indian whom
they would prefer to brand as a “Hindu
fundamentalist”.
The following tongue-in-cheek excerpt from

Antoine de Saint-ExupEry’s well known children’s
storybook, The Little Prince, illustrates the
situation:
“…the planet from which the little prince came is

the asteroid known as B-612. This asteroid has
only once been seen through a telescope. That
was by a Turkish astronomer, in 1909. On
making his discovery, the astronomer had
presented it to the International Astronomical
Congress, in a great demonstration. But he was
in Turkish costume, and so nobody would believe
what he said. …Fortunately, however, for the
reputation of Asteroid B-612, a Turkish dictator
made a law that his subjects, under pain of death,
should change to European costume. So in 1920
the astronomer gave his demonstration all over
again, dressed with impressive style and
elegance. And this time everybody accepted his
182
report.”
The type of attitude satirized by Saint-ExupEry in

this imaginary incident is very much a part of
world scholarly tendency even today: anyone,
Indian or Western, who writes anything,
howsoever logical, in support of the Indian
homeland theory, represents the “fundamentalist”
in his Turkish costume, (or the odd Westerner
with a misguided infatuation for this
fundamentalism) who deserves only scepticism,
ridicule and summary dismissal. Conversely,
anyone, Western or Indian, who writes anything,
howsoever incredible or ridiculous, in opposition
to the Indian homeland theory, represents the
“objective scholar” dressed “with impressive style
and elegance” in European costume, who
deserves a sympathetic hearing and due support.
But the case for an Indian homeland is so strong,

and the case for a non-Indian homeland so weak,
that, inspite of any number of academic dictators
decreeing “under pain of (academic) death” that
the Indian homeland theory be abandoned
without serious examination, or with only
perfunctory and determinedly sceptical
examination, the academic world will untimately
be compelled, nevertheless, to accept the fact
that the Indo-European family of languages
originated in India, or, at the very least, to
drastically tone down, or qualify, their strident
rejection of it.
Footnotes:
1BAIAP, p.835.
2ibid.
3ibid., p.853.
4ibid., pp.836-837.
5ibid., p.846.
6CCAIHO, pp.83-84.
7HHH, p.343.
8ibid., pp.349-350.
9ibid., p.343.
10ibid., p.354.
11ibid.,p.356.
12ibid.
13ibid., p.357.
14ibid., p.356.
15IASA, preface, p.x.
16ibid., preface, p.xi.
17ibid., preface, p.xiii.
18ibid., preface, p.xiv.
19ibid., preface, p.xii.
20ibid., preface, p.x.
21ibid.
23ibid., preface, p.xv.
25ibid.
26ibid., p.112.
27ibid., p.113.
28ibid.
29ibid.
30VM, p.15.
31IASA, p.108.
32ibid., preface, P.xiii.
34ibid., p.104.
35ibid., pp.104-105.
36ibid., p.105.
37ibid., p.106.
38ibid., pp.106-107.
39ibid., p.105.
40ibid., p.106.
41ibid., p. 107.
42HCIP, pp.209-210.
43HHH, p.326.
44ibid., p.326.
45HHH, p.102.
46ibid.
47ibid. p.54
48ibid., p.103.
49LEM, p.239.
50ibid.
51HHH, p.54.
52ADOSS, p.1344.
53AIHT, P.298.
54ibid.
55IVA, p.99.
56HCIP, p.283.
57HHH, p.349.
58HCIP, p.262.
59HHH, p.37.
60IED, p.44.
61HHH, p.37.
62ibid., p.297.
63ibid., p.323.
64ibid., p.324.
65ibid., p.298.
66IED, p.39.
67ibid.,p.131.
68ibid., p.109.
69ibid.
70ibid., pp.143-144.
71ibid., p.144.
72ibid., p.125.
73ibid., p.127.
74ibid., p.129.
75ibid., p.34.
76HHH, p.340.
77ibid., p.320.
78ibid., p.38.
79IED, p.56.
80ibid., p. 59.
81ibid., p. 13.
82ibid., p. 1 5.
83HHH, p.298.
84IED, p. 149.
85ibid.
86HHH, p.324.
87ibid., p.320.
88ibid.
89IED, p.101.
90ibid., p.102.
91HHH, p.340.
92ibid., p.320.
93ibid., pp.324-326.
94IED, p.167.
95HHH, p.340.
96ibid., pp.341-342.
97ibid., p.356.
98ibid., p.357.
99ibid., p.358.
100AL, p.123.
101ibid.,p.24.
102ibid., p.137.
103ibid.,p.122.
104ibid., pp.122-123.
105ibid., p.137.
106ibid.,p.130.
107ibid., p.138.
108ibid., pp.138-139.
109ibid., p.134.
110ibid., p.136.
111ibid.,p.135.
112ibid.,p.138.
113ibid.,p.137.
114ibid.
115ibid.,p.138.
116ibid.,p.123.
117SPP, p.32.
118ibid., p.34.
119ibid., p.35.
120ibid.
121ibid., p.36.
122ibid., p.32.
123ibid., p.33.
124ibid., p.34.
125IE & IE, p.439.
126ibid., p.431.
127HCIP, p.156.
128ibid., p.150.
129ODBL, p.200.
130ADOSS, p.135.
131ibid., p.528.
132ibid.,p.179.
133ibid., p.167.
134ibid., preface
135ibid., p.1464.
136ibid.
137ibid., p.179.
138ibid., p.167.
139“On Indo-Europeanization” in the

Journal of Indo-European Studies, Spring
1990.
140IE& THE IE.
141ADOSS, p.189.
142ibid.
143ibid.
144ibid., p.188.
145The Economic Times, Mumbai,

16/10/96, news-item, “Descent of Cattle”.
146HHH, p.320.
147EB, Vol.9, p.438.
148ibid.
149The Times of India, Mumbai, 14/6/87,

news-item “Bangani older than Sanskrit”.
150Indogermanische Forschungen, 1 0 1,
Band, 1996, p. 107.
151ibid.
152ibid., p.146.
153AGSL, p.v.
154ibid., p.vi.
155ibid., p.vii,
156EGSL,p.155.
157ibid.
158SOILSA, p.13.
159ibid.
160ibid., p.16.
161ibid., p.5.
162ibid., p.17.
163ibid., p.13.
164ibid., p.14.
165ibid., p.15.
166ibid.
167HHH, p.37.
168ibid., p.385.
169IED, p.44.
170ibid., p.113.
171ibid., p.78,
172ibid.
173ibid., p.39
174ibid., p.47.
175ibid.
176ibid.
177HHH, p.37.
178IED, p.44.
179ODBL. pp.20-21.
180IED, p.47.
181ODBL, p.21.
182TLP, p.17.

Back to Home
Chapter 8 (Appendix 1)
Misinterpretations of Rigvedic History
The Rigveda, as we have seen in this book,

contains a veritable treasury of information which
sheds light on the early history of the Vedic
Aryans, and of the Indo-Europeans as a whole.
But why, inspite of the fact that the Rigveda has

been a subject of historical study for nearly two
centuries, was this wealth of information left
untapped? Why did the scholars fail to discover
all this evidence?
The answer is that scholars engaged in the

historical interpretation of the Rigveda have never
really found it necessary to examine the actual
information in the Rigveda. All interpretations
have been based on purely extraneous factors,
and the Rigveda itself has never been required to
play more than an incidental, and dispensable,
role in these exercises.
To be specific, one extraneous factor has been

responsible for all the misinterpretations of
Rigvedic history to date: the erroneous belief that
linguists have established, on the basis of
comparative philology, that the original homeland
of the Indo-European or Aryan family of
languages was located in and around South
Russia, or, at any rate, that it was located outside
India.
This belief has influenced the interpretations not

only of those scholars who claim to subscribe to
it, but, as we shall see, also of those who claim
not to subscribe to it.
It will be necessary to examine why exactly

scholars, belonging to different schools of
interpretation, failed to tap the basic information in
the Rigveda. We will not go into details about
everything said and written by these scholars:
given the facility with which many of these
scholars have written out pages and pages, even
tomes and tomes, of pure drivel, based only on
an active imagination and an evident contempt
both for facts and logic, as well as for the source-
material, it would be an impossible as well as a
fruitless task to go into all their writings in detail
here. That can always be a subject for deeper
analysis elsewhere.
But it will be in order to examine generally the

beliefs, the concerns, the aims and motives, and
the obsessions, as well as the methods, which led
the scholars into analyses and conclusions so
completely divorced from the facts.
But, first and foremost, we must understand why

exactly the history of the Rigveda is so
inextricably bound up with the history of the Indo-
Europeans as a whole.
The fact is that the Rigveda represents a very

pristine state of Indo-European language and
religion. Griffith describes it as follows in his
preface to his translation: “As in its original
language we see the roots and shoots of the
languages of Greek and Latin, of Kelt, Teuton and
Slavonian, so the deities, the myths and the
religious beliefs and practices of the Veda throw a
flood of light upon the religions of all European
countries before the introduction of Christianity.
As the science of comparative philology could
hardly have existed without the study of Sanskrit,
so the comparative history of the religions of the
world would have been impossible without the
study of the Veda.”
It would not be possible to say this of any other

Indo-European text anywhere else in the world.
And the implications of this for the history of the
Rigvedic era are momentous: it means that the
Rigvedic people were, in a manner of speaking,
hot out of the Indo-European oven.
This presents us with two very specific

alternatives about the geographical habitat
indicated in the Rigveda: either this habitat was
itself the original habitat of the Indo-European
people as a whole, with the Vedic Aryans
remaining in it after the departure of the other
Indo-European groups; or else this habitat was
not really the habitat even of the Vedic Aryans
themselves, they having just arrived into it from
outside.
The facts do not allow any other alternative: it is

either one or the other.
But the linguists are supposed to have come out

with a host of arguments based on comparative
philology which apparently rule out the first
alternative, that the original homeland of the Indo-
Europeans could be located anywhere in India.
Hence, if the linguists are not to be challenged,

the second alternative has to be accepted. This,
at any rate, has been the general understanding
of the situation.
And if, as per this second alternative, the Vedic

Aryans are newly arrived from outside India into
the geographical area indicated in the Rigveda,
then this must be demonstrable from the hymns.
In fact, if the linguists are to be vindicated, it must
be demonstrated from the hymns!
Hence, the major, and official, school of

interpretation of the history of the Rigveda holds
that the Vedic Aryans entered India somewhere
around 1500 BC, and the text of the Rigveda was
composed by them during the early stages of their
presence in India, when they were still busy
invading, conquering and establishing settlements
all over the Punjab and the northwest, later to
spread out all over northern India.
The historical interpretation of the Rigveda, for

scholars belonging to this school, is therefore a
one-point programme: to find evidence for this
theory in the Rigveda.
Needless to say, this is not exactly calculated to
facilitate an honest and objective interpretation or
analysis of the text.
Scholars belonging to the other schools of

interpretation react emotionally, rather than
objectively, to this theory; and, what is more, even
when ostensibly opposed to the theory, they often
labour under a sub-conscious impression that the
linguists have somehow “proved” the external (to
India) origin of the Indo-Europeans on the basis
of linguistics, and this sub-conscious impression
influences their various reactions to it.
Needless to say, this attitude is also not

calculated to facilitate an honest and objective
interpretation of the text.
We will examine the concerns and methods, in

brief, of the four major schools of interpretation of
the Rigveda, as follows:
I. The Invasionist School.

II. The Hindu Invasionist School.
III. The Quasi-invasionist School.
IV. The Anti-invasionist School.
V. A Much Misinterpreted Historical Theme in the
Rigveda.
I
THE INVASIONIST SCHOOL
The invasionist school is the main school of

interpretation of the Rigveda.
It also houses the widest range of scholars: from

purely academic scholars to racist and casteist
fringe lunatics, and every shade in between. And
from scholars who genuinely do believe that
linguistics has “proved” that the Indo-European
languages originated in and around South
Russia, or, at any rate, somewhere outside India,
to scholars for whom there is no question of any
genuine belief in anything, and to whom it is all a
matter of politics.
We will not concern ourselves here with the

writings of the casteist and racist lunatics whose
prolific writings on the subject contain neither
logic, nor facts, nor analysis, nor even any
pretence to objectivity: these are clearly cynical
political writings whose only aim is to provide
propaganda material for casteist and racist
politics.
As to the rest, the main concern of scholars

belonging to this school of interpretation is to find
evidence in the Rigveda for the Aryan invasion in
the form of:
1. References indicating
a. foreign lands;
b. migrations from these foreign

lands, or, generally, movements
from west to east;
c. unfamiliarity with the local terrain.
2. References to non-Aryan aboriginal inhabitants

of the land.
3. References to conflicts between Aryan

invaders and non-Aryan aboriginals.
But the stark fact is that the Rigveda itself does

not contain one single reference which provides
any actual evidence in respect of any of these
points. All the “evidence” lies in extraneous,
inferential comments made by the invasionist
scholars on words and phrases, in the text, which
are basically innocent of invasionist connotations.
Nothing illustrates this better than Griffith’s

translation of the Rigveda, which, inspite of its
archaic language and style, is the best, most
complete, and most reasonably honest English
translation to this day.
Griffith is both, an honest scholar as well as a
genuine and staunch believer in the Aryan
invasion theory. Consequently, an examination of
his complete translation of the Rigveda brings out
the following facts:
1. Not a single invasionist meaning appears in his

translation of any of the 10552 verses in the
Rigveda: only invasionist suggestions appear in
his comments in the footnotes.
2. Although Griffith provides footnotes to around

four thousand or so verses, it is only in around
forty or so of them that we find these invasionist
comments.
3. These invasionist comments, as even a layman

can see, are purely gratuitous and subjective, and
have no basis whatsoever in anything said in the
actual verses to which they refer.
4. Many of these invasionist comments are

contradicted by other comments in Griffith’s own
footnotes.
The following is an almost exhaustive list of the

verses in the text where Griffith’s translations of
specific words and phrases are innocent, while
his comments on them in the footnotes are
loaded:
1. I.7.9: the five fold race: “the expression seems

to mean the Aryan settlements or tribes only, and
not the indigenous inhabitants of the country.”
2. 1.32.11: DAsa: “DAsa is a general term applied

in the Veda to certain evil beings or demons… It
means, also, a savage, a barbarian, one of the
non-Aryan inhabitants of India.”
3. I.33.4: the ancient riteless ones: “indigenous

races who had not adopted, or were hostile to,
the ritual of the Veda.”
4. 1.33.4: Dasyu: “The Dasyus are also a class of

demons, enemies of Gods and men, and
sometimes the word means a savage, a
barbarian.”
5. 1.51.8: Arya: “The Aryans are, first, the people

who speak the language of the Veda, and the
Dasyus are the original and hostile peoples of
India.”
6. I.100.18: Dasyus and Simyus: “men of

indigenous hostile races.”
7. I.100.18: his fair-complexioned friends:

“explained by SAyaNa as the glittering Maruts,
means probably the Aryan invaders as opposed
to the dark-skinned races of the country.”
8. I.101.1: the dusky brood: “the dark aborigines

who opposed the Aryans.”
9. I. 101.11: guards of the camp: “the guardians

of the camp or new settlement.”
10. I.102.2: the seven rivers: “the chief rivers in

the neighbourhood of the earliest settlements.”
11. I.103.3: DAsas: “or Dasyus, the non-Aryan

inhabitants of the land.”
12. I.104.2: The DAsa: “a chief of non-Aryan

race.”
13. I.104.3: Kuyava: “perhaps a name given by

the Aryans to one of the non-Aryan chieftains.”
But contradiction I.103.8: Kuyava: “meaning,

probably, ‘causing bad harvests’, is the name of
another of the demons of drought.”
14. I.112.5: Rebha and Vandana: “Rebha and

Vandana are said to have been thrown into wells
by Asuras or demons… ‘In these and similar
instances’, says Wilson, ‘we may probably have
allusions to the dangers undergone by the first
teachers of Hinduism among the people whom
they sought to civilize’.”
15. I.112.12: RasA: “The RasA, known to the

Zoroastrians as the RaNhA, was originally the
name of a real river, but when the Aryas moved
away from it into the PanjAb, it assumed a
mythical character, and became a kind of
Okeanos, surrounding the extreme limits of the
earth.”
But contradiction X.108.1: RasA: “In I.112.12 and

V. 53.9, RasA appears to be a river of the
PanjAb, probably an affluent of the Indus.”
16. I.132.4: the lawless man: “The lawless man is

the non-Aryan inhabitant of the country, the
natural enemy of the new settlers.”
17. I.175.6: who give not: “who offer no oblations;

barbarians who do not worship the Gods of the
Aryans.”
18. II.11.18: The Dasyu: “the barbarian, the

original inhabitant of the land.”
19. II.20.6: DAsa: “The word is frequently applied

to the foes of the Aryas, to the malignant demons
of the air as well as to the barbarians and hostile
inhabitants of the land.”
20. II.20.7: The DAsa hosts who dwell in

darkness: “the words thus rendered are variously
explained. It is uncertain whether the aborigines
of the country are meant, or the demons of air
who dwell in the dark clouds.”
21. III.12.6: ninety forts: “ninety is used

indefinitely for a large number. The forts are the
strongholds of the non-Aryan inhabitants of the
country.”
But contradiction V.29.6: his nine-and-ninety

castles: “the aerial castles of Sambara, the
demon of drought.”
22. III.14.4: spreading them: “causing Aryan men
to spread as the Sun spreads his rays.”
23. III.23.4: ApayA: “a little stream… near the

earlier settlements of the Aryan immigrants.”
24. II.33: “The hymn is a dialogue between

ViSvAmitra and the rivers VipAS and SutudrI…
interesting as a relic of the traditions of the Aryans
regarding their progress eastward in the land of
the Five Rivers.”
25. III.34.1 fort-render: “breaker down of the cloud

castles of the demons who withhold the rains as
well as of the hostile non-Aryan tribes.”
26. III.53.14: the KIkaTas: “the non-Aryan

inhabitants of a country (probably Kosala or
Oudh) usually identified with South Bihar.”
27. IV.4: “This hymn is said by SAyaNa to be

addressed to Agni as slayer of the RakSasas…
that is, as God of the fire with which the immigrant
Aryans burnt the jungle, drove back the hostile
aborigines, and cleared the ground for
encampment or permanent settlement.”
28. V.54.15: a hundred winters: “a frequently

occuring expression, ‘from which we might infer’,
says J. Muir, ‘that the Indians still retained some
recollection of their having at one time occupied a
colder country’.”
29. V.29.10: noseless: “that is, the flat-nosed

barbarians.”
30. VI.20.10: autumn forts: “probably strong

places on elevated ground occupied by the
DAsas or original inhabitants during the rain and
autumn.”
But contradiction I.131.4: autumnal forts: “the

brilliant battlemonted cloud-castles, which are so
often visible in the Indian sky at this period of the
year.”
31. VI.47.21: those darksome creatures: “the dark

aborigines.”
32. VII.6.1: fort-destroyer: “demolisher of the

cloud-castles of the demon of drought or of the
strongholds of the non-Aryan tribes.”
33. VII.18.7: Pakthas: “the Pakthas and the rest

mentioned in the first line of the stanza appear to
have been non-Aryan tribes.”
34. VIII.71.12: Agni to win the land for us: “the

fierce and rapid fire that clears the jungle for the
advance of the Aryan settlers. “
35. IX.41.1: the black skin: “meaning apparently

both the black pall or covering of night and the
RAkSasas, or dark-skinned Dasyus or hostile
aboriginals.”
36. X.43.8: the dames of worthy lords: “that is,

subjected them to the Aryans, whereas they had
been the thralls of DAsas.”
The purpose of giving this almost exhaustive list

of Griffith’s invasionist comments is to
demonstrate that even a verse-by-verse
examination of the Rigveda (which is what
Griffith’s translation amounts to) fails to conjure
up even the faintest picture of Aryans pouring into
India from outside, and invading, conquering and
occupying the land. This picture has to be
produced by way of a sustained exercise in
circular reasoning: words and phrases in the
Rigveda are interpreted on the basis of
extraneous ideas, and these extraneous ideas
are “proved” on the basis of these interpretations.
This invasionist interpretation of the Rigveda

forms a minor and almost incidental part of
Griffith’s vast, and extremely valuable, work. But,
in the case of most other invasionist scholars, it
constitutes the very raison d’être of their work.
The interpretations cover three aspects:
A. Movements and Migrations from

the West.
B. Aryans and non-Aryans.
C. Conflicts between Aryans and
non-Aryans.
I. A. Movements and Migrations from the

West.
The Rigveda contains no reference to any foreign

place west of Afghanistan, and certainly no
reference to any migration from west to east.
Some academic scholars have sought to prove

such a migration by asserting that the Rigveda
itself was composed in the west: “Brunnhofer,
Hertel, Hüsing and others, argue that the scene of
the Rgveda is laid. not in the Punjab, but in
1
AfghAnistAn and IrAn.”
However, this view is so absurd, and so clearly

contrary to the geographical facts in the Rigveda,
that it can be dismissed with a bored yawn. By
and large, academic scholars have been more
rational: “Max Müller, Weber, Muir, and others
held that the Punjab was the main scene of the
activity of the Rgveda, whereas the more recent
view put forth by Hopkins and Keith is that it was
composed in the country round the SarasvatI river
2
south of modem AmbAla.”
And most academic scholars are also agreed on

the fact that “it really cannot be proved that the
Vedic Aryans retained any memory of their extra-
3
Indian associations” , and “no tradition of an early
4
home beyond the frontier survives in India.”
Hence, the effort of most academic scholars is to

show a movement from west to east within the
accepted geographical horizon of the Rigveda, ie.
from Afghanistan in the west to the GaNgA in the
east, by the following methods:
1. By stressing that, in the west, the Rigveda

refers frequently to many of the rivers of
Afghanistan (i.e. the western tributaries of the
Indus): the RasA, the Krumu, the KubhA, the
GomatI, the GaurI, the Sveti, the TRSTAmA, the
Susartu, the SvetyAvarI, the SuvAstu, the
Mehatnu, the Sarayu, etc. But, in the east, it
refers only to the GaNgA (twice) and the YamunA
(thrice).
2. By interpreting various references as indicating

an eastward movement, as in the case of hymn
III.33, where the crossing of the SutudrI and the
VipAS is interpreted as “a relic of the traditions of
the Aryans regarding their progress eastwards.”
3. By interpreting common river-names in

Afghanistan and India (the SarasvatI, the Sarayu,
the GomatI) as evidence of a transfer of river-
names by Aryans migrating from Afghanistan to
India.
The first two points, as we have seen in the

course of our analysis, are totally out of line with
the evidence in the Rigveda.
The third point is again clearly a case of circular

reasoning: if there are common river-names in
two different places, it certainly indicates a
geographical transfer of river-names from one
place to the other. But, the fact itself does not
indicate the direction of this transfer. As our
analysis of the geographical data, not only in the
Rigveda but also in the Avesta, shows, the
direction of migration was from east to west.
Hence this was also the direction of transfer of the
river-names.
As there is really no evidence of any kind in the

Rigveda indicating a migration from west to east,
the scholars often end up resorting to arguments
and interpretations which border on the desperate
and the ridiculous:
V.G. Rahurkar interprets the fact that the GayatrI
mantra (III.62.10) is “regarded as the holiest
5
mantra in the Rigveda” as evidence that this
verse (which he himself correctly translates in the
religious sense in which it is composed: “We
meditate upon that most illuminating lustre of God
6
SavitR so that he may stir our intellects” ) is
actually “a slogan given by ViSvAmitra to the
advancing Aryans, who must have been
expanding towards the east ie. the direction of the
7
rising sun.”
I.B. Aryans and Non-Aryans
The Rigveda contains no references whatsoever

to people speaking non-Indo-European
languages (which is what “non-Aryans” basically
means).
If the Rigveda is to be interpreted as a text

composed by the Vedic Aryans during their period
of invasion, conquest and settlement of a land
originally occupied by non-Aryans, then this
constitutes a very serious and fundamental
setback to that interpretation.
This compels the scholars to resort to desperate

methods of interpretation in order to produce
evidence of the presence of such non-Aryan
aboriginals of the land, hostile to the Vedic
Aryans. And the most desperate, and most
pathetic, of these methods, and one which most
of the invasionist scholars ultimately fall back on,
is the interpretation of mythology as history: of
mythical entities as historical entities, and of
mythical events as historical events.
For this, the scholars follow a two-tier

interpretation:
At one level, the Aryans are represented as being

more or less settled in the Saptasindhu region,
and now engaged as much in conflict with each
other as with the indigenous non-Aryans. The
references to “Arya and DAsa enemies” are cited
as proof of this state of affairs.
And, at a deeper, higher and more fundamental

level, the earlier conflicts of the invading Aryans
with the non-Aryan natives are represented as
being already converted into religious
myths: “When the Aryans created a religion out of
these events, they deified their leaders and
arrogated to themselves the title of cosmic
good… (by a) transformation of historical events
8
into mythopoeic and symbolic.”
The myths which are treated as transformed

historical events are inevitably those involving
Indra and the celestial demons of drought and
darkness. Thus, Indra comes to be the sole
symbol of the “Aryan invaders”, and the celestial
demons become symbols of the conquered “non-
Aryan natives”:
1. Indra is generally accepted by even the most

conservative of invasionist scholars as a symbol
of the invading Aryans: at the very least as a God
invoked by them in their battles against the non-
Aryans.
However, to many of the scholars, Indra is much

more: he is an actual personification of the
invading Aryan chieftains, or even a deification of
the most prominent one among them.
For example, R.N. Dandekar devotes a large

number of pages in his Vedic Mythological
Tracts9 to prove “that Indra was not originally a
god, but that he was a human hero, who attained
godhood by virtue of his miraculous exploits. Not
only that, but he soon superseded the other gods
(VII.21.7) and came to be regarded as the
10
foremost among them (II.12.1).”
Again, “Indra, the young, blond, bearded,

handsome, well-shaped, mighty, heroic leader of
the Aryans... protected the Aryans from the
attacks of the Dasyus… Many were the hostile
leaders conquered by Indra. Many again were
the Aryan chiefs and tribes to whom Indra is said
to have rendered timely succour in several
ways… It is therefore no wonder that such a
leader should have soon become a national hero
and then a national god of the Vedic Indians. A
warring people would naturally glorify a warlike
11
god.”
Dandekar provides plenty of “evidence” to prove

that Indra was a human being:
Firstly: “the human features in Indra’s

personality… Indra’s body, head, arms and hands
are very often referred to (II.16.2; VIII.96.3). He is
said to be golden in colour (I.7.2; VIII.66.3). His
body is gigantic, his neck mighty, and his back
brawny. His arms are sleek and his hands thick
and firm - both right and left - being particularly
well-shaped (I.102.6: IV.21.9; VI.19.3; VIII.81.1).
He has handsome cheeks (or lips) and is,
therefore, often called suSipra (II.12.6; 33.5),
Siprin (I.29.2; III.36.10) and tawny-bearded
(X.23.4). These and several other similar
descriptions of Indra’s person unmistakably
produce before our mind’s eye a very life-like
picture of a tall, strong, well-formed, handsome,
12
blond Aryan.”
Secondly: “Far more lifelike, however, are the

descriptions of some peculiar physical
mannerisms of that god. He agitates his jaws
(VIII.76.10) or puffs out his beautiful lips (III.32.1),
in a characteristic fashion, in anticipation of or
after the Soma-drought. Once he is described –
very realistically indeed – as shaking off the drops
13
of Soma from his moustache (II.11.17)…”
Thirdly: “Another peculiarity… is the fact that he is

frequently referred to as having been born. Two
entire hymns, namely III.48 and IV.18, deal with
14
the subject of his birth.”
Fourthly: “by far the most convincing proof of the

essentially human character of Indra is the fact
that the Vedic poets have often referred to what
may be called the ‘weaknesses’ of that god. One
such oft-mentioned weakness is Indra’s proverbial
fondness for Soma. His immoderate indulgence
in the intoxicating beverage is a favourite theme
of the Vedic poets… Similarly Indra is
represented as an expert in female lore
(VIII.33.17)… Though Indra’s amorous
adventures are nowhere clearly mentioned in the
RV, there are, in it, a few indications of that trait of
his character. The latter have, indeed, been the
basis of Indra’s representation, in later mythology,
15
as a romantic figure - a ‘gay Lothario’.”
Fifthly: “the Vedic poets have never unnecessarily

over-idealised the character of Indra which they
would have done had he been primarily thought
of as a god… he did not disdain deceiving his
enemies or cleverly circumscribing the conditions
of an agreement whenever circumstances so
demanded… In I.32.14, mighty Indra is said to
have been overcome with fear when, after killing
VRtra, he thought that some avenger of the
enemy was following him. Such a reference
would be hardly understandable in relation to a
god who had been conceived as a god from the
16
beginning.”
All this reads like the naive, and even imbecile,

analysis of a schoolboy who knows nothing
whatsoever about mythologies in general. The
Greek Gods (for example. Zeus, the Greek
equivalent of Indra) are similarly described in
great physical detail, their mannerisms are
similarly detailed, they are also “born”, they also
indulge in drink and have tempestuous affairs,
they also have fears and jealousies, they also
cheat and quarrel among themselves.
As we shall see, an examination of other Indo-

European mythologies is the one thing that the
invasionist scholars dread and avoid like the
plague, since it can be fatal to their childish
identifications of “history” in the Vedic myths.
2. Almost the sole criterion in classifying any

entity in the Rigveda as “non-Aryan” is the
criterion of conflict: the necessity of identifying
“non-Aryans” in conflict with “Aryans” is so vital to
the very survival of the Aryan invasion theory that
the scholars go overboard in identifying “non-
Aryans” on the basis of some “conflict” or the
other.
In setting out on this exercise, the scholars

virtually set out on a path of no-return: it is like
jumping off a cliff - there is no going back, or
stepping off, halfway. Starting with the classes of
supernatural beings and the individual demons,
the scholars end up identifying nearly every entity
in the Rigveda as “non-Aryan” on the basis of the
sole criterion of conflict, right from the Vedic tribes
to the Vedic Gods to the Vedic RSis:
a. The Supernatural beings: The scholars accept

all the classes of supernatural beings (Asuras,
DAsas, Dasyus, PaNis, Daityas, DAnavas,
RAkSasas, YakSas, Gandharvas, Kinnaras,
PiSAcas, etc.) as non-Aryan races, and the
individual demons (VRtra, SuSNa, Sambara,
Vala, Pipru, NamUci, Cumuri, Dhuni, Varcin,
AurNavAbha, AhISuva, Arbuda, IlIbiSa, Kuyava,
MRgaya, UraNa, PadgRbhi, SRbinda, DRbhIka,
RauhiNa, RudhikrAs, SvaSna, etc.) as non-Aryan
chieftains or heroes, defeated, conquered or
killed by Indra.
This is basically like identifying the fairies, pixies,

gnomes, elves, trolls, ogres, giants, goblins,
hobgoblins, leprechauns, and the like, in the fairy
tales and myths of Britain as the original non-Indo-
European inhabitants of the British Isles.
b. The Vedic tribes: All tribes depicted as

enemies of the Vedic Aryans are classified as non-
Aryan tribes.
Thus, A.D. Pusalker refers to the Ajas, Sigrus and

YakSas, who fight, under the leadership of
Bheda, against SudAs, as “three non-Aryan
17
tribes.”
Likewise, Griffith, as we saw, identifies “the
Pakthas and the rest”, ranged against SudAs in
VII.18.7, as “non-Aryan tribes”. Rahurkar also
describes the Pakthas and others as “tribes of
18
obviously non-Aryan origin.”
19
F.E. Pargiter (who, strictly speaking, is not an
invasionist scholar proper, but belongs to the
quasi-invasionist school, which we will examine
later) classifies the Aila tribes (the Yadus,
TurvaSas, Anus, Druhyus and PUrus) alone as
Aryan, and all the rest (particularly the IkSvAkus,
whom he classifies as Dravidians) as non-Aryan.
Thus, prominent Vedic kings like Purukutsa and
Trasadasyu, and prominent Puranic kings like
MandhAtA, Sagara, HariScandra, BhagIratha,
DaSaratha and RAma, are non-Aryans according
to him.
20
Malati Shendge classifies all tribes whose
names end in u (and she specifies the PUrus
among them) as non-Aryan: this includes the five
Aila tribes whom alone Pargiter classifies as
Aryan!
c. The Vedic Gods: An overwhelming majority of

the scholars hold that Rudra is a non-Aryan God
borrowed by the Aryans, on the ground that
Rudra “is regarded in Vedic cult and religion as an
apotropaeic God of aversion – to be feared but
21
not adored.”
Many hold VaruNa also to be non-Aryan on the

ground that many verses in the Rigveda depict a
rivalry between Indra and VaruNa, and hymn
X.124 shows Indra abducting the leadership of
the Gods from VaruNa. According to Malati
Shendge, “Indra represents the conquering
Aryans, VaruNa as his powerful equal represents
22
the non-Aryans”, and, according to R.N.
Dandekar, “the mythological rivalry between
asura VaruNa and Indra… (represents the rivalry)
between the Assyrians of the Indus Valley and
23
Indra of the Vedic Aryans.”
Other Gods, also, qualify as non-Aryans:
according to D.D. Kosambi, USas is a Goddess
“adopted from the non-Aryans” since she “had a
famous brush with Indra on the BeAs river which
24
ended in her ox-cart being smashed.”
Malati Shendge, in fact, decides that all the Vedic

Gods, except Indra and ViSNu, are non-Aryans;
and not even non-Aryan Gods, but non-Aryan
human beings: “The so-called Vedic pantheon,
with the exception of Indra and ViSNu, is
composed of the functionaries of the government
of the Asura empire having its capital in the Indus
25
Valley.” The various Gods were “the cabinet-
26
members of the non-Aryan government,” Mitra
being “the exchequer-general of
27
contracts” Rudra “the commander of the Asura
28
army”, SUrya “the head of the intelligence
29
department”, SavitR “the head of the system of
30
redistribution”, PUSan “the inspector and
31
builder of roads”, and so on.
Shendge excepts only Indra and ViSNu, who,

according to her, were “the leaders of the Aryans
32
in their conflict.” According to her, “the Aryan
33
origin of Indra and ViSNu is beyond doubt.”
But, according to S.K. Chatterji, ViSNu is “partly

at least… of Dravidian affinity as a sky-God
whose colour was of the blue sky (cf. Tamil viN,
34
‘sky’…).” D.D. Kosambi, perhaps on the basis of
ViSNu’s dark skin, goes further: among the Gods
“adopted from the pre-Aryans”, according to him,
is “the obscure Vishnu, who was later to find a
35
great future in India.”
So Indra, alone is a purely Aryan God. Or is he?

According to R.N. Dandekar, Indra (inspite of
being a “tall, strong, well-formed, handsome,
36
blond Aryan” ), was half a non-Aryan, and,
moreover, from his father’s side: “Indra belonged
to the DAsas on the father’s side, and to the Gods
37
(Aryans) on the mother’s side.”
The reasoning behind this conclusion is as

follows: there is conflict between Indra and his
father, and Indra is depicted as “having killed his
38
father in order to snatch away Soma from him”;
hence his father must have been a DAsa or non-
Aryan!
d. The Vedic RSis: V.G. Rahurkar, in his Seers of

the Rigveda, classifies the KaNvas and the
Agastyas and VasiSThas as being partly at least
of non-Aryan origin: according to him, the names
of the RSis belonging to the KaNva family clearly
39
show “some non-Aryan influence”; and Agastya
and VasiSTha are born “from a non-Aryan mother-
40
goddess”, whatever that means.
41
Three different scholars, D.D. Kosambi, l F.E.
42 43
Pargiter, and Malati Shendge , classify all the
families of Vedic RSis, with the sole exception of
the ViSvAmitras, as non-Aryans (Malati Shendge,
among them, does not specifically except the
ViSvAmitras by name, but she does name all the
other families as non-Aryan). The sole criterion
behind this appears to be the fact that there was
conflict between ViSvAmitra and VasiSTha, and
that ViSvAmitra was originally a king belonging to
a Bharata dynasty.
The implications of this do not escape the

attention of these scholars, since the majority of
the hymns of the Rigveda, it must be
remembered, are composed by these very RSis:
According to Malati Shendge, most of the hymns

“were composed by the ancient sages in their
44
own language”, and “were probably, at a later
stage, either translated into Sanskrit, or, on the
basis of earlier material, new hymns were
45
composed.”
Pargiter also assures us that the fact that they

“appear in Sanskrit” does not disprove their non-
Aryan origin, since “they would naturally have
46
been Sanskritized in the course of time.”
This whole exercise of identifying various entities

in the Rigveda as “non-Aryan” ones, quite apart
from the intrinsic fatuousness of most of the
arguments and conclusions, suffers from two very
vital flaws:
1. Firstly, “non-Aryan” can only, and only, mean

non-Indo-European in the linguistic sense; and
the fact is that all the entities which the scholars
identify as non-Aryan, whether classes of
supernatural beings, or individual demons, or
tribes, or Gods, or RSis, have purely Indo-
European names.
This is the most fundamental obstacle to

identifying these entities as non-Aryan: their
names not only do not have Dravidian or Austric
etymologies, but they actually have purely Indo-
European etymologies, so that they cannot even
be identified with hypothetical, unrecorded and
extinct non-Indo-European groups.
Some invasionist scholars have tried hard to

discover non-Indo-European elements in the
Rigveda, but without success. John Muir, after
one such exercise, admits: “I have gone over the
names of the Dasyus or Asuras, mentioned in the
Rigveda, with the view of discovering whether any
of them could be regarded as being of non-Aryan
or indigenous origin, but I have not observed any
47
to be of that character.”
Likewise, Sarat Chandra Roy, in the census

report of 1911, tried to identify some names in the
Rigveda with Mundari (Austric) names, but even
so staunch a supporter of the Aryan invasion
theory as S.K. Chatterji admits: “Mr. Roy’s
attempts to identify non-Aryan chiefs in the
Rigveda with Munda names… are rather
48
fanciful.”
However, the necessity of identifying “non-
Aryans” in the Rigveda is so vital to the very
survival of the invasion theory that the scholars
have to find means of overcoming this obstacle:
a. The first, and safest, method is to simply ignore

the linguistic aspect altogether, and to continue
classifying entities as “Aryan” and “non-Aryan”
whenever occasion and convenience demands or
permits.
b. The second method is to merely make vague

statements to the effect that the names “seem”
non-Aryan, without bothering to specify what
exactly is intended to be meant by the term.
V.M. Macdonell, in his Vedic Mythology, derives

the Sanskrit etymologies of the names of most of
the demons of drought and darkness; but in
respect of the names SRbinda and IlIbiSa, he
suggests that they have “an un-Aryan
49
appearance.”
D.D. Kosambi, in speaking of the PaNis, suggests

that “the name PaNi does not seem to be
50
Aryan.”
V.G. Rahurkar, in suggesting that the KaNvas

were influenced by non-Aryans, tells us that the
names of many of the RSis belonging to this
family “appear to be strange names… (which) can
be accounted for by assuming some non-Aryan
51
influence.”
Among the names specified by Rahurkar are

names like ASvasUktin and GoSUktin!
c. The third method is to attribute specific

linguistic identities to clearly non-linguistic entities.
52
F.E. Pargiter, in speaking of the different tribal
groups, tells us that the Ailas (the Yadus,
TurvaSas, Anus, Druhyus and PUrus) were
Aryans, the IkSvAkus were Dravidians, and the
eastern Saudyumna groups (named in the
PurANas) were Austrics.
53
Malati Shendge classifies the classes of
atmospheric demons as follows: the DAsas and
Dasyus were Austric, the RAkSasas were
Dravidians, and the Asuras were Semites.
d. The fourth method is to allege linguistic

camouflage: ie. the names were originally non-
Indo-European, but they were “Sanskritized”, so
they appear to be Indo-European.
Malati Shendge, who classifies the Asuras as

Semites, and VaruNa as their king, tells us that
VaruNa is “a Sanskritized form of a Semitic
54
name.”
F.E. Pargiter, clearly uncomfortable with having to

classify entities with purely Indo-European names
as non-Aryans, tells us that “the fact that many of
the names… have a Sanskrit appearance does
not necessarily militate against their non-Aila
origin, because they would naturally have been
55
Sanskritized in the course of time.” In fact, he
suggests two methods of linguistic conversion:
“Non-Aryan names appear to have been (either)
56
Sanskritized or translated into Sanskrit.”
Thus, to illustrate a hypothetical example, a

person named RAjA in an ancient Sanskrit text
can be classified as a Semite: his name can be
claimed to originally have been either RazA
(Sanskritized into RAjA) or Malik (translated into
the Sanskrit equivalent word for “King”).
Needless to say, this kind of logic saves the

scholars the trouble of trying to adhere to
linguistic principles in classifying anyone or
anything as “non-Aryan”.
2. Secondly, “non-Aryan” entities encountered by

Aryan invaders in India must be found only in
India; but the fact is that many of the most
important names classified by the scholars as
refering to “non-Aryan natives” of India, are found
in the farthest Indo-European mythologies:
Thus, Asura is found in the Iranian Ahura, and the

Teutonic Aesir.
PaNi is found in Greek Pan and the Teutonic

Vanir (see Chapter 10 = Appendix 3 of this book
for further details).
DAsa is found in Iranian Daha and Slavonic DaZ.
VaruNa is found in Greek Ouranos and Teutonic

Woden.
This obstacle is also basically an insurmountable

one, but the scholars surmount it by four simple
methods:
a. The first method is to simply ignore the

inconvenient correspondences with other Indo-
European mythologies altogether.
In some cases, this is easy because the

correspondences have apparently not been
noticed by any scholar so far: a case in point is
the unmistakable correspondence between the
PaNis of the Vedas, Pan of Greek mythology, and
the Vanir of Teutonic mythology (see Chapter 10
of this book).
In other cases, even well-known and well

established correspondences are firmly ignored
by the scholars.
b. The second method is to note the

correspondence but to argue against it.
Thus, the correspondence between VaruNa,

Ouranos and Woden is clear not only from the
similarity of the names but from the identity of
many or most of the mythical traits and
characteristics of the three Gods. Yet many
scholars argue against the correspondence by
suggesting different etymologies for the three
names.
c. The third method is to note, and accept, the

correspondence; but to disdain to accept it as an
objection to branding the entity of that name, in
the Rigveda, as “non-Aryan”, by arguing that
there was a transfer of meaning of the word from
its original Indo-European context to a new
context of conflicts with non-Aryans in India.
Thus, most scholars are aware that the words

Asura, DAsa and Dasyu pertain to Indo-Iranian
contexts; but that does not prevent them from
interpreting these words as refering also to the
non-Aryan natives of India.
Emile Benveniste notes that “the Avestan word for

‘country’, dahyu (anc-dasyu) has as its Sanskrit
correspondent dasyu… (and) the connection
between the sense of dahyu/dasyu reflects
conflicts between the Indian and Iranian
57
peoples.” However, he suggests that although
“the word at first referred to Iranian society, the
name by which this enemy people called
themselves collectively took on a hostile
connotation and became for the Aryas of India the
58
term for an inferior and barbarous people.”
Hence: “In Indic, dasyu may be taken as an
59
ethnic” (ie. a native of India).
d. The fourth method, the most brazen of them

all, is to note and accept the correspondence; and
then, in the very same breath, to go on classifying
the entity in question as non-Aryan.
Thus, D.D. Kosambi, in one and the same breath,

or at least, on the same page of his book, tells us
that the Goddess USas “is related to the Greek
Eos”, and also that USas belongs to a group of
“peculiar Vedic gods not known elsewhere (who)
60
had been adopted from the pre-Aryans.”
It is clear that the whole exercise of identifying

“non-Aryans” in the Rigveda is more a case of
ignoring, or arguing against, facts, than a case of
citing facts as evidence.
I.C. Conflicts between Aryans and Non-Aryans
As we have seen, rather than linguistic principles,

it is “conflicts” in the Rigveda which are made the
criteria for locating “non-Aryans” in the text.
And, as we have also seen, it is not so much the

conflicts between the Vedic Aryans and their
human enemies (who, in any case, have purely
Indo-European names and tribal identities), which
engage the attention of the scholars, as the
conflicts between the elements of nature:
between the thunder-God and the demons of
drought, or the forces of light and the forces of
darkness.
The early Western scholars who analysed the

hymns of the Rigveda very clearly accepted that
the conflicts between Indra and the various
anthropomorphised demons were basically nature-
myths pertaining to the elemental battles between
light and darkness, or between the benign nature-
Gods of plenty and the malignant demons of
drought.
And, although these scholars tried to introduce a

parallel scheme of interpretation whereby the
nature-myths also functioned, on a secondary
level, as allegorical depictions of actual terrestrial
conflicts between Aryans and non-Aryans, they
rarely lost sight of the fact that this second
scheme of interpretation was secondary, and
basically speculative. Griffith, for example,
interprets the nature-myths as nature-myths
throughout his work; and, whenever he also
introduces the invasionist motif, there is an
element of dilemma in his comments:
commenting on “the DAsa hosts who dwell in
darkness” in II.20.7, for example, he notes that it
is “uncertain whether the aborigines of the country
are meant, or the demons of air who dwell in dark
clouds.”
But, later invasionist scholars became more and
more impatient with the naturalistic scheme of
interpretation. D.D. Kosambi is extremely critical
of the early Western scholars for interpreting the
battles of Indra as the battles between a thunder-
God and the demons of drought or darkness, and
attributes these interpretations to the scholars
having flourished “during the nineteenth century,
when nature-myths were made to account for
everything, including the Homeric destruction of
61
Troy…”
These later invasionist scholars, therefore,

interpret the two major categories of “conflicts” in
the nature-myths as two categories of historical
conflicts:
1. The first category of “conflicts” is the one

represented by the great battle, between Indra
and VRtra (or the VRtras).
Griffith, in his footnote to 1.4.8, notes: “The

VRtras, the enemies, the oppressors, or
obstructors, are ‘the hostile powers in the
atmosphere who malevolently shut up the watery
treasures in the clouds. These demons of
drought, called by a variety of names, as VRtra,
Ahi, SuSNa, Namuci, Pipru, Sambara, UraNa,
etc. etc., armed on their side, also, with every
variety of celestial artillery, attempt, but in vain, to
resist the onset of the gods’ - Muir, Original
Sanskrit Texts, V, p.95.”
Further, in his footnote to 1.31.1, he quotes

Wilson: “the legend of Indra’s slaying VRtra… in
the Vedas is merely an allegorical narrative of the
production of rain. VRtra, sometimes also named
Ahi, is nothing more than the accumulation of
vapour condensed or figuratively shut up in, or
obstructed by, a cloud. Indra, with his
thunderbolt, or atmospheric or electrical influence,
divides the aggregate mass, and vent is given to
the rain which then descends upon the earth.”
VRtra is regularly depicted as a dragon or Great

Serpent, and Indra as a dragon-slayer.
However, the later invasionist scholars reason

otherwise: according to D.D. Kosambi, Indra
represents the Aryan invaders, and the VRtras
represent the non-Aryans of the Indus Valley,
who had built dams across the rivers. The Aryans
destroyed these dams, thereby flooding out the
non-Aryans: “the myth and metaphors give a clear
account of the methods whereby the Indus
62
agriculture was ultimately ruined.”
According to Malati Shendge, VRtra was “an

official, who, alongwith his men, referred to as
63
VRtrANi, was guarding the dam.” Indra, “by
killing VRtra, the guard of the dam across the
seven rivers, brought under his control the sluice
gates which he opened in order to flood the
downstream settlements, thus causing panic and
64
damage to life and property.”
R.N. Dandekar also reasons as above, and

includes the killing of the non-Aryan VRtra or
VRtras among the exploits of his blond, Aryan
hero, Indra. He reasons as follows: “Indra, the
national hero, was deified by the Vedic
poets… And, still later, when naturalistic elements
came to be superimposed upon Indra’s
personality, as a result of which Indra came to be
regarded as the rain-god, there was a
corresponding naturalistic transformation in
VRtra’s personality so that he came to be looked
65
upon as the cloud-demon.”
As usual, the scholars firmly avoid examining the

mythologies of other Indo-European peoples.
Every major Indo-European mythology records
the killing of a mighty serpent by the thunder-God:
the Greek Zeus kills the Great Serpent Typhoeus,
and the Teutonic Thor kills the Great Serpent of
Midgard.
The scholars would, of course, claim that an

original nature-myth, of a thunder-God killing the
serpent who withholds the rain-clouds, has merely
been superimposed on the historical exploits of a
human, Aryan hero, Indra, who killed the VRtras
of the Indus Valley.
But Hittite mythology gives the lie to this forced

interpretation. The Larousse Encyclopaedia of
Mythology relates the following prominent Hittite
myth: “The Great Serpent had dared to attack the
weather-God. The God demanded that he be
brought to justice. Inar, (another) God,…
prepared a great feast and invited the serpent
with his family to eat and drink. The serpent and
his children, having drunk to satiety, were unable
to go back into their hole, and were
66
exterminated.” This weather-God “presided over
67
tempests and beneficial rainfall.”
Here, in this much-transformed myth, the name of

the God, who kills the Great Serpent who is
interfering with the rainfall, is Inar, clearly cognate
to Indra. So there has clearly been no
“superimposition” of any historical events onto
any nature-myth: Indra’s exploits are indeed the
exploits of a thunder-God fighting the demons of
drought.
2. The second category of “conflicts” is the one

represented by the hostilities between Indra and
the PaNis, particularly described in hymn X.108.
As Griffith points out in his footnote to this hymn:

“The hymn is a colloquy between SaramA, the
messenger of the Gods or of Indra (see I.62.3,
note; 72.8; III.31.6, V.45.8), and the PaNis or
envious demons who have carried off the rays of
light which Indra wishes to recover.”
Elsewhere, in his footnote to 1.62.3, Griffith adds:

“SaramA, the hound of Indra… is said to have
pursued and recovered the cows stolen by the
PaNis; which has been supposed to mean that
SaramA is the Dawn who recovers the rays of the
Sun that have been carried away by night.”
Again, later invasionist scholars refuse to accept

this naturalistic interpretation: D.D. Kosambi
points out that “the hymn says nothing about
stolen cattle, but is a direct blunt demand for
tribute in cattle, which the PaNis scornfully reject.
68
They are then warned of dire consequences.”
Kosambi therefore interprets the hymn as an
illustration of the terror tactics by which the
invading Aryans attacked small communities of
the native non-Aryan populace: first they
demanded tribute, and, when denied this tribute,
they attacked and conquered the hapless
community. Kosambi calls this “the standard
69
Aryan procedure for invasion.”
A majority of the invasionist scholars identify the

PaNis as non-Aryans.
However, in this case, also, an examination of

other Indo-European mythologies shows that the
PaNis, as well as the particular “conflict” in which
they are involved, are represented in at least two
other mythologies: Greek and Teutonic. We will
not go into this subject in greater detail at this
point, as we will be examining it in full in a later
chapter (Chapter 10 = Appendix 3).
The long and short of the whole thing is that there

is no such thing as a conflict between Indo-
Europeans and non-Indo-Europeans depicted
anywhere in the Rigveda.
And it is because scholars belonging to the

invasionist school of interpretation have
expended all their energies and efforts in trying to
discover history in the mythology of the Rigveda,
that the wealth of historical information, which is
actually present in the Rigveda, has remained
totally untouched by them.
II
THE HINDU INVASIONIST SCHOOL
The Hindu invasionist school is a distinctly

different school of interpretation from the standard
invasionist one: it also fully accepts the idea that
the Aryans invaded, or migrated into, India from
outside in the distant past; but that, perhaps, is
the only point on which it agrees with the
standard invasionist school. On every other point,
this school represents a particularly bizarre
variety of staunch Hindu reaction to the invasion
theory, and the sole aim of this school is to
present the Vedic Aryans and their civilization in
as glorified a manner as possible.
The basic postulates of the standard invasion

theory with which the Hindu invasionist school
differs sharply, are:
1. The Rigveda was composed around 1200 BC,

and it represents a culture and civilization which
commenced and flourished after 1500 BC.
2. The Aryans invaded India around 1500 BC.
3. Vedic civilization is different from the original

Aryan civilization, and both represent semi-
civilized and semi-nomadic cultures.
We will examine what the Hindu invasionist

scholars have to say, from the point of view of:
A. The Date of the Rigveda and of Vedic

Civilization.
B. The Aryan Invasion.
C. Vedic Civilization vis-a-vis the Original Aryan
Civilization.
D. The Original Homeland.
II.A. The Date of the Rigveda and of Vedic

Civilization
B.G. (Lokmanya) Tilak, the earliest scholar

belonging to this school of interpretation, proved
on the basis of astronomical references in the
Rigveda, that the composition of the Rigveda
commenced around 4500 BC or so, and the bulk
of the hymns were composed between 3500 BC
and 2500 BC.
However, he was not satisfied with these dates,
and he tried to find earlier astronomical
references, but without success: “I have, in my
later researches, tried to push back this limit by
searching for the older zodiacal positions of the
vernal equinox in the Vedic literature, but I have
70
not found any evidence of the same.”
Tilak, therefore, tried to “push back” the date of

the civilization represented in the Rigveda, if not
of the actual Rigveda itself, by formulating his
Arctic homeland theory, according to which Vedic
civilization “did not originate with the Vedic bards,
but was derived by them from their interglacial
71
forefathers” who lived in the Arctic region in the
interglacial period which ended around “10000-
8000 BC” with “the destruction of the original
72
Arctic home by the last Ice Age.”
Going even further back: “Aryans and their culture

and religion cannot be supposed to have
developed all of a sudden at the close of the last
interglacial period, and the ultimate origin of both
must, therefore, be placed in remote geological
times… though Aryan race or religion can be
traced back to last interglacial period, yet the
ultimate origin of both is still lost in geological
73
antiquity.”
Latter-day scholars of this school, however, are

less discreet about these dates “lost in geological
antiquity”. S.D. Kulkarni tells us that “our
civilization, Vedic or Hindu, has a continuity of
74
more than 31092 years before present.” and he
pinpoints “21788 BC as the period, at least, of the
75
origin of the Rigveda.”
For sceptics, Kulkarni adds: “It appears that the

scholars simply get awe-struck if any date for any
event in the past is fixed to such remote
antiquity. They forget that the creation of this
universe is some 200 crores of years old if not
more, and the first man has set his foot on this
76
mother earth at least some 60 lac years ago.”
II.B. The Aryan Invasion.
Tilak had nothing particular to say about the date

of the Aryan invasion of India, or about the actual
invasion itself.
The Indus civilization had not been excavated in

his time, and hence it formed no part of his
considerations.
However, later scholars of this school are very

careful to bring the Aryans into India before the
period of the Indus civilization, unwilling to allow
this civilization to be attributed to anyone other
than the Aryans themselves. And they are
strongly critical of suggestions or claims to the
contrary.
Kulkarni, for example, holds “the British imperialist

circles” responsible for “hatching a plot to
perpetuate their rule in India by adopting the
77
doctrine of ‘divide and rule’……”. They “spread
the canard that the Dravidians who peopled India,
from north to south, were conquered by the Aryan
barbarians sometime in 1500 BC… as a natural
corollary, when the Indus Valley Civilization was
discovered and its date was adjudged to be
around 3000 BC, this thesis was further
developed and conclusion drawn that the Aryan
barbarians came from the Northwest and
78
destroyed the locally developed civilization.”
Kulkarni alleges that by identifying “the Indus

Valley people as the Dravidians… they have
sowed the seeds of schism between the North
79
Indians and their southern counterparts”, and
he firmly insists that “the Harappa civilization was
80
a part and parcel of the Aryan achievements.”
It is clear that Kulkarni’s objection is not to the

idea that Aryans, coming from outside, conquered
the local Dravidians: he accepts the idea of this
invasion and conquest, but insists that it “occured
81
prior to 4500 BC.” His objection is to the Aryans
being considered “barbarians” and the Dravidians
“civilized”.
The Hindu invasionist interpretation, in fact,

contains the seeds of even greater “schism”:
while the standard invasionist theory, after the
discovery of the Indus civilization, at least gives
the Dravidians the credit of cultural and
civilizational superiority alongwith the military
inferiority which led to their alleged defeat at the
hands of the invading Aryans, the Hindu
invasionist theory wants the Dravidians to be
considered inferior in terms of both military
strength and culture.
The standard invasionist school treats the latter-

day Indian or Hindu culture and civilization as an
amalgam of the cultures and civilizations of the
invading Aryans and the indigenous Dravidians,
with more Dravidian elements than Aryan, but the
Hindu invasionist school treats this culture and
civilization as a wholly Aryan one imposed by a
superior race on an inferior one.
This is not merely an inference drawn from their

theory; it is actually stated in so many words by
Tilak, who asserts that “the very fact that… (the
Aryans) were able to establish their supremacy
over the races they came across in their
migrations from the original home, and that they
succeeded, by conquest or assimilation, in
Aryanising the latter in language, thought and
religion under circumstances which could not be
expected to be favourable to them, is enough to
prove that the original Aryan civilization most
have been of a type far higher than that of the
82
non-Aryan races.”
Tilak is very evidently proud of “the vitality and

superiority of the Aryan races, as disclosed by
their conquest, by ex-termination or assimilation,
of the non-Aryan races with whom they came into
contact in their migrations in search of new lands
83
from the North Pole to the Equator.”
Moreover, Tilak, and other scholars of this school,

are quite certain that they themselves are
descendants of these “Aryan races” who
conquered India, rather than of the “non-Aryan
races” of India who were conquered: Tilak
repeatedly refers to the Aryans as “the ancient
84
worshippers and sacrificers of our race.”
V.D. (Veer) Savarkar, who more or less accepted

Tilak’s hypothesis, takes equal pride in the
“achievements” of the Aryans, but is less inclined
to stress the “extermination” of the inferior races,
and, in fact, tries to suggest that the non-Aryans
were relatively few in number, and that most of
them welcomed the Aryan invaders with open
arms.
According to Savarkar, the history of the Aryan

conquest began in the westernmost part of the
Saptasindhu region when “the foremost band of
the intrepid Aryans made it their home and lighted
the first sacrificial fire on the banks of the
Sindhu… BY the time they had cut themselves
aloof from their cognate and neighbouring people,
especially the Persians, the Aryans had spread
out to the farthest of the seven rivers, Sapta
85
Sindhus…”
Now, “the region of the Sapta Sindhus was,

though very thinly, populated by scattered tribes.
Some of them seem to have been friendly
towards the newcomers, and it is almost certain
that many an individual had served the Aryans as
guides and introduced them to the names and
nature of the new scenes to which the Aryans
could not be but local strangers. The
Vidyadharas, Apsaras, Yakshas, Rakshas,
Gandharvas and Kinnaras were not all or
altogether inimical to the Aryans as at times they
are mentioned as being benevolent and good-
natured folks. Thus it is probable that many
names given to the great rivers by the original
inhabitants of the soil may have been
86
Sanskritised and adopted by the Aryans…”
“The activities of so intrepid a people as the

Sindhus or Hindus could no longer be kept
cooped or cabined within the narrow compass of
the Panchanad or the Punjab. The vast and
fertile plains farther off stood out inviting the
efforts of some strong and vigorous race. Tribe
after tribe of the Hindus issued forth from the land
of their nursery, and, led by the consciousness of
a great mission and their Sacrificial Fire that was
a symbol thereof, they soon reclaimed the vast,
waste and but very thinly populated
lands. Forests were felled, agriculture flourished,
cities rose, kingdoms thrived… As time passed
on, the distances of their new colonies increased,
and different peoples of other highly developed
types began to be incorporated into their
87
culture…”
“At last the great mission which the Sindhus had

undertaken of founding a nation and a country,
found and reached its geographical limit when the
valorous Prince of Ayodhya made a triumphant
entry in Ceylon and actually brought the whole
land from the Himalayas to the Seas under one
sovereign sway. The day when the Horse of
Victory returned unchallenged and
unchallengeable, the great white Umbrella of
Sovereignty was unfurled over that Imperial
throne of Ramchandra, the brave, Ramchandra
the good, and a loving allegiance to him was
sworn, not only by the Princes of Aryan blood, but
Hanuman, Sugriva, Bibhishana from the south –
that day was the real birth-day of our Hindu
people. It was truly our national day: for Aryans
and Anaryans knitting themselves into a people
88
were born as a nation.”
Besides accepting that “Yakshas. Rakshas,

Gandharvas”, and “Hanuman, Sugriva,
Bibhishana” were not “of Aryan blood”, Savarkar
also accepts the linguistic and sociological (caste)
implications of the invasion theory: “Further on, as
the Vedic Sanskrit began to give birth to the
Indian Prakrits which became the spoken tongues
of the majority of the descendants of these very
Sindhus as well as the assimilated and the cross-
born castes, these too might have called
89
themselves as Hindus.”
Kulkarni is much more graphic in his description

of the Aryan invasion of India. He converts the
whole thing into a veritable saga, ostensibly on
the basis of the Rigveda:
According to him, the Vedic empire, which lay

mainly to the west of the Indus, was ruled by the
PRthu emperor CAyamAna, with his capital in
Abhivarta, “now identified as a village near the
90
city of Khorasan in Eastern Iran.”
The Bharatas were one of the groups of Vedic

people living within this empire. A rift developed
between the Bharatas and the PRthus, and
“DivodAsa, the chief of the Bharatas, was
captured by VadhryaSva, the commander of the
91
CAyamAnas.”
Later, DivodAsa was released: “After his release,

he crossed the Sindhu and the other rivers of the
Punjab and settled in the region between the
92
rivers Satudri and the GangA.”
DivodAsa’s “son SudAs was very ambitious. He

wanted to be independent of the CAyamAnas of
the PRthus ruling from far-off Abhivarta in Eastern
93
Iran”, VasiSTha agreed to help him in his
ambition, and “crossed the Sindhu and other
94
rivers and joined SudAs”. Together, they
“gained supremacy over the region between the
95
Sindhu and the GangA.”
However: “The emperor CAyamAna could not

tolerate this. He gave a call to all his chieftains to
gather together under his command. Ten very
powerful kings including Yadu, Turvasu, Anu,
Druhyu - the Arya chiefs, and Sambar the Dasyu
chief, joined CAyamAna. They crossed the
96
Sindhu…”. The resulting DASarAjña war was
decisively won by SudAs: “This was the turning
point in the relationship of the Vedics who stayed
behind in the western region beyond the Sindhu,
and those who crossed over the rivers of the
Punjab and came to settle permanently in the
97
region east of the river Sindhu.”
“The exodus of the Bharatas to the east of the

Sindhu had started. And it gained momentum
with the sage ViSvAmitra crossing the Sindhu and
the other rivers of the Punjab… when ViSvAmitra
left his original habitat west of the Sindhu,
alongwith his followers, he is stated to be
requesting the rivers Vipat and Satudri to allow
passage for his people, the Bharatas (RV
98
3.33.11).”
“After ViSvAmitra became the priest of SudAs, he

inspired SudAs to perform a horse-sacrifice to
proclaim to the Kings here that they should
hereafter pay homage to him as their King
Emperor (RV 3.53.11)… The horse was escorted
to the east, the west and the north. It appears
that SudAs had not yet penetrated the Vindhyas
and established his sway there in the South. But
the Bharatas triumphed over all the regions north
of the Vindhyas. For it is stated that SudAsa’s
army had humbled the Kikatas, ie. modem Bihar
99
and the regions around it.”
There is clearly a sleight of hand in Kulkarni’s

description of the exploits of SudAs: since the
geographical landmark associated with VasiSTha
(ie. the ParuSNI) is to the west of the
geographical landmarks associated with
ViSvAmitra (ie. the VipAS and SutudrI, and
KIkaTa), Kulkarni places VasiSTha
before ViSvAmitra, although the unanimous
verdict of both tradition as well as modern
scholarship is that ViSvAmitra preceded
VasiSTha as the priest of SudAs. His only
explanation for this reverse order, significantly, is
that “the sequence of events appears to be
100
queer” (from the point of view of the invasion),
if ViSvAmitra is placed before VasiSTha!
And finally, Kulkarni does what he accuses the

Western scholars of doing: he sows “the seeds of
schism between the North Indians and their
101
southern counterparts.” He takes the invasion
right into southern territory: “the expansion of the
Vedic Aryans towards the south of the Vindhyas
clearly belongs to the later Vedic and early post-
Vedic periods. It must have been during these
periods that the family of Agastya led the
colonising Aryan missionaries to the south… He
is the first Aryan explorer and the originator of the
art of colonization… the Aryanizer of the
102
south.”
II.C. Vedic Civilization vis-a-vis the Original

Aryan Civilization.
Tilak sees the religion and culture preserved in

the Rigveda as “the anti-diluvian religion and
103
culture” of the Aryans in their original Arctic
homeland, “preserved in the form of traditions by
the disciplined memory of the Rishis until it was
incorporated first into crude, as contrasted with
the polished, hymns (su-uktas) of the Rig-Veda in
the Orion Period, to be collected later on in
MaNDalas and finally into Samhitas; and… the
104
subject matter of these hymns is interglacial.”
It was “those who survived the catastrophe or

their immediate descendants” who first
“incorporated into hymns the religious knowledge
they had inherited as a sacred trust from their
105
forefathers”.
If this anti-diluvian religion and culture is found

preserved only in India, and to some extent in
Iran, it is because “the civilization of the Aryan
races that are found to have inhabited the
northern parts of Europe in the beginning of the
Neolithic age” suffered “a natural relapse into
106
barbarism after the great catastrophe”; while
“the religious zeal and industry of the bards or
107
priests of the Iranian and the Indian Aryas”
preserved this religion and culture “to be
scrupulously guarded and transmitted to future
108
generations”.
About the language of the hymns, and therefore,
indirectly, of the original Aryans, Tilak at first tries
to appear non-commital: “How far the language of
the hymns, as we have them at present,
resembled the anti-diluvial forms of speech is a
different question… we are not concerned here
with the words or the syllables of the hymns,
which, it is admitted, have not remained
109
permanent.”
But he immediately abandons this ambiguity: “the

hymns have been preserved, accent for accent,
according to the lowest estimate, for the last 3000
or 4000 years; and what is achieved in more
recent times can certainly be held to have been
done by the older bards in times when the
traditions about the Arctic home and religion were
110
still fresh in their mind.”
In short, Tilak sees little difference between the

language, religion and culture of the original
Aryans, and that of the Vedic Aryans.
Kulkarni is more categorical: “the Vedas are the

heritage of mankind. Even though the credit for
preservation of these without adding a syllable
here or a dot there is that of the Indians, the
verses in these have come down to us from
remotest antiquity when forefathers of all the
111
peoples of this wide world were living together”
in the original homeland.
“Unfortunately, those who migrated from their

original homeland almost totally lost their links
with the ancient culture while only the Indians
could preserve the Vedas and their links with their
ancient Vedic civilization, making such
modifications as the climes and times
112
demanded.”
About the language of the original Aryans,

Kulkarni is even more categorical: he objects to
“the language from which all these languages
including Sanskrit and Zend have been derived
113
(being) designated as Indo-European”, and he
tells the scholars that they “should not feel shy
and should consider this original language as
114
Sanskrit itself, instead of Indo-European.”
The Hindu invasionist scholars thus clearly see

the language, religion and culture of the Rigveda
as almost identical with the language, religion and
culture of the Aryans in their original homeland
outside India, and, in the process, they make
this Vedic culture totally alien to India. It may be
noted that even the standard invasionist scholars,
except for the lunatic fringe among them, accept
that while the Aryans came from outside, “the
Indo-Aryans had become completely Indianized
when the Rigvedic culture started on its course as
a distinct product of the Indian soil about 1500
115
BC.” The Hindu invasionist theory is thus far
more inimical to the Indian ethos than the
standard invasionist one.
The only thing with which these scholars are

concerned is the glorification of the Aryan
civilization in its original homeland:
Tilak insists that the Aryans had attained “a high

degree of civilization in their original Arctic home,”
and “there is no reason why the primitive Aryans
should not be placed on an equal footing with the
prehistoric inhabitants of Egypt in point of culture
116
and civilization”.
This, of course, means more than it actually says:

the Aryan civilization apparently flourished in the
Arctic region before 10000-8000 BC, while the
Egyptian civilization flourished much later; so
naturally the Aryan civilization must be treated as
much more than merely “equal” with the Egyptian
civilization!
Kulkarni, as usual, is much more reckless in his

pronouncements. He starts out by asserting that
“the Vedas are the compositions of a highly
117
civilized people”, and ends up with deriving all
the civilizations of the world from the civilization of
the Vedic Aryans: “the Rigvedic people were the
civilizers of the world in the post-glacial
118
epoch” since “the Aryans dispersed to different
lands in Europe, North Africa, the rest of Asia,
and America, and developed the ancient world
119
civilizations in their respective regions.”
II.D. The Original Homeland
After examining the main concerns of the Hindu

invasionist scholars, we now come to the main
point: the location of the original homeland
according to these scholars, their real reasons
behind locating the homeland in these far-off
regions, and the arguments by which they try to
prove these locations on the basis of the Rigveda.
Tilak locates the original homeland in the Arctic

region from “remote geological times” till “the
destruction of the original Arctic home by the last
120
Ice Age” in “10000-8000 BC”. The period from
“8000-5000 BC” was the “age of migration from
the original home. The survivors of the Aryan
race roamed over the northern parts of Europe
121
and Asia in search of new lands.”
By 5000 BC, according to Tilak, the Aryans were

divided into two groups. One group consisted of
“the primitive Aryans in Europe… as represented
by Swiss Lake Dwellers”, and the other group
consisted of the “Asiatic Aryans… probably
122
settled on the Jaxartes”, still in Central Asia, on
their way towards India.
Thus, the Aryan colonisation of India took place

long after the colonisation of Europe. Far from
being the original Aryan homeland, India,
according to Tilak, was practically the last land to
be colonised by the Aryans.
Kulkarni’s idea of the original homeland is even

more peculiar than Tilak’s:
Letting his imagination run riot, Kulkarni tells us

that “the Vedic civilization covered a wide area
including Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Azerbaijan,
123
Afghanistan, Sindha, Punjab and Kashmira”,
and “the Vedic influence was all-pervasive and it
spread right from modem Turkey and Egypt,
covered the region between the Caucasus
mountain and the Caspian Sea down to Syria and
Palestine and the Persian Gulf kingdoms of
Ancient Babylon, Asur, Sumer, Akkad, Ur,
Kassite, and including the modern Iran-
Afghanistan, the Russian Azerbaijan, and the
Southern regions of the Russian Republics,
Tadjikistan, Uzbek, Turkmen and Kirghis. It
extended further east to Hindukush Mountains
and covered the region around Varasakh river
and included the Sindhu region of modem
124
Sindha, the Punjab and the Kashmira.”
Now, it may appear from the above that Kulkarni

includes three northwestern parts of India in the
original homeland. But he is quick to disclaim
this. He immediately clarifies that “this was the
position in about 5000 BC. About 2000 or so
years earlier, the Dasarajnya battle was fought
and the Vedics… began to spread eastwards and
125
southwards to the present day India”; and,
even after that, “these people had their
settlements mostly in the regions West of the river
Sindhu, and only the Punjab, Sindha and Kashmir
126
were the regions known to them.” Needless to
say, “southern India of present day was
127
unknown” to them.
Now the question arises: why are these staunch

Hindu scholars so determined to locate the
original Aryan homeland far outside India?
There are two main reasons:
1. Firstly, these scholars are not concerned with

the narrow national boundaries of India: their
main concern is to portray Vedic civilization as the
most ancient civilization in the world, and as the
most likely source-point for all the other
civilizations of the ancient world.
At the time Tilak wrote The Arctic Home in the
Vedas, the Indus civilization had not yet been
excavated, and the oldest archaeological remains
of any highly developed civilization in India did not
go beyond the first millennium BC.
Hence Tilak was compelled to look elsewhere for

an ancient and highly developed civilization which
could be projected as the original Aryan and
Vedic civilization. However, all civilizations
excavated till then were already booked and
accounted for. The only option left for Tilak was
to postulate a hypothetical Aryan, and Vedic,
civilization in the remote geological past, in an
almost inexcavable part of the world like the Arctic
region.
Later scholars belonging to this school have an

option within India in the Indus civilization, but this
option has very limited utility: it is difficult to
suggest that this civilization could have been the
source or inspiration for the other civilizations like
the Egyptian or Mesopotamian. Hence, even
though careful to suggest that the Aryans entered
India before the period of the Indus civilization,
they still find it necessary to look outside India for
the original Aryan or Vedic civilization.
128
Many scholars (for example B.G. Siddharth,
Director-General of the B.M. Birla Science Centre
in Hyderabad) accept Colin Renfrew’s view that
the original homeland was in Anatolia (Turkey),
and try to identify 10,000 year old epipaleolithic
agricultural and proto-agricultural sites excavated
in Turkey, such as Nevali Cori in southeastern
Turkey, as Rigvedic sites. Anatolia is
conveniently close to the later centres of
development of civilizations in Egypt and
Mesopotamia.
Kulkarni, as we have seen, sweepingly includes

almost the whole of Asia to the west of the Indus
in the original homeland. Consequently, he feels
free to identify any and every archaeological site
in West Asia, which shows signs of economic or
technological advancement, as a Vedic site:
referring, among others, to Jarmo, Tell-es-
Sawwan and Maghzatiyah in Iraq, Beidha in
Jordan, and Jericho in Israel, Kulkarni tells us that
“they fit in with our picture of the developed
129
administration in the Vedic days.”
2. Secondly, these scholars are irked by the fact

that their Hindu ancestors are portrayed, by
historians in general, as a race of mild, stay-at-
home namby-pambies who bowed down before
every new race of invaders.
Their answer to this is to portray their Hindu

ancestors, or at least a section of Hindu ancestors
whom they can claim to be their own, as a
glorious, vibrant race of daredevils who swept a
large part of the world, including India, with their
military prowess and civilizational greatness.
Their attitude is somewhat like that of a large

section of Indian Muslims, who, themselves
descendants of native Hindus, identify themselves
with the Islamic invaders from the west, claim
them as their own ancestors, and glorify the
Islamic invasion of India. The difference is that
there was an Islamic invasion of India, recorded in
great detail by the invaders themselves, while the
“Aryan invasion of India” is a comparatively
recent, and purely hypothetical, proposition.
If the Aryan invasion theory places a question

mark on the status of the ancestors of other
sections of Hindus, it is a matter of little
consequence to these scholars.
However, it is of consequence to other scholars.

Dr. Ambedkar reacts sharply and critically to “the
support which this theory receives from Brahmin
scholars”: as he points out, “this is a very strange
phenomenon. As Hindus they should ordinarily
show a dislike for the Aryan theory with its
expressed avowal of the superiority of the Aryan
races over the Asiatic races. but the Brahmin
scholar has not only no such aversion, but he
most willingly hails it. The reasons are obvious.
The Brahmin… claims to be a representative of
the Aryan race and he regards the rest of the
Hindus as descendants of the non-Aryans. The
theory helps him to establish his kinship with the
European races and share their arrogance and
their superiority. He likes particularly that part of
the theory which makes the Aryan an invader and
a conqueror of the non-Aryan races. For it helps
him to maintain his overlordship over the non-
130
Brahmins.”
Finally, we come to the question of the methods

by which these scholars try to find evidence in the
Rigveda for their homeland theories. We will not
go into details, but we will examine, in general,
the trend of the “evidence” presented by them:
Tilak completely ignores the actual geographical

data in the Rigveda, and concentrates instead on
finding “memories” of the Arctic astronomy
embedded in the phrases, myths and rituals in the
Rigveda, and even in later texts.
According to Tilak, “the North Pole and the Arctic

region possess certain astronomical
131
characteristics which are peculiar to them,”
and these characteristics form the basis of the
phrases, myths and rituals in the Rigveda. This
can only mean that “the ancestors of the Vedic
Rishis must have become acquainted with these
characteristics when they lived in these
132
regions”, and, therefore, that “the home of the
ancestors of the Vedic people was somewhere
near the North Pole before the last Glacial
133
epoch.”
These astronomical characteristics are:
a. “The spinning round of the

134
heavenly dome over the head.”
b. “A Dawn continuously lasting for

135
many days.”
c. “The long day, the long night, the
number of months of sunshine and
of darkness, and the character of
136
the year” peculiar to the Arctic
region.
Tilak finds references to these characteristics in:
1. Words and phrases in the Rigveda: Thus, for

example, he translates II.28.9 as: “Remove far the
debts (sins) incurred by me. May I not, o King! be
affected by others’ doings. Verily, many dawns
(have) not fully (vi) flashed forth. O Varuna! direct
137
that we may be alive during them.” After a long
and involved discussion on the meaning of the
phrase “many dawns”, Tilak “proves” that the
phrase does not mean “many days”, but that it
means “many day-long portions of time during
138
which the dawn lasted”.
2. Myths and legends in the Rigveda: This

includes the myths of Aditi and the seven Adityas,
MArtaNDa the eighth Aditya, the seven sages,
the Navagvas and DaSagvas, the blind
DIrghatamas, Trita Aptya, Satakratu Indra,
VRtrahan Indra, RjrASva and the hundred sheep,
Sambara and his hundred forts, ViSNu and his
three steps, the ASvins and their rescue-missions
at sea, etc. etc.
An examination of Tilak’s voluminous book, and

the single-minded way in which he interprets
anything and everything in the Rigveda on the
basis of the “astronomical characteristics” of the
Arctic region, is a depressing experience; and it is
made worse by his naive assertions, repeatedly
made, that the traditions and myths in the Vedic
texts “can be better explained on the Arctic theory
139
than at present”, and that all difficulties of
Vedic interpretation vanish “when we explain the
140
legends on the Arctic theory.”
In fact, the Arctic theory apparently explains all

kinds of inexplicable myths even in respect of late
texts like the RAmAyana. The following
representative examples of such myths, and their
Arctic explanations according to Tilak, will
illustrate how this method of interpretation
apparently solves all kinds of problems:
a. Problem: The fact that “RAma's

adversary was con-ceived of as a
141
ten-headed monster.”
Solution: This represents “the

annual fight between light and
darkness as conceived by the
inhabitants of a place where a
summer of ten months was followed
by a long winter night of two
142
months.”
b. Problem: The myth that “the

brother of this ten-headed monster
slept continuously for six months in
143
a year.”
Solution: This “indicates his Arctic

144
origin.”
c. Problem: The myth that “all the

Gods were said to be thrown into
prison by RAvana until they were
145
released by RAma.”
Solution: This indicates “the

temporary ascendancy of the
powers of darkness over the
powers of light during the
continuous night of the Arctic
146
region.”
d. Problem: The myth of “the birth

of SItA from the earth and her final
147
disappearance into it.”
Solution: This represents "the story

of the restoration of the dawn… to
148
man” in the Arctic region.
3. Vedic rituals and sacrificial sessions (sattras):

This includes the Pravargya, GavAmayanam,
AtirAtra, etc.
149
Thus, for example, according to Tilak, the
TaittirIya SaMhitA, the Aitareya BrAhmaNa, the
ASvalAyana and Apastambha Srauta S5tras, and
even the Nirukta, describe a procedure to be
followed in respect of the GavAmayana sacrifice,
which shows that a very long time (so long that
“all the ten MaNDalas of the Rigveda” could be
comfortably recited without the sun appearing
above the horizon) elapsed between the first
appearance of morning light on the horizon, and
the rising of the sun above the horizon, clearly
indicating the long dawn of the Arctic region.
It may be noted here that according to Tilak’s own

150
chronology, the Arctic home was destroyed in
10,000-8000 BC, the “survivors of the Aryan race
roamed over the northern parts of Europe and
Asia in search of lands” between “8000-5000 BC”,
and the Asiatic Aryans were settled in Central
Asia by 5000 BC. “The TaittirIya SamhitA and the
BrAhmaNas” were produced in “3000-1400 BC”,
when “the sacrificial system and the numerous
details thereof found in the BrAhmaNas seem to
have been developed.” And “the SUtras... made
their appearance” in “1400-500 BC”.
Is it at all within the realms of possibility that the

composers of the BrAhmanas who developed the
sacrifices after 3000 BC, and the writers of the
SUtras, who wrote after 1400 BC, could be
seriously giving detailed instructions to sacrificers
about the procedures to be followed when
performing a sacrifice in the Arctic region which
their remote ancestors had left around 8000 BC?
Rational thinking clearly has no role to play in

Tilak’s scheme of interpretation. Anything and
everything in the Rig-veda, howsoever
commonplace or howsoever esoteric, somehow
refers to the “astronomical characteristics” of the
Arctic region: the mere fact that the Vedic texts
describe a “series of night sacrifices from two to a
151
hundred nights” indicates to Tilak that “a
hundred continuous nights marked the maximum
duration of darkness experienced by the ancient
152
sacrificers of the race”, and that “the duration
of the long night in the ancient home varied from
one night (of 24 hours) to a hundred continuous
nights (of 2400 hours) according to latitude,
and… the hundred nightly Soma sacrifices
corresponded to the different durations of the
night at different places in the ancient
153
home.” Tilak complacently notes that any
number can be given a special Arctic connotation,
“for the sun may then be supposed to be below
the horizon for any period varying from one to a
154
hundred nights, or even for six months.”
But Tilak knows where to draw the line: he takes

poetical or ritualistic exaggerations in the texts
literally, whenever he can interpret them on the
basis of the “astronomical characteristics” of the
Arctic region (which, as we have seen, can mean
anything); but, elsewhere, when he refers to some
annual sacrifices which “are described as
extending over 1000 years”, he decides that “we
may pass it over as unnecessary for our
155
purpose.” He does not, in this case, take it as
evidence of the “astronomical characteristics” of
some other planet where the Aryans may have
lived before migrating (by space-ship) to the
Arctic region!
Kulkarni’s procedure for finding evidence in the

Rigveda for his homeland theory is different: he
merely goes on making geographical statements
and assertions on a take-it-from-me basis, and
these statements and assertions, apparently,
constitute sufficient evidence in themselves.
Thus, Kulkarni assigns the following geographical

locations to the different families of RSis:
a. The Atris: near “Susa, the

156
ancient Iranian capital.”
b. The KaNvas: “somewhere in the

regions of modern Persia and
157
Afghanistan.”
c. The GRtsamadas: in the

“Tadzhak and Kazakh republics of
158
the U.S.S.R.”
d. The KaSyapas: in the area of the

“Caspian Sea and to its north… (in)
159
the Caucasus mountains”.
e. The ANgirases and BhRgus:

160
“somewhere in Iran”.
f. The ViSvAmitras and VasiSThas:

161
“somewhere in Iran”.
Likewise, he tells us that the Saptasindhu region

is not the Punjab, but “the land watered by
SarasvatI, Sindhu, Sharayu, Rasa, Oxus,
Helmand, and one more river somewhere in the
162
region West of the river Sindhu.”
The SarasvatI is “the modem river Syr Darya

163
which now disappears in the Aral Sea.”
Kulkarni is critical of scholars for “trying to locate
the river SarasvatI within the present day
164
boundaries of India.”
The RasA is, on one page, “the mighty Euphratis

165
river”, and on another, “that famous river
166
Tigris.”
AbhyAvartin CAyamAna is from “Abhivarta… a

village near the city of Khorasan in Eastern
167
Iran.”
Likewise, “Sushna’s clan was from South

Azerbaijan and Sambara was the chief of the clan
operating in North Iran along the banks of
168
Samber, a small river.”
Arbuda is not Mount Abu, but “the present-day

169
Alburz mountain of North Iran.”
KIkaTa, more generously, is either “modem

170
Baluchistan or Baharain” (although, on another
page, it is “modem Bihar and the regions around
171
it.” )
To cut a long story short, the Hindu invasionist

scholars are so busy internationalising the
Rigveda, and transporting it into the remote past,
that they really cannot be bothered with the actual
historical information so richly present in the
Rigveda.
III
THE QUASI-INVASIONIST SCHOOL
The quasi-invasionist school, strictly speaking, is

not exactly a school of interpretation in itself, but,
for want of a better name, and because the two
scholars whose interpretations we will examine
here cannot be properly included in any of the
three other schools, we must examine it
separately.
The two scholars who can be classified as quasi-

invasionist scholars are F.E. Pargiter and Dr. B.R.
(Babasaheb) Ambedkar, and what makes them
different from other scholars is that both
invasionists and anti-invasionists can try to claim
them as their own on the basis of select
quotations from their writings.
But what makes their writings particularly

important is that they best illustrate the
phenomenon which has been at the root of all the
misinterpretations of Vedic and Aryan history: the
phenomenon of the blind belief in the fallacy that
linguists have established that the original
homeland of the Indo-European family of
languages was located outside India.
Both Pargiter and Ambedkar, after their detailed

examination of the ancient texts, find that there is
absolutely no basis to the invasion theory. And
they make their conclusions in this regard clear in
no uncertain terms.
But, after making their views loud and clear, they

suddenly seem to be assailed by apprehensions
about having exceeded their brief in challenging
the conclusions of established scholars belonging
to a field in which they themselves cannot lay
claims to any special scholarship, viz. linguistics.
So they try to backtrack by trying to give

respectability to their literary analysis by
somehow introducing the concept of an Aryan
invasion through the back door (literally so in the
case of Pargiter, as we shall see); and the ways
in which they do so are so illogical, so
contradictory to their own analyses, and so
incongruous even with the linguistic theory itself,
that the effect is ludicrous.
We will examine their writings as follows:
A. The Anti-invasionist Conclusions.

B. The Invasionist Second
Thoughts.
III.A. The Anti-invasionist Conclusions
F.E. Pargiter examines traditional Indian history

as recorded in the PurANas, and he finds that this
history gives absolutely no indications of any
Aryan invasion of India from the northwest:
“Indian tradition knows nothing of any Aila or
Aryan invasion of India from Afghanistan, nor of
172
any gradual advance from thence eastwards.”
In fact, he finds quite the opposite: “the Aryans

began at Allahabad, conquered and spread out
northwest, west and south, and had by YayAti’s
time occupied precisely the region known as
MadhyadeSa… They expanded afterwards into
the Punjab and East Afghanistan, into West India
173
and the northwest Dekhan…”
And then, “Indian tradition distinctly asserts that

there was an Aila outflow of the Druhyus through
the northwest into the countries beyond where
174
they founded various kingdoms.”
Pargiter’s examination of traditional history

produces a picture which tallies perfectly with our
175
theory. He describes the expansion of the
Aryans from the region around Allahabad into the
northwest and beyond in great detail.
Other scholars, when they deign to notice the

evidence in the PurANas in respect of the
indigenous origin of the Aryans and their
expansion outside India, tend to dismiss this
evidence as irrelevant on the ground that it is
allegedly contradictory to the evidence of the
Rigveda.
However, Pargiter does not do that. On the

contrary, he asserts about the Puranic accounts
that “there is nothing in them, as far as I am
aware, really inconsistent with the most ancient
book we possess, namely, the Rigveda, and they
throw much light thereon, and on all problems
176
concerning ancient India.”
He notes that “the bulk of the Rigveda was

composed in the great development of
Brahmanism that arose under the succesors of
king Bharata who reigned in the upper Ganges-
177
Jumna doab and plain;” and, while referring to
the founders of the kingdom of N. PaNcAla, who
come far down in the list of kings in his detailed
description of the expansion of the Aryans from
an original region around Allahabad, he points out
that “they and their successors play a prominent
178
part in the Rigveda.”
All in all, he notes that “tradition… makes the
earliest connexion of the Veda to be with the
179
eastern region and not with the Punjab.”
Pargiter’s analysis of the ancient texts thus makes

him reject the two most fundamental aspects of
the “evidence” for an Aryan invasion of India:
a. The fact that there are Indo-

European languages outside India:
Pargiter clearly attributes the
presence of these languages to the
“Aila outflow of the Druhyus through
the northwest into the countries
beyond where they founded various
180
kingdoms.”
b. The contention that the Rigveda

depicts a “gradual advance from
Afghanistan eastwards”: Pargiter
rejects this contention, and points
out that the movement is in the
opposite direction.
Thus, Pargiter’s analysis of the ancient texts

would appear to make him an anti-invasionist
scholar.
Ambedkar is even more forthright and categorical

in his rejection of the Aryan invasion theory:
“There is not a particle of evidence suggesting the
invasion of India by the Aryans from outside
India… The theory of the Aryan race set up by
Western writers falls to the ground at every
point… the theory is based on nothing but
pleasing assumptions and inferences based on
such assumptions… Not one of these
assumptions is borne out by facts… The assertion
that the Aryans came from outside and invaded
India is not proved and the premise that the
Dasas and Dasyus are aboriginal tribes of India is
demonstrably false… The originators of the Aryan
race theory are so eager to establish their case
that they have no patience to see what
absurdities they land themselves in… The Aryan
race theory is so absurd that it ought to have
181
been dead long ago.”
He analyses the logic behind the theory as

follows: “The theory of invasion is an invention.
This invention is necessary because of a
gratuitous assumption which underlies the
Western theory. The assumption is that the Indo-
Germanic (sic) people are the purest of the
modem representatives of the original Aryan
race. Its first home is assumed to have been
somewhere in Europe. These assumptions raise
a question: how could the Aryan speech have
come to India? This question can be answered
only by the supposition that the Aryans must have
come into India from outside. Hence the
182
necessity for inventing the theory of invasion.”
Ambedkar likewise rejects the invasionist

interpretation of the Rigveda as “a perversion of
183
scientific investigation.”
According to him, the Western scholars

“proceeded to invent the story of the invasion of
India by the Aryans and the conquest by them of
184
the Dasas and Dasyus”, and, in the
process, “they start on a mission to prove what
they want to prove, and do not hesitate to pick
such evidence from the Vedas as they think is
185
good for them.”
These scholars assume “that the Aryans are a

186
European race.” But, “the European races
were white and had a colour prejudice against the
187
dark races” ; hence these scholars try “to find
evidence for colour prejudice in the Aryans who
188
came into India.”
But Ambedkar proves with references from the

Rigveda that “the Vedic Aryans had no colour
prejudice. How could they have? The Vedic
Aryans were not of one colour. Their complexion
varied; some were of copper complexion, some
189
white and some black.” He examines the word
varNa, which is treated as evidence that the caste-
system was originally based on colour, and
proves that “it originally meant a class belonging
to a particular faith and it had nothing to do with
190
colour or complexion.”
He also examines the words mRdhravAka, anAs,

KRSNayoni, etc. in the Rigveda, which are
construed as evidence of a dark, flat-nosed,
aboriginal race of India, and concludes that “it
would be childish to rely upon (them) as a basis of
191
consciousness of race difference.”
He further examines the word DAsa (or Dasyu)

and concludes that “there is no evidence to show
that the term is used in a racial sense indicative of
192
a non-Aryan people”, but, in fact, “it was the
word of abuse used by the Indo-Aryans for the
193
Indo-Iranians (sic)”. He further concludes that
the battles in the Rigveda Were not between
Aryans and non-Aryans but between “different
communities of Aryas who were not only different
194
but opposed and inimical to each other.”
In sum, Ambedkar arrives at the following

conclusions, “(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 its having conquered the
Dasas and Dasyus supposed to be the natives of
India. (3) There is no evidence to show that the
distinction between Aryas, Dasas and Dasyus
was a racial distinction. (4) The Vedas do not
support the contention that the Aryas were
different in colour from the Dasas and
195
Dasyus.”
Even more than Pargiter, Ambedkar’s analysis of

the ancient texts would appear to make him an
emphatically anti-invasionist scholar.
III.B. The Invasionist Second Thoughts
Their examination of the ancient texts leaves both

Pargiter and Ambedkar, separately, with no
doubts whatsoever about the untenability of the
Aryan invasion theory and the invasionist
interpretation of the Rigveda.
But, the moment they turn from their examination

of the ancient texts, and are confronted by the
claim that linguistics is supposed to have
conclusively established that the Indo-European
languages originated outside India, they are
assailed by self-doubts, and take up a contrary
position.
According to Pargiter: “We know from the

evidence of language that the Aryans entered
India very early, and established themselves
ultimately throughout North India, and in the north-
west of the Dekhan, so that the history of those
times is bound up closely with the Aryan
196
conquest.”
“The Aryans could not have established

themselves in India without long and arduous
warfare. Among the hostile races who possessed
the country before them were not only rude tribes
but also communities in a higher state of
civilization… Their wars, their conquests and the
founding of new kingdoms all implied that there
were victorious kings, whose lineage and exploits
would have been sung in many a KSatriya
ballad… Their victorious career must have given
rise to abundant tradition of all kinds, warlike,
197
religious and peaceful…”
Hence, “if we wish to discover and estimate what

their position and achievements were, it is
essential to study their traditions, for, as will be
shown, the Puranic genealogies, and they alone,
give an account how the Aila race dominated all
the regions to which we assign the Aryan
198
occupation.”
Pargiter tells us that “the genealogies give an

account, how the Aryans dominated North India,
and the north-west of the Dekhan, and it is the
only account to be found in the whole of Sanskrit
199
literature of that great ethnological fact”.
But this is totally at variance with Pargiter’s own

analysis, which shows that the “Aryans began at
Allahabad… (and) expanded afterwards into the
200
Punjab and east Afghanistan”; and his
conclusions that, rather than an
immigration, “there was an outflow of people from
201
India before the fifteenth century BC”,BC”, and
that “the arguments used to prove the advance of
the Aryans from Afghanistan into the Punjab
202
might simply be reversed.”BC”,
How does Pargiter harmonize his childlike faith in

the pronouncements of the linguists with his own
analysis of traditional Indian history?
Simply by deciding that tradition “makes the Aila

power begin at Allahabad and yet distinctly
203
suggests that they came from outside India.” !
Now this “outside” cannot be from the northwest,

since Pargiter does not want to challenge the
results of his own analysis of traditional history
either. So Pargiter comes up with the theory that
“tradition or myth… directly indicates that the
Ailas (or Aryans) entered India from the mid-
204
Himalayan region.”
And what is this tradition? According to Pargiter:

“All ancient Indian belief and veneration were
directed to the mid-Himalayan region, the only
original sacred outside land, and it was thither
that rishis and kings turned their steps in
205
devotion, never to the northwest.”
Incredible as it may seem, Pargiter seems to feel

that the linguistic evidence simply shows that the
Aryans came from “outside”, period. Any
“outside”, apparently, will fit the bill, and
harmonise his analysis of traditional history with
the linguistic theory!
The notion that the Aryans came from outside
India is supposed to be based on a comparative
study of Sanskrit with other Indo-European
languages outside India; and it is supposed to be
reinforced by the evidence in the Rigveda which
allegedly shows the movement of the Aryans from
the northwest into the interior of India.
But Pargiter rejects both these claims, by

accepting that the Indo-Europeans outside India
were emigrants from India, and that the
movement was from the interior of India to the
northwest.
Clearly no linguist will accept that the linguistic

evidence can be interpreted as showing that the
Indo-Europeans originated in the mid-Himalayan
region “outside” India (ie. in Tibet?), and that the
speakers of these languages then passed
through the whole of North India before migrating
to their present habitats!
Having fallen into the trap, Pargiter now finds it

necessary, like any other invasionist scholar, to
discover “non-Aryans”, and “Aryan-vs-non-Aryan”
conflicts, in the ancient texts: “India contained
many folk of rude culture or aboriginal stock such
as NiSAdas, DAsas and Pulindas. Powerful
races of hostile character are often mentioned,
such as DAnavas, Daityas, RAkSasas, NAgas,
and Dasyus. Some of these were partly civilized,
206
while others were rude and savage…”
We have already seen, during our examination of

the invasionist school of interpretation, Pargiter’s
identification of tribes like the IkSvAkus, and of all
the families of RSis (other than the ViSvAmitras),
as non-Aryans; and his assertion that the names
of all the non-Aryans were “Sanskritized in the
207
course of time.”
Here, therefore, we have a perfect example of

blind belief, without proper understanding, in the
pronouncements of scholars belonging to an
unfamiliar discipline, leading an otherwise brilliant
scholar to doubt the evidence of his own
research, and to make a mess of his otherwise
brilliant thesis by trying to harmonise his
conclusions with diametrically opposite theories.
Ambedkar’s case is even stranger than Pargiter’s.
To begin with, even when he is rejecting the

Aryan invasion theory in sharp terms, Ambedkar
is well aware of the linguistic nature of the origin
of the theory: “The theory of the Aryan race is just
an assumption… based on a philological
proposition… that a greater number of languages
of Europe and some languages of Asia must be
referred to a common ancestral speech… (From
this) are drawn two inferences: (1) unity of race,
and (2) that race being the Aryan race. The
argument is that if the languages are descended
from a common ancestral speech, then there
must have existed a race whose mother tongue it
was... From this inference is drawn another
inference, which is that of a common original
habitat. It is argued that there could be no
community of language unless people had a
208
common habitat, permitting close communion.”
But, he, rather peremptorily, dismisses the logic of

the idea that the Aryan languages must originally
have been spoken in a common homeland as “an
209
inference from an inference.”
Ambedkar’s study of the Aryan problem is merely

incidental to his study of the caste-system. And
hence he is not linguistically equipped to study a
matter which basically originated from a linguistic
problem.
He gives many examples of his lack of linguistic

sense: for example, he uses the phrase Indo-
210
Iranian when he means Iranian, and Indo-
211
Germanic when he means Germanic.
And then, after dismissing the idea of an Aryan

race, he contradicts himself and complicates
things by introducing a confusing distinction
between racial Aryans and linguistic Aryans: “the
Aryan race in the physiological sense is one thing
and an Aryan race in the philological sense quite
different, and it is perfectly possible that the Aryan
race, if there is one, in the physiological sense,
may have its habitat in one place, and the Aryan
race, in the philological sense, in quite a different
212
place.”
Clearly, for all his criticism of the Aryan theory,

Ambedkar has a lurking apprehension that there
may be truth, after all, in the assertions of the
linguists.
And he capitulates to this apprehension at a most

unlikely point, when he is discussing and
dismissing the idea of an earlier Dravidian
invasion of India mooted by another scholar in
order to explain the origin of the Untouchables:
“The racial theory of Mr. Rice contains two

elements: (1) That the Untouchables are non-
Aryan, non-Dravidian aboriginals. (2) That they
were conquered and subjugated by the
Dravidians. This raises the whole question of the
invasion of India by foreign invaders, the
conquests made by them, and the social and
cultural institutions that have resulted therefrom.
According to Mr. Rice, there have been two
invasions of India. First is the invasion of India by
the Dravidians. They conquered the non-
Dravidian aborigines, the ancestors of the
Untouchables, and made them Untouchables.
The second invasion is the invasion of India by
the Aryans. The Aryans conquered the
Dravidians. He does not say how the conquering
Aryans treated the conquered Dravidians. If
pressed for an answer he might say they made
them Shudras. So that we get a chain. The
Dravidians invaded India and conquered the
aborigines and made them Untouchables. After
Dravidians came the Aryans. The Aryans
conquered the Dravidians and made them
Shudras. The theory is too mechanical, a mere
speculation, and too simple to explain a
complicated set of facts relating to the origin of
213
the Shudras and the Untouchables.”
In order, apparently, to counter the above theory,

Ambedkar sets out to invent a new racial theory of
his own with only two races: “What we can say
about the races of India is that there have been at
the most only two races in the field, the Aryans
and the Nagas… The Dravidians and the Nagas
are the one and the same people… Naga was a
racial or cultural name and Dravida was their
214
linguistic name.”
Once the ball is set rolling, it is virtually

unstoppable: “Tamil or Dravida was not merely
the language of South India, but before the
Aryans came it was the language of the whole of
India, and was spoken from Kashmere to Cape
Comorin. In fact it was the language of the
Nagas throughout India… The Nagas in North
India gave up Tamil which was their mother
tongue and adopted Sanskrit in its place. The
Nagas in South India retained Tamil as their
mother tongue and did not adopt Sanskrit the
language of the Aryans… The name Dravidian
came to be applied only for the people of South
India… in view of their being the only people
speaking the Dravida language after the Nagas of
215
the North had ceased to use it.”
This incredible theory is nothing but the very

Aryan invasion theory elsewhere rejected by
Ambedkar in such strong terms, but in different
words. And what makes the whole thing totally
inexplicable and pointless in the particular context
in which he postulates this racial theory - the
question of the origin of the Untouchable - is that
it does nothing whatsoever to explain that origin,
since he immediately declares, after a detailed
description of Dr. Ghurye’s anthropometric study
of the different castes, that this study establishes
“that the Brahmin and the Untouchable 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. If the
Brahmins are Nagas, the Untouchables are also
216
Nagas.”
Clearly, therefore, the question of invasions and

racial conflicts has nothing to do with the question
of the origins of Untouchability; and the only
reason why Ambedkar suddenly capitulates to the
Aryan invasion theory at this point is because he
is assailed by doubts about the correctness of his
own rejection, elsewhere, of this theory. He is
seized by apprehensions of having erred in
questioning the sacrosanct pronouncements of
linguistic scientists, and he takes this first
opportunity to redeem himself.
And now, having invented a racial theory of his

own, Ambedkar is compelled to imitate the
Western scholars who “do not hesitate to pick
such evidence from the Vedas as they think is
217
good for them”, and who “are so eager to
establish their case that they have no patience to
218
see what absurdities they land themselves in.”
And so, he suddenly discovers that “a careful

study of the Vedic literature reveals a spirit of
conflict, of a dualism, and a race for superiority
between two distinct types of culture and
thought. In the Rigveda we are first introduced to
the Snake-god in the form of Ahi Vritra, the
enemy of the Aryan god Indra… It is also evident,
from the hymns that refer to Ahi Vritra, that he
received no worship from the Aryan tribes and
was only regarded as an evil Spirit of
considerable power who must be fought
219
down.”
Further, he approvingly quotes the views of a

220
Western scholar C.F. Oldham, identifying not
only the term Naga but also the terms Asura and
Dasyu as epithets applied to the Dravidian natives
of India. And, in sharp contradiction to his own
strongly expressed views elsewhere, Ambedkar
now insists that “the Dasas are the same as
221
Nagas... undoubtedly they were non-Aryans,”
and that “the Dasas are the same as the Nagas
and the Nagas are the same as the
222
Dravidians.”
Ambedkar faces difficulties when he tries to find

evidence for his Naga theory in the Vedas. He
admits that the name Naga “does not appear in
early Vedic literature. Even when it does for the
first time in the Shatapatha Brahmana (XI. 2, 7,
12), it is not clear whether a great snake or a
223
great elephant is meant.”
His explanation is that the Vedic texts prefer to

use the word DAsa: “The Nagas came to be
called Dasa in the Vedic literature. Dasa is a
Sanskritized form of the Indo-Iranian word
Dahaka. Dahaka was the name of the king of the
Nagas. Consequently, the Aryans called the
Nagas after the name of their king Dahaka, which
in its Sanskrit form became Dasa, a generic name
224
applied to all the Nagas.”
Thus Ambedkar contradicts his own logical

analysis, of the Aryan invasion theory and the
evidence of the Vedic texts, on every count
(except on the matter of the alleged racial basis of
the caste system).
If the quasi-invasionist scholars, after starting out

sensibly and logically, fail to take their
interpretations to their logical conclusions, and
end up with a confused and confusing picture of
Vedic history, it is because of their failure to have
faith in their own analyses, and their misguided
attempts to try to effect clumsy compromises with
theories which they do not understand.
VI
THE ANTI-INVASIONIST SCHOOL
The anti-invasionist school is a school which

outright rejects the Aryan invasion theory.
One reason why many scholars, particularly

Hindus or Indians, may be impelled to reject the
theory is because it goes against their grain. As
Ambedkar puts it, Hindus, “as Hindus should
ordinarily show a dislike for the Aryan theory”, and
the fact that some staunch Hindus actually
support it strikes him as a very strange
225
phenomenon.”
The political misuse of the theory by leftists and

casteists, in order to question the Indianness of
Hinduism or to stir up caste hatreds and conflicts,
a process which started with Jyotiba Phule, is the
primary cause of this “dislike”.
But mere dislike for any theory, howsoever much

it may be provoked by the gross misuse of that
theory, is no argument against the validity of the
theory.
What we are examining here is misinterpretations

of Rig-vedic history, and it is a fact that scholars
who reject the Aryan invasion theory have also
been responsible for gross misinterpretations of
the Rigveda.
Strictly speaking, our own book is classifiable as

an anti-invasionist one, since we have also
rejected the Aryan invasion theory, and
conclusively proved that India was the original
homeland of the Indo-European family of
languages; and, what is more, our research was
also born out of a “dislike” for a theory which has
been made a primary source for divisive and anti-
national politics in India.
But the difference is that our research has fully

tapped the historical, information in the Rigveda
and arrived at clear conclusions which other
scholars will find extremely difficult, if not
impossible, to challenge.
Anti-invasionist scholars, in general, have failed to

tap the historical information in the Rigveda, and
their examinations, if any, of the text, have
resulted in gross misinterpretations, for two
simple reasons:
a. Most of these scholars resort to

negative and evasive methods of
analysis, in respect of both the
Aryan invasion theory as a whole
as well as the Rigveda in particular.
b. Most of them are unable to

shake off dogmatic notions
regarding the Sanskrit language,
Vedic culture, and Vedic literature
in general.
In fact, an examination of the misinterpretations of

the anti-invasionist scholars brings to the fore two
points:
a. The scholars belonging to this

school, like the scholars belonging
to the other schools already
examined by us, labour under a
secret belief (or, in the case of
these scholars, dread) that the
external (to India) origin of the Indo-
European family of languages has,
perhaps, indeed been “proved” by
the linguists.
b. In their eagerness to reject ideas

and notions which they feel are
supportive of the Aryan invasion
theory, and due to a failure or
refusal to understand the logic of
the debate, these scholars often
end up accepting notions which
basically go against them, and
rejecting notions which are really in
their favour.
We will examine the methods of the scholars

under the four following heads:
A. The Rhetorical Approach.

B. The Evasionist Approach.
C. The Anti-linguistic Approach.
D. The Indus-Valley Centred Approach.
IV.A. The Rhetorical Approach
Many of the scholars adopt a purely rhetorical

approach towards the whole problem of the Aryan
invasion theory and the invasionist interpretation
of the Rigveda.
The Aryan invasion theory is dismissed, often with

little or no examination, as a Western imposition;
and various motives are attributed to the western
scholars, who first mooted and developed the
theory, ranging from imperialism to evangelism to
anti-Semitism.
One of the earliest opponents of the Aryan

invasion theory was Swami Vivekananda, who
rejected the theory in strong terms:
“The Americans, English, Dutch and the

Portuguese got hold of the poor Africans, and
made them work hard while they lived, and their
children of mixed birth were born in slavery and
kept in that condition for a long period. From that
wonderful example, the mind jumps back several
thousand years, and fancies that the same thing
happened here, and our 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
Thibet, others will have it that they came from
Central Asia… Of late, there was an attempt
being made to prove that the Aryans lived on the
Swiss lakes. I should not be sorry if they had
been all drowned there, theory and all. 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 Aryans
came from anywhere outside of India, and in
ancient India was included Afghanistan. There it
226
ends.”
“And what your European Pandits say about the

Aryans swooping down from some foreign land,
snatching away the lands of the 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! This
is very bad indeed… In what Veda, in what Sukta,
do you find that the Aryans came into India from a
foreign country? Where do you get the idea that
they slaughtered the wild aborigines? What do
227
you gain by talking such wild nonsense?”
Vivekananda’s opposition was strong and

unambiguous, but restricted to rhetoric. That he
intended to go deeper into the matter is on
record: “I have been talking with the Indian and
European savants on the subject, and hope to
raise many objections to this theory in detail,
228
when time permits.”
No-one will deny that Vivekananda’s life was too

short, and his activities too multifarious, to permit
him time to devote to this particular subject. But
what is worthy of note is that, despite his strong
rhetorical rejection of the Aryan invasion theory, a
survey of his writings appears to indicate that he
had actually internalised many of the basic tenets
of the theory.
At one point, he tells us that “the problems in

India are more complicated… Here have been the
Aryan, the Dravidian, the Tartar, the Turk, the
Mogul, the European - all the nations of the world,
229
as it were, pouring their blood into this land.”
Vivekananda clearly appears to see the Aryans

as a racial group which was originally a stranger
to India: “(The) Aryan race… (was) a
comparatively small and compact race, of the
same blood and speech and the same social and
230
religious aspirations”, and “many forms of
religion and society must have been left behind in
the onward march, before we find the race as
depicted in the Scriptures, the Vedas… Many
modem scholars are agreed that surroundings as
to climate and conditions purely Indian were not
yet working on the race… onward through several
centuries… we catch a glimpse of different races -
Dravidians, Tartars and Aboriginals, pouring in
their quota of blood, of speech, of manners and
religions - and at last a great nation emerges to
our view, still keeping the type of the Aryan;
stranger, broader and more organised by the
assimilation… We find the central, assimilative
core giving its type and character to the whole
mass, clinging on with pride to its name of ‘Aryan’,
and though willing to give other races the benefit
of its civilization, it was by no means willing to
admit them within the ‘Aryan’ pale. The Indian
climate again gave a higher direction to the
231
genius of the race.”
As if the above rhetoric is not confusing enough,

here is Vivekananda’s theory about the origin of
caste: “A veritable ethnological museum!… The
cavemen and leaf-wearers still persist. The
primitive hunters living in forests are in evidence
in various parts of the country. Then there are
the core historical varieties - the Negrito Kolarian,
the Dravidian and the Aryan. To these have been
added from time to time dashes of nearly all the
known races, and a great many yet unknown -
various breeds of Mongoloids, Moguls, Tartars,
and the so-called Aryans of the Philologists… In
the midst of this madness of nature, one of the
contending factions discovered a method, and
through the force of its superior culture,
succeeded in bringing the largest number of the
Indian humanity under its sway. The superior
race styled themselves the Aryans or Nobles, and
their method was the VarndshramAchAra - the so-
232
called caste.”
Vivekananda even seems to find it necessary to

defend the imperialistic activities of his “superior
race” by comparing them with those of the
Europeans: “It was quite possible, however, that
in a few places, there were occasional fights
between the Aryans and the aborigines… But
how long could the aborigines fight with their
sticks and stones? So they were killed or chased
away, and the kings returned to their capital.
Well, all this may have been, but how does this
prove that their lands were taken away by the
233
Aryans?”
“And may I ask you, Europeans, what country you

have ever raised to better conditions? Wherever
you have found weaker races, you have
exterminated them by the roots, as it were. You
have settled on their lands and they are gone
forever. What is the history of your America, your
Australia and New Zealand, your Pacific Islands
and South Africa? Where are those aboriginal
races there today? They are all exterminated,
you have killed them outright, as if they were wild
beasts. It is only where you have not the power
to do so, and there only, that other nations are
234
still alive.”
“But India has never done that. The Aryans were

kind and generous, and in their hearts which were
large and unbounded as the ocean, and in their
brains gifted with superhuman genius, all these…
beastly processes never found a place. And I ask
you, fools of my own country, would there have
been this institution of Varnashrama if the Aryans
had exterminated the aborigines in order to settle
on their lands? The object of the peoples of
Europe is to exterminate all in order to live
themselves. The aim of the Aryans is to raise all
up to their own level, nay, even to a higher level
than themselves. The means of European
civilization is the sword; of the Aryans, the division
235
into Varnas.”
Swami Vivekananda was one of the first

prominent Indian thinkers to voice his opposition
to the Aryan invasion theory. However, it is
difficult to know what exactly he wanted to say,
and whether, in the final analysis, he actually
accepted or rejected the idea of the external
origins of the Aryans and of their conquest of
India.
However his writings, on this subject, represent

certain tendencies which dominate Indian anti-
invasionist scholarship to this day, and which
have effectively prevented any logical and
objective analysis, or even understanding, of the
problem:
a. A tendency to depend on rhetoric

rather than on analytical study.
b. A tendency to concentrate on
criticism of the early Western
scholars and their motives.
c. A tendency to evade the issues

when dealing with invasionist
arguments.
d. A tendency to indulge in vague

and fuzzy thinking, and to fail to
understand the exact nature of the
issues involved.
e. A tendency to insist on lavish

glorification and idealisation of the
Vedic Aryans and their culture.
So far as the criticism of the motives of early

Western scholars. who first mooted and
developed the theory, is concerned, it may be
noted that:
a. Mere motives by themselves do

not invalidate any theory or
interpretation.
b. The basic origin of the theory lay

in the linguistic fact of the Indo-
European family of languages, and
not in any motives.
c. Even though the early Western

scholars may have had their
motives, their interpretations were,
by and large, reasonably honest;
and although they were often
wrong, they were usually naturally
wrong and not deliberately so.
Hence, while motives may be, and even must be
noted, any approach which concentrates only on
criticism of these motives is self-defeating.
But the main problem in the interpretations of the

anti-invasionist Indian scholars is that they adopt
a partisan, rather than objective, attitude in their
analysis of Vedic history.
Thus, Swami Vivekananda talks about the Aryan

kings killing or chasing away primitive aborigines
who fought with sticks and stones; and about the
Aryans bringing the Indian non-Aryans under their
sway by the force of their superior culture, but
refusing to admit them within the Aryan pale, and,
in fact, creating the caste-system in order to keep
them in check.
And yet, from all this, he concludes that the

Aryans were “kind and generous”, that their
hearts were “large and unbounded as the ocean”
and their brains “gifted with superhuman genius”,
and that their only aim was “to raise all up to their
own level, nay, even to a higher level than
themselves”! The logic is indeed
incomprehensible.
Later scholars, however, take this attitude even

further: they idealise the Vedic Aryans as a highly
cultured, refined, civilized and spiritual people,
and condemn those with whom they fought, as
uncultured, crude, uncivilized or materialistic
people. The battles between the Vedic Aryans
and their enemies are depicted, in a variety of
ways, as struggles between Good and Evil.
It must be noted that, apart from the fact that the

Aryas of the Rigveda (the PUrus) and the DAsas
(the Yadus, TurvaSas, Anus Druhyus and others)
were all equally Indian, there is nothing to indicate
that the Aryas were more civilized and cultured
than the DAsas, or that the Arya kings were more
noble and idealistic than the DAsa kings, or that
the priests of the Aryas were more spiritual or
righteous than the priests of the DAsas. Nor that
the struggles between the Aryas and DAsas
involved any noble social, moral or ethical issues.
Rigvedic history, which forms the backdrop of the

Rigveda, is like the history of any ancient
civilization: in ancient China (not coterminous with
modem China), during the Period of the Warring
States (403-221 BC), the land was divided into
seven kingdoms (Chu, Chin, Chi, Yen, Chao, Han
and Wei) which were constantly at war with each
other. Likewise, ancient India was divided into
various kingdoms, not necessarily constantly at
war with each other, but certainly with often sharp
political differences, rivalries and enmities.
In Chinese tradition, the soul-stirring poems of

Chu Yuan, a poet, thinker and statesman of the
kingdom of Chu, have survived to this day. In
India, a collection of hymns composed among the
PUrus has survived to this day. But this does not
render all the kingdoms other than the kingdom of
Chu, or all tribes other than the PUrus, as the
villains of the piece.
The PUru text, of course, later became the

primary text of a Pan-Indian religion which came
to encompass and incorporate the religious
traditions of all parts of India; and some of the
non-PUru tribes, in the course of time, emigrated
from India. But neither of these facts justifies a
partisan attitude in the study of Rigvedic history.
Unfortunately, most Indian scholars, in their study

of Rigvedic history, seem to find it necessary to
concentrate all their energies on rhetoric glorifying
the Vedic Aryans, and their culture, and
defending them from all kinds of perceived slurs.
Naturally, therefore, they can neither afford, nor

spare the time, to look too closely and objectively
at the actual historical source-material in the
Rigveda.
IV.B. The Evasionist Approach.
Swami Dayanand Saraswati, the founder of the

Arya Samaj, was also one of the earliest
prominent Indians to reject the Aryan invasion
theory.
The Arya Samaj was in the forefront of a great

many activities which took Hindu society forward,
but, unfortunately, it was also strongly influenced
by some of the dogmas of the very ideology, and
the very forces, which it sought to counter.
The Christian missionaries treated Hinduism as

inferior to Christianity on various counts: namely,
idol-worship, polytheism, etc.
Instead of countering these religious prejudices

and pointing out that there was nothing superior
to polytheism in monotheism, or superior to idol-
worship in Christian forms of worship, the Arya
Samaj adopted these prejudices, and sought to
counter the Christian propaganda by insisting that
Hinduism, in its pristine and “pure” form, as
represented in the Vedas, was more monotheistic
and non-idol-worshiping than Christianity itself.
This was rather like accepting and adopting the

European prejudice which treats white-skinned
people as superior to dark-skinned people, and
then trying to show that Indian skins are whiter
than European skins!
Another point of Christian superiority to Hinduism,

in the eyes of the Christian missionaries, was the
claim that Christianity had One Divine Book which
was the revealed word of God, while the Hindus
had a large and miscellaneous assortment of
religious books.
The Arya Samaj sought to counter this by raising

the Vedas to that status: the Vedas thus became
the one and only Divine Book (the four SaMhitAs
being treated as parts of one indivisible whole)
revealed by God.
However, the cosmology of Hinduism, with its

eternal cycle of creation and dissolution of the
Universe, was different from that of Christianity
with its concept of a one-time Creation by a
whimsical God. Hence, the concept of Revelation
envisaged by the Arya Samaj was also different
from the Biblical concept of Revelation.
According to the Arya Samaj, the Vedas are
eternal, without beginning and without end, and
are revealed anew to the first RSis, apparently
Aditya, Agni, VAyu and ANgiras, at the beginning
of each round of Creation.
Therefore, the Arya Samaj rejected the idea that

the Vedas could contain anything so petty and
temporal as historical events. As Devi Chand, an
Arya Samaj scholar, puts it in his introduction to
his translation of the Yajurveda: “Swami
Dayanand does not believe in history in the
Vedas. Western scholars like Griffith, Max Müller,
Monier-Williams, Mac-donell, Bloomfield, and
Eastern scholars like SAyaNa, MahIdhara, Ubbat
and Damodar Satavalekar believe in history in the
Vedas. History in the Vedas militates against its
eternity and revelation from God, and reduces it
to a man-made composition… Scholars, by
believing in history in the Vedas, have
undermined their grandeur and put a stain upon
them. Rishi Dayanand, by refuting the doctrine of
history in the Vedas, has established their eternity
236
and enhanced their excellence.”
Thus, instead of refuting the invasion theory, or at

least the invasionist interpretation of the Rigveda,
by presenting a rational and authentic historical
analysis of the Rigveda, the Arya Samaj scholars
chose to adopt an evasive and fundamentalist
outlook. They rejected any and every factor,
which could have helped them in an analysis of
Rigvedic history, on the ground that these factors
“reduced” the Rigveda to a “man-made
composition”; such factors being:
a. The names of the individual

composers of the hymns given in
the AnukramaNIs.
b. Any chronological classification

of the Vedic hymns, placing the
Rigveda prior to the other Vedas, or
certain MaNDalas and hymns of the
Rigveda prior to others.
c. Any names of historical persons

mentioned within the hymns.
d. Any specific geographical

landmark (rivers, etc.) named in the
hymns.
Therefore, in translating the hymns into any other

language, the Arya Samaj scholars do not treat
the names of persons and places as names.
They instead translate each name into its literal
meaning and try to interpret it
accordingly: “Pururava is not the name of a
person. It is the name of a cloud which roars,
thunders, and makes noise. … Bharata is he who
wants to advance and progress, being well-fed…
Bharatas are disciples who are reared and looked
237
after by their teacher…”
But interpreting any name by its literal meaning

may not yield a coherent meaning in every
context where that name occurs in the text.
Hence the Arya Samaj scholars are compelled to
resort to arbitrary techniques of symbolic
interpretation.
Thus Devi Chand tells us that the names of RSis

occuring in the hymns of the Rigveda are not
really the names of RSis at all. They are the
names of different parts of the body: “Rishi
Yajnavalkya speaks of the right ear as Gautama
and the left ear as Bharadvaja. He describes the
right eye as Vishwamitra and the left as Kashyap.
Speech is described as Attri as food is taken by
238
the tongue.”
Symbolic interpretation allows these scholars to

assign a hundred different “meanings” to the
same word in a hundred different contexts,
depending on the exigencies of the verse and the
whims of the translator. Devi Chand ingenuously
tells us that “Sarasvati is not the name of a river in
the Veda. In the Brahman Granthas, Sarasvati
239
has got thirteen meanings.”
About the names of the different rivers in the

Rigveda, he reiterates that “in the Veda, the
names of so-called rivers do not denote any
historical, temporary or transient objects. These
names have got spiritual significance. Sarasvati
is speech. The smell-carrying current flowing out
of the nostril is the Ganges. The current flowing
out of the ear is Yamuna, the organ of touch is
240
Shatadru…
But, on the very next page, he gives totally

different meanings: “Ganga… (is) an artery
instrumental in the circulation of blood. Yamuna
is the artery which guides the motion of all parts
of the body. The weakening of this artery results
in paralysis. Sarasvati is that artery which brings
knowledge… Parushni is an artery which
maintains heat in all parts of the body…
241
Marudvridha is Pran (breath)…”
While Arya Samaj scholarship has been

responsible for some fundamental research work
on the Vedas, like the Vedic Word Concordance,
their research work pertaining to translations and
interpretations of the Vedic texts are misleading
rather than helpful.
The Arya Samaj school of interpretation produced

an off-shoot in the writings of Sri Aurobindo.
Following the lead given by the Arya Samaj,
Aurobindo gives primacy to the Vedas over the
later Sanskrit texts, and he also makes a liberal
use of symbolic interpretations. The difference
lies in his emphasis on spiritualism and
mysticism, and in his less dogmatic attitude.
According to Aurobindo, the Rigveda is “the one

considerable document that remains to us from
the early period of human thought… when the
spiritual and psychological knowledge of the race
was concealed, for reasons now difficult to
determine, in a veil of concrete and material
figures and symbols which protected the sense
from the profane and revealed it to the
initiated. One of the leading principles of the
mystics was the sacredness and secrecy of self-
knowledge and the true knowledge of the Gods…
Hence… (the mystics) clothed their language in
words and images which had, equally, a spiritual
sense for the elect, and a concrete sense for the
242
mass of ordinary worshippers.”
There is no doubt that there are a great many

mystical hymns in the Rigveda; and, in any case,
no-one can object to the mystically-inclined
discovering mystic secrets hidden and encoded in
the Vedas, or in any other ancient texts of the
world, so long as they do not preclude other less
mystical analyses of the texts. And Aurobindo, it
appears, was willing to allow other systems of
interpretations as being also valid: “The ritual
system recognised by SAyaNa may, in its,
externalities, stand; the naturalistic sense
discovered by European scholarship may, in its
general conception, be accepted; but behind
them there is always the true and still hidden
secret of the Veda - the secret words, niNyA
vacAMsi, which were spoken for the purified in
soul and the awakened in knowledge. To
disengage this less obvious but more important
sense by fixing the import of Vedic terms, the
sense of Vedic symbols, and the psychological
function of the Gods is thus a difficult but a
243
necessary task.”
But while he is willing to allow the ritualistic and

naturalistic interpretations, he is less liberal
towards the historical interpretation of the hymns:
“the whole struggle is between the Light and the
Darkness, the Truth and the Falsehood, the
divine… and the undivine… historical
244
interpretation will not do at all here.”
About the Aryan invasion of India, Aurobindo

starts out by doubting “whether the whole story of
an Aryan invasion through the Punjab is not a
245
myth of the philologists.” And after an
interesting dissertation on the subject of the
Aryan and Dravidian language-families, he goes
so far as to doubt the linguistic validity of the
concept of these being two distinct families: “Can
we positively say that Tamil is a non-Aryan, or
Greek, Latin and German Aryan
246
tongues?” , and to suggest that “rather than to
form a conclusion by such a principle, it is better
to abstain from all conclusions and turn to a more
247
thorough and profitable initial labour.”
However, he is willing to concede that “the bulk of

the peoples now inhabiting India may have been
the descendants of a new race from more
northern latitudes, even perhaps, as argued
by Mr. Tilak, from the Arctic regions; but there is
nothing in the Veda, as there is nothing in the
present ethnological features of the country, to
prove that this descent took place near to the time
of the Vedic hymns or was the slow penetration of
a small body of fair-skinned barbarians into a
248
civilized Dravidian peninsula.”
Thus, he rejects the literary and the racial-casteist

implications of the Aryan invasion theory, but
does not deny that the Aryans may originally have
come from outside India.
Strangely enough, the arguments in this respect

which he seems to find most convincing or difficult
to refute are those of his friend and colleague
Lokmanya Tilak: “Mr. Tilak in his Arctic Home in
the Vedas… has established at least a strong
probability that the Aryan races descended
originally from the Arctic regions in the glacial
249
period.”
In fact, Tilak’s interpretation strikes him as the

only valid one when it comes to naturalistic
interpretations: “If… we are to give a naturalistic
explanation and no other to Vedic hymns, it is
quite clear that the Vedic Dawn and Night cannot
be the Night and Dawn of India. It is only in the
Arctic regions that the attitudes of the Rishis
towards these natural circumstances, and the
statements about the Angirasas, become at all
250
intelligible.”
And so he neatly divides up the interpretation of

the Vedas between Tilak and himself: “The
memories of the -Arctic home enter into the
external sense of the Veda; the Arctic theory does
not exclude an inner sense behind the ancient
251
images drawn from Nature.”
The insistence on symbolic interpretation and the

avoidance of historical interpretation are, thus,
only a cover-up for a lurking apprehension that
the Aryans may indeed have come from outside
and that a historical study of the Rigveda may
indeed confirm this fact. In the case of the Arya
Samaj, one strongly suspects this to be the case;
in the case of Sri Aurobindo, this suspicion
becomes a certainty.
IV.C. The Anti-Linguistic Approach
Linguistics, for some inexplicable reason, has

been the bane of Indian anti-invasionist scholars.
Most of the scholars, to whatever school they
belong, as we have seen, overtly, covertly or
subconsciously, seem to accept that linguists
have proved that the Indo-European family of
languages originated outside India. Most anti-
invasionist scholars, therefore, choose to evade
the linguistic debate altogether in their
examination of the Aryan problem.
Many others, however, try to tackle the issue in a

different way, by summarily rejecting the
arguments of linguists; some of them even going
so far as to question the validity of linguistics itself
as a science. They reject not only the arguments,
allegedly based on linguistics, which are
supposed to show that the Indo-European
languages originated outside India, but even
some of the basic postulates of the linguistic case
itself.
The two main points which they find most irksome
are:
a. The idea that the languages of

North India and the languages of
Europe belong to one family, while
the languages of South India
belong to a different one.
b. The idea that the original Proto-

Indo-European language was
different from Vedic Sanskrit.
Thus, according to N.R. Waradpande, “the

linguists have not been able to establish that the
similarities in the Aryan or Indo-European
languages are genetic, ie. due to their having a
common ancestry. The similarities are mostly
those of roots and formations which could be due
to borrowing… The contention that the similarity
of basic vocabulary for family relations and
numbers cannot be due to borrowing is falsified
by the modem Indian languages borrowing such
252
vocabulary from English.” At the same time,
“the view that the South Indian languages have
an origin different from that of the North Indian
languages is based on (the) irresponsible,
ignorant and motivated utterances of a
253
missionary.”
Elsewhere, he provides us with a linguistic

criterion to test the case. Apropos his point that
words for family relations and numbers are easily
borrowed, as is done by the modem Indian
languages from English, he admits that “there is
some difficulty about pronouns. Pronouns have
not been borrowed from English, and expressions
like ‘he gaya’ and ‘she gayi’ are not yet heard.
But then the so-called Indo-European languages
also do not have the same pronouns. What are
the analogues for he, she, it and they in
Sanskrit? The corresponding Sanskrit pronouns
are sah, saa, tat and te. The similarity of they
and te is notable. Other English and Sanskrit
254
pronouns are unconnected.”
Waradpande is clearly determined to show that
the languages of North India and South India
belong to one family, while the languages of
Europe do not belong to the same family as the
languages of North India.
But Waradpande also provides us with a linguistic

criterion: according to him, pronouns are not
easily borrowed, and similar pronouns could
indicate genetic relationship. And his contention
is that English and Sanskrit, for example, do not
have similar pronouns.
But, when we examine the pronouns of the

relevant languages, we find that the case is
exactly the opposite: there is a close similarity
between the pronouns of English and Sanskrit,
but none between the pronouns of Sanskrit and
Tamil. Thus, English I, thou and she correspond
to Sanskrit ah-am, tv-am and sA (Tamil nAn, nI
and avaL). English we, you and they correspond
to Sanskrit vay-am, yUy-am and te (Tamil
nAngaL, nIngaL, and avargaL). English me and
thee correspond to Sanskrit me and te (Tamil
yennai and unnai). Therefore, Waradpande’s
own criterion proves him wrong.
The reason why Indian anti-invasionist scholars

refuse to accept the language-family situation is
because they feel it creates a division between
the people of North India and South India, while
connecting the people of North India with the
people of Europe.
However, this apprehension is groundless: there

is no connection between the people of North
India and the people of Europe. If the languages
of Europe are related to the languages of North
India, it is only because there were emigrations of
groups of speakers of Indo-European dialects
from North India in ancient times, very much like
the later emigrations of Gypsies. And the present-
day speakers of these Indo-European languages
are not the descendants of those ancient
emigrants: they are the descendants of the
natives of their respective areas, who adopted the
languages brought by those emigrants in ancient
times.
On the other hand, the people of North India and

South India share a common race, culture,
history, religion, philosophy and way of life which
is uniquely Indian. And, even from the linguistic
point of view, though the languages of India
belong to different families, they have developed
a common phonology, syntax and grammatical
structure, and have a vast mutually borrowed
vocabulary in common. Even in respect of
pronouns, the languages have developed a
similarity of semantic form, although the words
are different.
Both the Indoaryan and Dravidian languages, as

well as the Austric, Sino-Tibetan, Andamanese
and Burushaski languages native to India, are
part of the rich linguistic heritage of the country,
and any division exists only in the minds of leftist
and casteist politicians and ideologues whose aim
is to create that division. It certainly does not
warrant irrational or desperate reactions.
About the position of Sanskrit, Waradpande tells

us: “Even if the Indo-European languages are
supposed to have a common ancestry, no
sensible reason has been advanced to show why
Sanskrit cannot be regarded as the common
ancestor: If, at all, the Indo-European languages
have a common origin, that origin is obviously in
Sanskrit, because Sanskrit is the most ancient of
the ‘Indo-European’ languages… There is no
justification for postulating an imaginary language
255
as the origin.”
Apart, perhaps, from a religious or traditional bias

in favour of Sanskrit, one reason why these
scholars take this position is because they feel
that accepting another, hypothetical, language as
the ancestral language is tantamount to accepting
the extra-Indian origin of the Aryans.
But this apprehension is also groundless: if the

hypothetical Proto-Indo-European language is
different from Sanskrit, it is also different from
every other ancient, or modem, Indo-European
language known from anywhere else in the
world. And there is nothing in the basic concept
of a hypothetical Proto-Indo-European language,
different from Sanskrit, which, in itself, rules out
the likelihood of India being the original homeland
where this language was spoken in the extremely
remote past.
The sooner these anti-invasionist scholars realize

that linguistics is a science which cannot, and
indeed need not, be wished away, and the sooner
they decided to expend their energies in the
study, rather than the dismissal, of this science,
the better they will be able to serve their own
cause.
IV.D. The Indus-Valley Centred Approach
The major preoccupation of anti-invasionist

scholars today is the establishment of the Aryan
(Indo-European) linguistic identity of the Indus
Valley civilization.
The identification of this civilization as Aryan can

go a long way in countering the invasion theory,
and even a staunch invasionist scholar like B.K.
Ghosh admits: “Could it be proved that the
language of the prehistoric Mohenjo-daro was
Sanskrit or Proto-Sanskrit, then indeed it might
have been possible to argue that in spite of all
evidence to the contrary India was the original
home of the Aryans; for there is no evidence of
any Aryan race or language previous to the age
256
of the Mohenjo-daro culture.”
And the work done by many of these scholars in

identifying the Aryan character of the Indus
civilization, as well as in identifying the Indus
civilization as a post-Rigvedic phenomenon, has
been extremely valuable.
But the question remains: how far is this approach

effective in proving that there was no Aryan
invasion of India?
Strictly speaking, what this approach achieves is

that it shows that the Aryans could not have
entered India from outside in the second
millennium BC, but it does not in itself rule out the
possibility that they may have entered India from
outside in the third or fourth millennium BC or
earlier. As we have seen, there are scholars, for
example those belonging to the Hindu invasionist
school, who postulate that the Aryans did enter
India from outside in the Pre-Indus Civilization
period.
Therefore, this approach shows that the Aryans

were in India - or, more precisely, in northwestern
India, more or less in the territory of present-day
Pakistan - at least as far back as the third
millennium BC. But, in itself, it neither rules out
an Aryan movement into the northwest from
outside in an earlier period, nor an Aryan
movement from the northwest into the rest of
India in a later period.
Even when these scholars specifically rule out the

first possibility, and treat the Indus region as the
original homeland of the Aryans, and identify the
Indus Valley civilization with the civilization of the
Rigveda, it still amounts to an invasion theory: an
invasion of mainland India, presumably occupied
by non-Aryans, by Aryans from the northwest -
which is just one step away from the full-fledged
Aryan invasion theory.
All this may appear to be a case of hair-splitting: if

the Aryan homeland was in northwestern India, is
that area, the Indus region, a foreign land, that
any movement from the northwest into India
should be treated as a foreign invasion? After all,
the Mauryas, the Guptas, the Marathas, etc. at
various points of time in our later history, started
out from one corner of our country and
established empires covering large parts of India.
We will not enter into a contentious debate on this

point: we will only note that the northwest is not
just any part of India, it is the entry-point to India,
or the exit-point from India, for migratory
movements and expansions. And acceptance of
an invasion from the northwest is just one step
away from acceptance of an invasion from
outside, especially if that invasion is assumed to
have brought a completely new language, religion
and culture which later engulfed the rest of India.
And this is what the anti-invasionist scholars do

when they accept the idea that the northwest was
the original homeland of the Aryans, that Vedic
Sanskrit was the language of the Indus
civilization, and that Vedic Sanskrit was the
mother of all our Indoaryan languages.
This last is a particular obsession with most anti-

invasionist scholars. Apart from those who
advocate the irrational idea that Sanskrit was the
mother of all the languages of the world, or the
idea that Sanskrit was at least the original Proto-
Indo-European language, nearly all the anti-
invasionist scholars accept the idea that Vedic
Sanskrit was the mother of all the Indoaryan
languages.
And it is not only the first two ideas which are

wrong, the third is also wrong, as we have seen in
our discussion of Proto-linguistics in the earlier
chapters.
What is most relevant to our subject here is the

fact that an Indus-Valley centred approach is
incompatible with any rational historical
interpretation of the Vedic and other later Sanskrit
texts:
The invasionist scholars in general treat the

Rigveda as a collection of hymns composed by
the Vedic Aryans during the period of their
conquest and settlement of the Punjab and the
northwest. But the more sensible among them
admit that the Rigveda contains no memories of
any external homeland or of any invasion, and
that the Vedic Aryans appear to be more or less
settled in the area (which they identify as the
Punjab).
They, therefore, postulate that some time had

elapsed since the actual invasion and conquest,
and it was the close ancestors of the composers
of the hymns who had come from outside, and
the composers themselves were already settled in
the area. The invasion and conquest, they
conclude, is not recorded in the Rigveda, since
the composition of the hymns of the Rigveda
commenced after the period of the actual invasion
and conquest.
But the same argument cannot hold for a post-

Rigvedic movement from the northwest into the
rest of India: it is clear that a full-fledged literary
tradition had certainly started with the Rigveda at
least; and any post-Rigvedic movements should
be reflected in the later texts.
But the post-Rigvedic texts contain no reference

whatsoever to the migration of the Aryans from
the Punjab to the plains and plateaus of North
and Central India, or to their interaction, or
conflicts, with the non-Aryan inhabitants of these
areas, or to the en masse adoption by these non-
Aryans of completely new and unfamiliar Aryan
speech-forms.
While the idea of an Aryan influx into

northwestern India from outside can be sought to
be maintained (on extraneous grounds) in the
absence of any evidence to this effect in the
Rigveda, the idea of an Aryan influx into the rest
of North India cannot be accepted in the face of
the total absence of any evidence to this effect in
the post-Rigvedic texts.
It is clear, therefore, that there have been no

major migrations of Aryan-language speakers
from the northwest of India into the interior of
North India, and all the major migrations, as we
have pointed out, were by groups of Aryan-
language speakers from the interior of North India
into the northwest.
The area of the Rigveda was not primarily the
Punjab or the Indus Valley but Haryana and Uttar
Pradesh; and the Vedic Aryans were one of many
groups of Aryan-language speakers who were
spread out over most of northern India, and who
were part of a greater Indian milieu which
included speakers of languages belonging to
other families, in the south and east, all of whom
were equally part of a more ancient Indian
heritage.
The Vedic Aryans, the PUrus, as we have seen

from our analysis of the Rigveda, moved out
towards the northwest; but the people of the
Punjab and the northwest, the Anus, although
large sections of them migrated out of India in the
course of time, continued to be the inhabitants of
the area.
The Indus Valley Civilization, now more correctly

designated by some as the Indus-Sarasvati
Civilization, cannot therefore be characterized as
the civilization of the Rigveda either: it was a joint
civilization of the Anus (Aryans belonging to the
same linguistic stock as the latter-day Iranians
and some other Indo-European groups, as we
have seen in the earlier chapter) and the PUrus
(the post-Rigvedic Vedic Aryans), even perhaps
more Anu than PUru, at least in the case of the
more well-known western sites.
An acceptance of these facts may help in a more

rational and objective analysis of the history of the
Indus Civilization, as well as of Vedic literature.
V
A MUCH MISINTERPRETED
HISTORICAL THEME IN THE RIGVEDA
We have examined the four major schools of

interpretation of the Rigveda. In the course of this
examination, we have had occasion to examine
the writings of many scholars who were giants in
their respective fields, and whom (with the
express exclusion of scholars belonging to the
invasionist school) this writer holds in the very
highest respect and esteem.
If, therefore, we have found it necessary to point

out why their writings and interpretations, on the
subject which is the topic of our present book,
were wrong, it is because these writings and
interpretations have exerted, and continue to
exert, a strong influence on large numbers of
other scholars, and, as a result they have added
to the general confusion and disorientation in the
study of Rigvedic history.
We will illustrate this by concluding our

examination with examples of the peculiar
interpretations, by various scholars, of what we
may consider the most important, and definitely
the most historical, of the events recorded in the
Rigveda, the DASarAjña battle between SudAs
and his enemies.
Some of the invasionist scholars treat this battle

principally as a conflict between the Aryan
invaders (led by SudAs) and the non-Aryan
natives.
Some others treat it (on the basis of VII.83.1) as a

conflict between a section of Aryans led by
SudAs, on the one hand, and a confederation of
both Aryan and non-Aryan tribes, on the other.
Yet others treat it primarily as a conflict between

two sections of Aryans: the Bharatas (led by
SudAs) versus the Five Tribes (the Yadus,
TurvaSas, Druhyus, Anus and PUrus). This is
then further interpreted in terms of the so-called
two waves of Aryan invasion: some, like V.G.
257
Rahurkar, treat the Five Tribes as representing
the earlier wave, and the Bharatas as
representing the later wave; and others, like S.D.
258
Kulkarni, reverse the order.
But so far, though biased and incorrect, these

interpretations at least treat the event as a
historical battle. On the other hand, many other
scholars, in keeping with their own particular
obsessions or particular fields of study, interpret
this historical event in a wide variety of peculiar
ways which completely transform the character of
the event:
1. Lokmanya Tilak, as we have seen, tries to

interpret every tradition, myth and ritual in the
Rigveda in terms of the meteorological or
astronomical characteristics of the Arctic region.
According to him, therefore, the event is not a

historical battle at all. The ten kings or tribes
ranged against SudAs “represent the ten monthly
sun-gods… and Indra’s helping SudAs in his fight
with the ten non-worshipping kings is nothing
more than the old story of the annual fight
between light and darkness as conceived by the
inhabitants of a place where a summer of ten
months was followed by a long winter night of two
259
months.”
2. To Dr. Ambedkar, the study of Vedic history is

incidental to his larger study of the origins, and
the socio-historic dimensions, of untouchability
and of the caste system.
260
According to him, therefore, although the
DASarAjña was indeed a historical battle, its
historical importance lay solely in the fact that it
represented the culmination of a struggle
between “Shudra” kings and “Kshatriya” kings.
SudAs and the Bharatas, according to him, were
“Shudras”.
3. To the Arya Samaj scholars, as we have seen,

the very idea of history in the Rigveda is
sacrilegious. It is unthinkable, to them, that a
historical event featuring a battle between two
groups of transient human beings could possibly
be recorded in divine hymns which have been in
existence since the very beginnings of time.
Therefore, by a miracle of translation, they

manage to convert the battle hymns (VII.18, 33,
83), which refer to the DASarAjña battle, into
divine sermons on the qualities and the duties of
an ideal king.
4. Bhagwan Singh is a scholar who identifies the

Vedic civilization with the Indus Valley civilization
on the basis of an analysis of the evidence with
regard to trade, commerce and industry in the
Rigveda. He rejects “the general belief that the
261
Vedic society was pastoral and nomadic”, and
insists that it was a highly commercialized
mercantile society where the merchants enjoyed
“social hegemony” and “were the chief patrons of
262
the poets and priests.” The Rigveda, according
to him, “is agog with mercantile activities
undertaken by its traders against all conceivable
263
odds.”
His interpretation of anything and everything in

the Rigveda in terms of mercantile activity is so
thorough that even the Gods are not spared:
“Indra, the supreme Vedic deity was cast in the
image of the leader of the caravans and convoys,
and his allies, the Maruts in those of the small
264
traders joining the caravan or convoy.”
He, therefore, rejects the idea that the DASarAjña

265
battle “was a great war of the Vedic times”,
and concludes that “if we read the hymn with an
unprejudiced mind, we come to the simple
conclusion that it was an encounter with a
contending rival in trade who had become jealous
of SudAs’ hegemony in trade and conspired to
ruin him with the help of a few others, but, thanks
266
to Indra, he was saved…”
5. K.D. Sethna is a staunch disciple of Sri

Aurobindo, and also a scholar (as we have noted
in our earlier book) who has done valuable work
in proving the contemporaneity of the Indus
Civilization with the period of the SUtras. He,
however, accepts Aurobindo’s view that, in the
Rigveda, “the whole struggle is between the Light
and the Darkness, the Truth and the Falsehood,
267
the divine… and the undivine”.
He, therefore, concludes that “the true nature of

the campaign in which SudAs is engaged… (is
the) conquest over supernatural agents who…
268
stand inwardly antagonistic to the Divine light.”
The DAsas ranged against SudAs, according to

Sethna, were “supernatural deniers and
destroyers of the inner and spiritual progress of
269
spiritual initiates,” and the Aryas ranged
against him were “the lords of higher states of
being and consciousness in the inner world,
beyond whom the Aryan man would go and who
therefore resent his progress and join hands with
the DAsas/Dasyus, the obstructors in that occult
270
dimension.”
Clearly, all these are purely subjective

interpretations of the Rigveda, in which the
scholars do not find it at all necessary to examine
the actual sources of historical material, such as
the AnukramaNIs or the internal references within
the hymns, and rely only on their predetermined
biases and theories in analysing, or even denying
the historicity of, historical aspects of the Rigveda.
Our own analysis of Rigvedic history, on the other

hand, is based wholly on the actual sources of
historical material. But no research on any
subject can be carried on in a vacuum: it is
necessary to know, analyse and evaluate the
earlier research on the subject. And that is what
we have attempted to do in this chapter.
Footnotes:
1HCIP, p.248.
2ibid.
3ibid., p.208.
4OHI, p.53.
5SOR, p;.35.
6ibid.
7ibid., p.36.
8CDHR, pp.3-4.
9VMT, pp.141-198
10ibid., p.162.
11ibid.,pp.,170-171.
12ibid., p.160.
13ibid.
14ibid., pp.160-161.
15ibid, pp.161-162.
16ibid., p.164.
17HCIP, p.249.
18SOR, p.121.
19AIHT, p.295.
20CDHR.p.114.
21HCIP,p.207.
22CDHR, p.295.
23VMT, p.65.
24CCAIHO, p.84.
25CDHR, p.290.
26ibid., p.5.
27ibid., P.303.
28ibid., p.306.
29ibid., p.308.
30ibuid., p.321
31ibid., p.326
32ibid., p.3.
33ibid., p.19.
34HCIP. p.165.
35CCAIHO, p.84.
36VMT, P.160.
37VMT, p.161.
38ibid.
39SOR, p.167.
40ibid., p.118.
41CCAIHO, p.83.
42AIHT, p.306.
43CDHR, pp.351-355, 375.
44ibid., p.375.
45ibid., p.379.
46AIHT, p.313.
47OST, p.387.
48ODBL, p.29.
49VM, p.162.
50CCAIHO, p.80.
51SOR, p.167.
52AIHT, p.295.
53CDHR, pp.57-58.
54ibid, p.301.
55AIHT, p.295.
56ibid. p.308.
57IELS, pp.260-261.
58ibid.
59ibid.
60CCAIHO, p.84.
61CCAIHO, p.79.
62CCAIHO, P.79.
63CDHR, P.339.
64CDHR, p.25.
65VMT, pp.175-176.
66LEM, p.85.
67ibid.
68CCAIHO, p.80.
69ibid.
70AHV, p.420.
71ibid., p.463.
72ibid., p.453.
73ibid., p.445
74BHISHMA, Vol.2, p. 14.
75BHISHMA, Vol.1., p.128
76ibid., p.129.
77ibid., p.297.
78ibid., p.298.
79ibid., p.107.
80ibid., p.299.
81ibid., p.296.
82AHV, p.440.
83ibid., p.464.
84ibid, p.150.
85HINDUTVA, p.5.
86ibid., p.9.
87ibid., pp.10-11.
88ibid., pp.11-12.
89ibid., p.8
90BHISHMA, Vol. 1, p.111.
91ibid.,p.114.
92ibid.
93ibid.
94ibid.
95ibid., p.116.
96ibid.
97ibid., p.122.
98ibid., p.117.
99ibid.
100ibid., p.118.
101ibid.,p.107.
102ibid., p.218.
103AHV, p.455.
104ibid., p.457.
105ibid., p.456.
106ibid., p.454.
107ibid., 455.
108ibid.
109ibid., p.456.
110ibid.
111BHISHMA, Vol.1, p.155.
112ibid., front inner cover
113ibid., p.293.
114ibid., p.294.
115HCIP,p.210.
116AHV, p.464.
118ibid., p.299.
119ibid, front inner cover.
120AHV, p.453.
121ibid.
122ibid., p.17.
123BHISHMA, Vol. 1, introduction, p.ix.
124ibid., p.147.
125ibid.
126ibid., p.127.
127ibid., p.13.
128New Findings on ‘Rigveda’, Article in

The Times of India, Mumbai, 2/8/93.
129BHISHMA, Vol. 1. introduction, p.ix.
130BAWS, Volume 7, p.80.
131AHV, pp.44-45.
132ibid., p.45.
133ibid., p.7.
134ibid., p.65.
135ibid., p.93.
136ibid., p.136.
137ibid., p.94.
138ibid., p.95.
139ibid., p.351.
140ibid., p.306.
141ibid., p.347.
142ibid., p.346.
143ibid., p.348.
144ibid.
145ibid.
146ibid.
147ibid.
148ibid., p.349.
149ibid., pp.82-83.
150ibid., pp.453-454.
151ibid., p.211.
152ibid., p.216.
153ibid.
154ibid., p.306.
155ibid., p.207.
157ibid., p.207.
158ibid., p.172.
159ibid., p.159.
160ibid., p.213.
161ibid., p.196.
162ibid., p.121.
163ibid., p.120.
164ibid., p.139.
165ibid., p.133.
166ibid., p.192.
167ibid., p.111.
168ibid., p.123.
169ibid., p.124.
170ibid., p.182.
171ibid., p.117.
172AIHT, p.298.
173ibid., p.296.
174ibid., p.298.
175ibid., pp.253-286.
176ibid., preface.
177ibid., p.297.
178ibid., p.275.
179ibid., p.302.
180ibid., p.298.
181BAWS, Vol.7, pp.74-80.
182ibid., p.79.
183ibid., p.78.
184ibid., P.79.
185ibid., p.80.
186ibid., P.79.
187ibid.
188ibid.
189ibid., p.81.
190ibid., p.85.
191ibid., p.76.
192ibid., p.103.
193ibid., p.104.
194ibid., p.87.
195ibid., P.85.
196AIHT, p.1.
197ibid., p.3.
198ibid., pp.8-9.
199ibid., p. 124.
200ibid., p.296.
201ibid., p.300.
202ibid., p. 298, footnote.
203ibid., p.137.
204ibid., p.299.
205ibid., p.298.
206ibid., p.290.
207ibid., p.295, footnote.

208BAWS, Volume 7, p.78.
209ibid.
210ibid., p.104.
211ibid., p.78.
212ibid., p.79.
213ibid., pp.290-291.
214ibid., p.300.
215ibid.
216ibid., p.303.
217ibid., p.80.
218ibid.
219ibid., p.292.
220ibid., pp.296-298.
221ibid., p.292.
222ibid., 300.
223ibid., p.292.
224ibid.
225ibid., p.80.
226CWSV, Vol.3, The Future of India,

pp.292-293.
227CWSV, Vol.5, The East and the West,

pp.534-535,
228ibid., p.535.
229CWSV, Vol.3, The Future of India,

p.286.
230CWSV, Vol.6, Historical Evolution of

India, p.163.
231ibid., p.159.
232CWSV, Vol.4, Aryans and Tamilians,

p.296.
233CWSV, Vol.5, The East and the West,

p.536.
234bid., p.536-537.
235ibid., p.537.
236YAJ, p.xvii-xviii,xxii.
237ibid., p.xx.
238ibid., p.xix.
239ibid., p.xx.
240ibid., p.xxi.
241ibid., p.xxii.
242SA, pp.5-6.
243ibid., p.6.
244ibid., p.217.
245ibid., p.4.
246ibid., p.561.
247ibid.
248ibid., pp.23-24.
249ibid., pp.28-29.
250ibid., p.122.
251ibid., p.123.
252TAP, p.15.
253ibid., p.17.
254AIM, p.20.
255TAP, p.15.
256HCIP, pp.206-207.
257SOR, p.70.
259AHV, p.346.
260BAWS, Vol.7, p.114-131.
261TAP., p.192.
262ibid.
263ibid.
264ibid.
265ibid., p.204.
266ibid., p.205.
267PAO, p.349.
268ibid., pp.357-358.
269ibid., p.346.
270ibid., p.359.

Back to Home
Michael Witzel - An Examination of Western

Vedic Scholarship
The question of the original homeland of the Indo-

European family of languages is a purely
academic subject, although discourse on the
subject, particularly in India, has been highly
politicized.
We have already examined, in Appendix I, the

various aspects of this politicization.
But while the most vocal and extremist supporters

of the theory (that the Indoaryan languages
spoken in most parts of India were originally
brought into South Asia by invaders or immigrants
in the second millennium BC) are undoubtedly
politically motivated, the theory is generally
accepted by most academic scholars as well,
purely on the ground that it represents the
general consensus in the international academic
world.
The question, therefore, is: how far can we rely on

the objectivity and sincerity of world scholarship?
We have, in our earlier book, presented a new

theory which answers the problem of the original
Indo-European homeland more effectively than
the generally accepted theory. In this present
book, we have shown that the Rigveda confirms
our theory with evidence which, at least so far as
the literary aspect of the debate is concerned, is
practically unanswer-able.
A true scholarship would examine, and then either

accept or reject, with good reason, any new
theory which challenges a generally accepted
theory admitted to be full of sharp anomalies.
However, this has not been the attitude of world

scholarship towards our earlier book.
The general attitude has been as follows: there is
a school of crank scholarship in India which is out
to prove, by hook or by crook, that India was the
original homeland of the Indo-European family of
languages; and the writers of this school deserve
to be firmly put in their place.
And the best method of doing this is by tarring all

scholars who support, or even appear to support,
an Indian homeland theory, with one brush; and
then pointing out particularly untenable
propositions made by one or the other of the
scholars so branded together, to prove that all the
scholars so named belong to one single school of
irrational scholarship.
Thus, Bernard Sergent, a French scholar, in his

book Genèse de l’Inde (Bibliothèque Scientifique
Payot, Paris, 1997) has the following (roughly
translated into English by us) to say about these
scholars:
“Thus D.K. Chakrabarti, George Feuerstein, Klaus

Klostermaier, Richard Thompson, David Frawley,
Jim Shaffer, Koenraad Elst, Paramesh
Choudhury, Navaratna S. Rajaram, K.D. Sethna,
S.R. Rao, Bhagwan Singh, Subhash Kak,
Shrikant Talageri… It can be seen that the case is
argued mainly from a nationalist Indian viewpoint,
relayed also by some westerners. Above (p.155)
we have been able to evaluate manipulations
indulged in by one of these scholars, J. Shaffer, in
order to arrive at his above conclusions: he simply
argues that it is not necessary to take into
account any linguistic data! Rajaram arrives at
the same conclusion: Linguistics is not a science
since it does not lead to the same conclusions as
his own… On this subject, Bryant (1996, 8 and
11) remarks that what he calls the ‘Indigenous
School’ ignores all the linguistic literature, in
particular those which draw attention (by
decisively demonstrating the existence) to a
substratum, and only use linguistics when it
happens to benefit them. As for Choudhury, he is
the author of a work entitled Indian Origin of the
Chinese Nation (well, let’s see!), and of another
entitled The India We Have Lost: Did India
Colonise and Civilise Sumeria, Egypt, Greece and
Europe?: Self-service is the best service!
Nationalism, obviously, has no limits. In any
case, these authors battle to make their beautiful
‘discovery’ triumph through the organisation of
conferences in the United States, sending panels
to other conferences, etc. This ‘struggle’ shows
up the ideological nature of this exercise: a
student of science does not need to impose his
ideas through propaganda, he has arguments to
1
furnish.”
It may be noted that a whole range of scholars,

Western and Indian, are clubbed together, and
then two specific points are elaborated: N.S.
Rajaram’s disdain for linguistics, and Paramesh
Choudhury’s fantastic scenarios (clearly modelled
on the writings of P.N. Oak). The inference is that
these two points characterize the writings of all
the scholars concerned!
Let us see how far they apply to our own earlier

book:
N.S. Rajaram has been a friendly supporter of the

theory outlined by us in our earlier book. But he
has equally been a critic of our failure to share his
disdain for linguistics. Referring to our book, he
specifically states: “One can have some
reservations about his excessive reliance on
linguistics, and his acceptance of Dravidian
languages (which did not exist much before the
Christian era) as constituting a separate language
2
family.”
Paramesh Choudhury’s theories about the origins

of the Chinese, Sumerians and Egyptians in India
can have no relevance whatsoever to our theory
about the origins of the Indo-European languages
in India. No Western scholar will accept that the
Indians, Chinese, Sumerians and Egyptians had
a common origin in one particular land; but surely
they do accept that the different Indo-European
languages did have a common origin in one
particular land. So how does the location of the
Indo-European homeland in India fall into the
same category as the location in India of a
fantasy homeland of the Chinese, Sumerians and
Egyptians?
Sergent’s last thrust represents the unkindest cut

in this whole smear campaign. It is not we who
have avoided debate. It is these Western
scholars who have chosen to conduct a spit-and-
run campaign from a safe distance, while
restricting their criticism of our theory (elaborated
by us in our earlier book) to name-calling and
label-sticking rather than to demolition of our
arguments.
We would certainly have loved to joust with

Sergent. However, the restraints of language
prevent us from doing so. His book is in French,
which is Greek to us. So we must turn to scholars
more amenable to our scrutiny.
To go deeper into the unacademic attitude of

Western scholarship, we will examine the writings
of one particular American scholar, Michael Witzel
(whom we have had occasion to refer to many
times within our present volume).
We will examine, in particular, the papers

presented by him during a conference on
Archaeological and Linguistic Approaches to
Ethnicity in Ancient South Asia, held in Toronto
(Canada), 4th-6th October 1991.
This conference was held in 1991, well before the

publication of our earlier book in 1993; but the
papers presented at this conference were
published later, in a volume entitled The Indo-
Aryans of Ancient South Asia - Language,
Material Culture and Ethnicity, edited by George
Erdosy and published by Walter de Gruyter,
Berlin-New York, in 1995.
The particular paper by Witzel which we will

examine in detail is Rgvedic history: poets,
3
chieftains and polities. In the course of our
examination, we will also quote from another
paper by Witzel, Early Indian history: linguistic
and textual parametres4, included in the same
volume; and, occasionally, from another paper by
Witzel, On the Localisation of Vedic Texts and
Schools5, published in a separate volume.
There are two basic reasons why we will be

examining Michael Witzel’s papers:
1. The volume containing the above papers also

contains critical references to our earlier book in
its footnotes to both the editorial preface as well
as the papers by Michael Witzel. These
references cast strong aspersions on the
scholarly value of our earlier book.
It is therefore, necessary to examine, in return,

the scholarly value of Witzel’s own writings.
2. Our present book contains a complete and

logical historical analysis of the Rigveda. Michael
Witzel’s papers also purport to present a logical
historical analysis of the Rigveda, and, what is
more, his basic approach very closely parallels
our own, as we shall see presently.
However, the conclusions he arrives at are

diametrically opposed to our own: to him the
Rigveda gives evidence of a migration of the
Vedic Aryans from Afghanistan to India. Clearly,
one of the two analyses has to be wrong. But,
which one?
To arrive at an answer to this question, again, it is

necessary to examine Witzel’s writings in detail.
We will examine Witzel’s writings under the

following heads:
I. Scientific Evaluation of Rival Theories.

II. Basically Sound Approach to the Rigveda.
III. Witzel’s Theory, Evidence and Conclusions.
IV. Careless Misinterpretations.
V. The Chronology and Geography of the
MaNDalas.
VI. Geographical Misrepresentations
VII. Violation of Basic Principles.
SCIENTIFIC EVALUATION OF RIVAL

THEORIES
One of the tests of true scholarship is the

treatment of rival theories. There are two
possible ways in which one, as a propounder or
protagonist of a theory, can deal with a rival
theory:
The first is to ignore the rival theory and behave

as if it does not exist, and to go on propounding
one’s own theory in isolation.
The second is to examine the rival theory and to

show how that theory is logically wrong, and one’s
own theory, by contrast, is correct.
Erdosy and Witzel, however, follow a third course

altogether: they refer to the rival theory and
condemn the propounders of that theory in very
strong terms, without bothering to examine the
theory or justify this condemnation.
The rival theory, and there is only one, is the

theory of an Indian homeland.
Erdosy, in his editorial preface, describes the

political implications of the Aryan invasion theory
in India, and refers to “spirited opposition which
has intensified recently - cf. Biswas 1990;
Choudhury 1993; Telagiri 1993. Unfortunately,
political motivations (usually associated with
Hindu revivalism, ironic in view of Tilak’s theory of
an Arctic home) renders this opposition devoid of
scholarly value. Assertions of the indigenous
origin of Indo-Aryan languages and an insistence
on a long chronology for Vedic and even Epic
literature are only a few of the most prominent
6
tenets of this emerging lunatic fringe.”
Witzel, referring to Biswas (1990:44): “The ulterior

political motive of this ‘scientific piece’ is obvious.
7
Cf. Choudhury 1993; Telagiri 1993, etc.”
And: “there are also pronounced and definite

South Asian biases to hold us back:… the
contrary view that stresses the Indian home of the
Indo-Aryans. Even Indo-Iranians, not to mention
all Indo-Europeans (!), are increasingly located in
South Asia, whence they are held to have
migrated westward, a clearly erroneous view that
has nevertheless found its way into even
otherwise respectable scholarly publications (eg.
Biswas, quoted above, in Ray and Mukherjee,
1990)… Such speculations further cloud the
scientific evaluation of textual sources, and can
only be regarded as examples of Hindu exegetical
or apologetic religious writing, even if they do not
always come with the requisite label warning us of
8
their real intentions.”
The footnote to the phrase “erroneous view”

above, clarifies: “More recently propagated by
Choudhury (1993), whose books also include The
Indian Origins of the Chinese Nation, and Telagiri
9
(1993).”
It may be noted that in all the three references,

our earlier book is firmly categorised together with
the books by Paramesh Choudhury, and
Choudhury’s theory about the Indian origins of the
Chinese is stressed and highlighted.
And the irony of the whole exercise is that it is

very clear that the scholars concerned (George
Erdosy and Michael Witzel) have not only not
read our earlier book, but they have probably not
even seen an actual copy of the book which they
condemn so categorically.
The references to our book consistently misspell

the name as Telagiri instead of Talageri, and the
10
bibliography even gives the initials as S.K.
Telagiri instead of S.G. Talageri.
What is more, the bibliography lists our book as

follows: “Telagiri S.K., 1993. Aryan Invasion
Theory and Indian Nationalism, Delhi, Aditya
11
Prakashan.”
Now it so happens that our earlier book was

published in two editions: the one published by
Aditya Prakashan was entitled The Aryan
Invasion Theory: A Reappraisal, and the one
published by Voice of India was entitled Aryan
Invasion Theory and Indian Nationalism.
The confusion between the title and the name of

the publisher originally occured in Shri Girilal
Jain’s review of the book which was published in
The Times of India dated 17.6.93; but, in that
case, the confusion was explainable: the Voice of
India edition was already printed and read by Shri
Jain, and formed the basis of his review, the
Aditya Prakashan edition was still in print and it
was to be the official edition, and Shri Girilal Jain
was clearly not aware that the book still under
print was to have a different title.
In the case of Erdosy and Witzel, this confusion

can have no explanation, other than that their
acquaintance with our book is a second-hand or
third-hand one, based on some third party’s
comments on Shri Girilal Jain’s review.
And it is on such acquaintance that these

scholars have condemned our book in strong
terms, decided that it is “devoid of scholarly
value”, and consigned it to the “lunatic fringe”.
Clearly this strong condemnation of a book,

unread and unseen by them, is both unacademic
and unethical.
It must be noted that:
1. The theory propounded in our book, that India

was the original homeland of the Indo-European
family of languages, is not a crank theory,
comparable, say, to a theory that the earth is flat,
or that the sun moves round the earth. It is not a
theory so contrary to all scientific norms and facts
that it can be condemned without trial.
In fact, far from being contrary to scientific norms,

our theory, on the testimony of the very book
under discussion, is at least as scientifically
probable as their own theory:
Erdosy in his preface, tells us that on this subject

there is a great “disciplinary divide… between two
12
disciplines involved in a study of the past,” ie.
between Linguistics and Archaeology; and that
the idea that the Aryans were intruders into South
Asia “has recently been challenged by
archaeologists who - alongwith linguists - are best
13
qualified to evaluate its validity.”
Further, while the book pits Witzel’s linguistic

arguments against the arguments of the
archaeologists and anthropologists, his linguistic
arguments (as we have already seen in our
chapter on The Indo-European Homeland) turn
out to be self-defeating. He sets out to
demonstrate “the evidence of place-names,
14
above all hydronomy” against the claims of the
archaeologists, and ends up all but admitting that
the evidence in fact supports their claims.
2. The theory of an Indian homeland is the only

rival theory pertinent to the subject of their
conference and their book (The Indo-Aryans of
Ancient South Asia), and it is, in fact, the only rival
theory referred to by Erdosy and Witzel.
And this rival theory has been in the running ever

since the debate started on the subject two
centuries ago. And it is not an old and
abandoned theory, either. In the words of Erdosy
15
and Witzel, it represents also an “emerging”
16
viewpoint which is being “increasingly”
propounded in recent times, and represents “a
questioning of assumptions long taken for granted
and buttressed by the accumulated weight of two
17
centuries of scholarship”.
In these circumstances, the condemnation of our

book, unread and unseen, cannot be justified on
any ground.
The scholars, however, do seek to justify it on the

ground that “political motivation… renders this
18
opposition devoid of scholarly value.”
This, again, is neither academic nor ethical.

Books and theories cannot be condemned,
unread and unseen, solely on the basis of one’s
perceptions about the motivations behind them.
And, on this principle, Witzel’s papers themselves

are “devoid of scholarly value”, since he is also
“motivated” by the desire to counter the Indian
homeland theory. Erdosy testifies that “the
principal concern” of scholars (like Witzel)
studying South Asian linguistics is to find
“evidence for the external origins - and likely
arrival in the 2nd millennium BC - of Indo-Aryan
19
languages” ; and Witzel himself admits that his
historical analysis of the Rigveda is motivated by
the desire to counter “recent attempts (Biswas
1990, Shaffer 1984) to deny that any movement
20
of Indo-European into South Asia has occured.”
However, we will not condemn Witzel’s writings

on grounds of “motivation”. We will examine them
in detail and leave it to the readers to judge their
“scholarly value”.
Witzel, as we shall see, starts out with a basically

sound approach, but follows it up with a careless
attitude towards the source materials and a
system of analysis based on deliberate
misinterpretations, and ends up with conclusions
contradictory to the facts cited by himself.
We have already examined parts of Witzel’s

writings in other parts of this present book. Here,
we will examine only his analysis and
interpretation of the Rigvedic source materials,
and the conclusions that he arrives at from this
exercise. And the only quotations that we will cite
against him will be his own.
II
BASICALLY SOUND APPROACH TO THE
RIGVEDA
Witzel’s basic approach to the Rigveda closely

parallels our own.
He recognizes the unique importance of the

Rigveda: “apart from archaeology, our principal
source for the early period must be. the
21
Rigveda…”
He notes that the evidence of the Rigveda is as

solid as the evidence of actual inscriptions: “Right
from the beginning, in Rgvedic times, elaborate
steps were taken to insure the exact reproduction
of the words of the ancient poets. As a result, the
Rgveda still has the exact same wording in such
distant regions as Kashmir, Kerala and Orissa,
and even the long-extinct musical accents have
been preserved. Vedic transmission is thus
superior to that of the Hebrew or Greek Bible, or
the Greek, Latin and Chinese classics. We can
actually regard present-day Rgveda-recitation as
a tape recording of what was first composed and
recited some 3000 years ago. In addition, unlike
the constantly reformulated Epics and PurANas,
the Vedic texts contain contemporary
materials. They can serve as snapshots of the
political and cultural situation of the particular
period and area in which they were composed…
As they are contemporary, and faithfully
preserved, these texts are equivalent to
22
inscriptions.”
And he stresses the authority of the information in

the Rigveda over the actual or assumed
information available in later texts, and
deprecates the use of these texts in arriving at
conclusions which would appear to contradict the
information in the Rigveda: “there has been a
constant misuse of Vedic sources and some
historical and pseudo-historical materials, not only
by nationalist politicians, but also by
archaeologists and historians. Most serious is the
acceptance of much later materials as
23
authoritative sources for the Vedic period.” His
reference is not only to the PurANas and Epics,
but also to the Vedic literature which constitutes
the “bulk of the post-Rgvedic texts”, since “the
later Vedic texts contain stanzas and prose… of a
24
later period.”
He concedes that the historical material in the

Rigveda does not consist of clear narrations, but
of historical allusions: “there is no ‘logical’
development describing successive actions or the
story of a myth, only disjointed allusions to facts
well known to contemporary listeners… Thus the
myths, the ritual and certainly the contemporary
history have to be pieced together from stray
references, and these, too, were addressed to
25
people who knew the events well.”
But he feels that scholars have been misled by

this into refraining from proper utilisation of the
rich historical material in the Rigveda: “the
generally held view (is) that everything that can
be gathered from a study of the text has already
been said. The general attitude seems to be: the
immigration of the Indo-Aryans is a fact that can
frequently be noticed in the Rgveda; there are
some rare glimpses of political history, with
approximately 30 small tribes known from the
text; a few names of kings can be discovered,
such as Trasadasyu, DivodAsa or the famous
SudAs of the 10 kings battle (RV 7.18), a sort of
precursor to the MahAbhArata. But all of this is
too sketchy to allow us much more than a glimpse
at what actually happened in that period. One of
the aims of this paper is to show that this
impression is erroneous, and to give an idea of
the wide range of information that can be
26
extracted.”
Witzel therefore sets out to “demonstrate the

richness of the available information (in the
Rigveda) which has generally been overlooked by
27
both historians and archaeologists.”
Witzel realizes that for any “detailed analysis of

28
the historical content of the Rigveda.” the first
requirement is a reconstruction of the
29
“geographical and chronological framework” of
the text.
Hence: “In order to lay a firm basis for such an

investigation, one has to establish… a few key
parametres. In particular, we need the following
grids of reference: A) The structure of the Rgveda
itself, with its relative order of hymns that are
already divided into ‘books’… B) The relationship
of the various tribes and clans to the books of the
Rgveda... C) The authors of the hymns… D)
Geographical features, especially rivers and
30
mountains.” All this is to be “combined with a
chronological grid established on the strength of a
few pedigrees of chiefs and poets available from
the hymns… eventually… it should be possible to
construct a multi-axial grid with variables of time,
space and social situation. Once that grid is
plotted (and the various points support rather than
contradict each other) we may begin the writing of
31
Rgvedic history.”
Thus, Witzel starts out with a basic approach

which is unexceptionable.
III
WITZEL’S THEORY, EVIDENCE AND
CONCLUSIONS
Witzel’s theory about the Aryan invasion is that

“the actual movement of Indo-Iranian speakers
must have involved a succession of
32
waves,” and that all the historical Indoaryans
and Iranians, ie. “the speakers of Rgvedic and
post-Rgvedic Skt., of Median and Persian, and of
the various Avestan dialects are representatives
of some of the later waves that entered the Indo-
33
Aryan area.”
Thus, Witzel’s theory involves the old division of

the Aryan invasion into two waves: an older wave
of pre-Vedic Aryans, and a later wave of Vedic
Aryans.
The pre-Vedic Aryans, according to him, were the

four tribes, the Yadus, TurvaSas, Anus and
Druhyus: “By the time of composition of most
Rgvedic hymns, the Yadu-TurvaSa and the Anu-
Druhyu had already been well-established in the
Punjab… They retain only the dimmest
34
recollection of their move into South Asia.”
These tribes “do not figure much in the
35
Rgveda.”
The Vedic Aryans proper were “the PUru, and

their subtribe the Bharata, who play a major role
36
in most books ;” and it is “the PUru to whom
(and to their dominant successors, the Bharata)
37
the Rgveda really belongs.”
But even here, Witzel sees two waves of invasion

after the earlier settlement of the four tribes in the
Punjab: “The next wave is represented by the
PUru, although their movement into the
subcontinent had also become a done deed by
the time most Vedic hymns were composed. The
PUru are thus included among the ‘Five Peoples’
whom they initially dominated. Finally, the PUru
contained a subtribe, the Bharatas, who were the
latest intruders and who thoroughly disturbed the
38
status quo.”
All these different tribes, in different waves, came

into the Punjab from the northwest, according to
Witzel: “Their previous home is, thus, clearly the
mountainous country of Afghanistan to the west
(especially along the Haraxvaiti-Helmand and
Haroiiu-Herat rivers corresponding to the Vedic
39
SarasvatI and Sarayu).”
The Rigveda was composed by the priests of the

PUrus and the Bharatas, and “most of Rgveda
was composed as the PUru and the Bharata were
moving into the Panjab. Portions composed
before the PUru assumed a central role in the
Panjab (in about three generations) were
40
subsequently recast in their style.” [Here,
incidentally, Witzel suggests a phenomenon
roughly similar to that suggested by scholars like
Pargiter and Shendge, who visualise parts of the
Rigveda being already in existence in the Punjab
before the arrival of the Vedic Aryans, and being
revised and incorporated by the Vedic Aryans into
their text. But while these parts, according to
Pargiter and Shendge, were originally composed
by non-Aryans in their non-Aryan language,
Witzel sees them composed by non-Vedic Aryans
belonging to an earlier wave of invasions.]
The corpus of the Rigveda was thus, according to

Witzel, “composed primarily by the PUrus and
Bharatas, and spans the story of their
41
immigration.”
And here we come to the crux of Witzel’s

endeavour: Witzel’s main purpose in analysing
the Rigveda is to reconstruct a chronological and
geographical framework out of the data in the
Rigveda, which will corroborate his theory of the
migration of Aryans from Afghanistan into the
Punjab.
And the chronological and geographical picture

he reconstructs from this data places the six
Family MaNDalas in the following order: II, IV, V,
VI, III, VII. Among the non-family MaNDalas, he
counts MaNDala VIII among the early MaNDalas,
probably after MaNDala IV or MaNDala VI, but
definitely before MaNDalas III and VII.
According to him, MaNDala II, which he refers to

42
repeatedly as “the old book 2” is the oldest
MaNDala in the Rigveda. This MaNDala “focuses
on the Northwest, in the mountains and in the
passes leading into South Asia from
43
Afghanistan.” During this period, the Vedic
Aryans were still “fighting their way through the
44
NW mountains passes” , and had not yet
entered India proper.
The subsequent MaNDalas record “the story of

the immigration: the initial stages (beginning with
their stay still on the western side of the Sindhu)
in books 4, 5, 6 and 8, and the final stage
( including the defection of the PUrus and the
victory of the Bharatas in the battle of the ten
45
kings) in books 3 and 7.”
MaNDala IV, which Witzel refers to as “the

46
comparatively old book 4”, represents the
commencement of their movement into India, but
“still places the Bharatas on the far western side
47
of the Sindhu.”
Witzel’s geographical picture of the Rigveda, with

the MaNDalas arranged in his chronological
order, is as tabulated in the chart on the next
page.
Witzel thus concludes that he has established the

immigration of the Aryans into India on the basis
of an analysis of the Rigveda.
We will now proceed to examine his analysis and

his conclusions.
IV
CARELESS MISINTERPRETATIONS
The very first point that must be noted about

Witzel’s work is his grossly careless attitude
towards the basic facts about the source material
in the Rigveda, manifested mainly in the form of
wrong sweeping statements or identifications.
At the very beginning Witzel assures us that his
analysis is based on “a few key parametres”
based on “the following grids of reference: A) The
structure of the Rgveda itself, with its relative
order of hymns that are already divided into
books… B) The relationship of the various tribes
and clans to the books of the Rgveda… C) The
authors of the hymns… D) Geographical features,
especially rivers’ and mountains… E) This
information can then be combined in a grid of
places, poets and tribes… F) Finally this grid can
be combined with a chronological grid established
on the strength of a few pedigrees of chiefs and
48
poets available from the hymns.”
APPENDICES A &
B
"GEOGRAPHICAL "GEOGRAPHICAL "GEOGRAPHICAL
MANDALA 49 50 AND HISTORICAL
LINKS" AREAS"
DATA IN THE
51
RIGVEDA"
"Book 2 is clearly
concerned with the
II "NW, Panjab" "West, Northwest,
west and with
Afghanistan."
"Book 4 again
concentrates on
"West, Northwest,
IV the west... but also "NW, Panjab"
Panjab"
knows of the
Panjab"
"Book 8
"West, Northwest,
concentrates on
VIII "NW, Panjab" Panjab,
the whole of the
KurukSetra"
west..."
"Book 5, similarly,
knows of the
west... and of the "West, Northwest,
"NW => Panjab
V Punjab, but also Panjab,
=> YamunA"
includes the east KurukSetra"
and even knows ...
of the YamunA."
"Book 6, again,
knows of teh "NW, Panjab, "West, Northwest,
VI west... but once SarasvatI => (Panjab),
mentions even the GangA" KurukSetra East"
GangA."
"Book 3
"Panjab,
concentrates on
III "Panjab, KurukSetra,
the Panjab and the
SarasvatI"
KurukSetra area..."
"Book 7 mainly
mentions the
SarasvatI, and in a
"(Northwest),
late hymn retraces "Panjab, SarasvatI,
VII Panjab,
the entire process YamunA"
KurukSetra"
of immigration
across the
Panjab..."
"Book 9, which has
authors from all the
preceding family
books is much
more difficult to (Generally Cover
IX, I, X. locate. The same (Not Mentioned) the entire area of
applies to Book 10 the Rigveda)
and the various
collections
assmbled in Book
1"
Of the six parametres or grids of reference, the

first four represent aspects of the basic facts of
the Rigveda, and the two last ones represent their
use in the reconstruction of the chronology and
geography of the text. Of the first four, again, the
fourth one (ie. geographical features) is vital to
this reconstruction, and, therefore, will require
more detailed examination.
To begin with, therefore, (ie. in this section), we

will examine only his careless attitude towards the
first three aspects:
A. The Structure of the Rigveda.

B. The Tribes and Clans.
C. The Authors of the Hymns.
IV.A. The Structure of the Rigveda
In referring to the books (ie. MaNDalas) of the

Rigveda, Witzel tells us that “books 2 to 7 (usually
referred to as the ‘family books’) … have been
ordered according to the increasing number of
52
hymns per book”. He calls it a “very important
53
principle in their arrangement.”
Is this a fact? The number of hymns in books 2 to

7 are as follows: 43, 62, 58, 87, 75, 104. Clearly
this is a zigzag pattern; perhaps an ascending
zigzag pattern, but the books are certainly not
arranged “according to the increasing number of
hymns per book”.
It must be noted that this wrong statement has no

bearing whatsoever on Witzel’s theory and
conclusions: it does not help him to prove, or
claim to prove, what he intends to prove (ie. the
movement of the Aryans from west to east). In
fact, it is a pointlessly wrong statement.
But it serves to show that Witzel, for whatever

reason, does not deem it necessary to be too
careful in making sweeping statements about the
data in the Rigveda.
IV. B. The Tribes and Clans
Witzel correctly reiterates the generally accepted

identification of the “Five Peoples” in the Rigveda,
when he states that these five peoples “include
54
the Yadu, TurvaSa, Anu, Druhyu and PUru”, or
that “the TurvaSa and Yadu… are frequently
associated with the Anu, Druhyu and PUru, thus
55
making up the ‘Five Peoples.’”
But, elsewhere, he words his statements so

carelessly that it results in confusion:
At one place, he refers to “the Bharata... and -

their battle with the ‘Five Peoples’ and the
56
PUru”, as if the PUrus are separate from the
five peoples. This is even more glaring when he
refers to “the older ‘Five Peoples’ as well as the
57
newcomers, the PUrus and Bharatas.” In this
statement, are the PUrus counted among the
“older” peoples or the “newcomers”?
The above statements, while careless, do not

affect his analysis. However, another mistake
made by him very much affects his historical
analysis (though not in a manner calculated to
prove his immigration theory):
He counts Purukutsa and Trasadasyu and their

entire IkSvAku clan among the PUrus. He refers
repeatedly to “the PUru king Trasadasyu”; and
even draws up parallel family trees entitled
58
“Bharata” and “PUru”, in which he depicts the
lineages of the DivodAsa-SudAs clan and the
Purukutsa-Trasadasyu clan respectively.
At the same time, Witzel makes another mistake:

he decides that “the PUru… were the leaders in a
coalition of the Five Peoples, and some other
tribes, against the Bharata chief SudAs in the
59
dASarAjña battle.”
The combination of these two mistakes leads him

to conclude that the leader of the coalition against
SudAs the Bharata, in this battle, was Trasadasyu
the PUru.
Firstly, let us examine whether this identification

of Purukutsa and Trasadasyu as PUrus is right:
Many scholars have identified Trasadasyu (and

therefore .his father Purukutsa) as a PUru on the
basis of Rigveda IV. 38.1. But, in fact, this verse
clearly proves that Trasadasyu is not a PUru: the
verse refers to the help given by Trasadasyu to
the PUrus (Griffith’s translation: “From you two
came the gifts in days aforetime which
Trasadasyu granted to the PUrus.”).
Witzel tries to drum up one more reference in the
Rigveda: “In 1.63.7, Purukutsa himself is clearly
related to the PUrus, not to mention the Bharatas:
‘You Indra broke seven forts for Purukutsa; as
you, Indra, lay down the (enemies) for SudAs like
offering grass, you created for PUru liberation
60
from distress.’”
What is one to make of this kind of careless

interpretation? The two lines of the verse (Witzel
himself separates them by a semi-colon)
obviously refer to two separate cases where both
Purukutsa and SudAs are described as liberators
(by the grace of Indra) of the PUrus; and if any
one of the two is to be identified as a PUru,
Witzel’s own translation makes it clear that it is
SudAs and not Purukutsa. Nevertheless, Witzel
identifies Purukutsa as a PUru, and SudAs as his
Bharata rival.
Witzel’s misidentification of Purukutsa and

Trasadasyu as PUrus has two aspects:
1. While other scholars have identified Purukutsa

and Trasadasyu as PUrus before, there is a
difference in Witzel’s identification: the other
scholars either decided that these two kings were
PUrus and not IkSvAkus (and therefore that the
PurANas are wrong in identifying them as
IkSvAkus), or else that the Purukutsa and
Trasadasyu of the Rigveda, being PUrus, are
different from the Purukutsa and Trasadasyu of
the PurANas who were IkSvAkus.
Witzel, however, identifies these two kings in the

Rigveda as PUrus, even while accepting them as
IkSvAkus, and therefore treats the IkSvAkus as a
whole as a branch of the PUrus.
It is clear that he himself is not confident of this

identification: he places a question-mark when he
makes the connection between PUru and
61
IkSvAku.
In spite of this doubt, however, he treats his

identification as a settled fact when it comes to
citing the “complete separation in the PurANas of
62
the IkSvAku dynasty from the PUru” as one of
his criteria for dismissing the dynastic lists in the
PurANas as unreliable!
2. The misidentification of Purukutsa and

Trasadasyu as PUrus, and the postulation of
PUrus and Bharatas as two related but rival
groups led by Trasadasyu and SudAs
respectively, leads to some confusion in Witzel’s
interpretations.
Whenever the word PUru occurs in the Rigveda,

Witzel takes it as a reference to Trasadasyu’s
dynasty and tribe, when, in actual point of fact (as
we have seen in the course of our analysis of the
Rigveda), almost all such references are to the
Bharatas themselves.
And the result is that Witzel himself ends up

thoroughly confused: “Although book 7 is strongly
pro-Bharata, it provides several, conflicting,
glimpses of the PUru… (in) 7.5.3, VasiSTha
himself praises Agni for vanquishing the ‘black’
enemies of the PUrus - this really ought to have
been composed for the Bharatas.
Inconsistencies also appear in hymn 7.19.3,
which looks back on the ten kings’ battle but
mentions Indra’s help for both SudAs and
Trasadasyu, the son of Purukutsa, and also refers
63
to the PUrus' winning of land.”
The confusion is not due to “inconsistencies” in

the Rigveda, but due to a wrong identification by
Witzel. But instead of seeking to find out the
cause for the confusion, and correcting it, Witzel
chooses to decide that the Rigveda “provides
several conflicting glimpses” and contains
“inconsistencies”!
How far does this fit in with Witzel’s own principle

that “the writing of Rgvedic history” should be on
the basis of an analysis where “the various points
64
support rather than contradict each other” ?
IV.C. The Authors of the Hymns
Witzel concedes that the identity of the authors

(composers/RSis) of the hymns is a very
important factor in the analysis of Rigvedic
history.
However, his treatment of the information with

regard to these authors is also casual, careless
and slipshod:
1. Speaking about MaNDala VIII, he tells us:

“With regard to the order of Book 8 (Oldenberg
1888: 254-264), it is not the metre but the authors
that are more important. There are two groups,
the KANva in hymns 1-66 and the Angirasa in the
65
rest.”
What is the actual case? The first 66 hymns of

the MaNDala include five hymns by KaSyapas
(27-31), four by Atris (35-38) and seven by
ANgirases (23-26, 43-44, 46); and the rest include
one hymn by an Agastya (67), seven by KaNvas
(76-78, 81-83, 103), three by Atris (73-74, 91),
three by BhRgus (84, 100-101), and one by a
KaSyapa (97).
But Witzel sweepingly declares that the first 66

are by KaNvas and the rest by ANgirases. And
that, too, while emphasising, in italics, that the
identity of the authors is the more important
aspect of the hymns in this MaNDala!
Here, again, we find an illustration of Witzel’s

unwritten dictum that it is not necessary to be too
particular while making statements about the
Rigveda: either no one will notice or no one will
care!
2. Witzel is equally careless in identifying the

different families of RSis in the Rigveda.
At one point, he tells us: “Most of the poets are

counted among the ANgiras, only the origin of the
KuSika-GAthin-ViSvAmitra (book 3) and of the
66
Atri Bhauma (book 5) remains unclear.” This
appears to imply that except, perhaps, for the
ViSvAmitras and Atris, all the other RSis, and
groups of RSis, belong to the ANgiras family.
But, elsewhere, he tells us: “ViSvAmitra is, via his

67
teacher GAthin, a Jamadagni, ie. a BhRgu.”
And, in referring to MaNDala VIII, as we have

seen, he divides the hymns into two groups: “the
KANva in hymns 1-66 and the Angirasa in the
68
rest.”
These two statements would now imply that the

BhRgus (whom he counts as one family with the
ViSvAmitras) and the KANvas are also not
ANgirases.
In referring to the VasiSThas, Witzel tells us:

“VasiSTha and his descendants… count
themselves among the ANgiras. (7.42.1;
69
7.52.3).” But an examination of the two verses
clearly shows that the VasiSTha composers of
VII.42.1; 52.3, only refer to ANgirases, they do
not claim that they (the composers) are
themselves ANgirases.
And when, in a like manner, the ViSvAmitras

(III.53.7) and the Atris (V.11.6) also refer to
ANgirases, Witzel does not treat this as evidence
that the ViSvAmitras and Atris also “count
themselves among the Angiras.”
Ultimately, it is impossible to know exactly how

many families of composers there are in the
Rigveda according to Witzel.
The actual facts are not difficult to elucidate: the

Rigveda has ten AprI-sUktas, and these clearly
indicate that there are ten different families of
composers in the Rigveda: the KaNvas,
ANgirases, Agastyas, GRtsamadas, ViSvAmitras,
Atris, VasiSThas, KaSyapas, Bharatas and
BhRgus.
But Witzel’s analysis of the text does not appear

to uncover these basic facts.
His careless interpretations, naturally, lead to

wrong conclusions. Having arbitrarily decided
that the ViSvAmitras are BhRgus, he treats the
references to BhRgus in the DASarAjña hymns as
references to ViSvAmitras, and concludes: “there
is even the possibility that it was ViSvAmitra who -
in an act of revenge - forged the alliance against
his former chief. Whatever the reason, however,
the alliance failed and the PUru were completely
ousted (7.8.4, etc) alongwith ViSvAmitra
70
(=BhRgu, 7.18.6).”
Thus SudAs’ battle with an Anu-Druhyu

confederation whose priests were the (non-
Jamadagni) BhRgus, is interpreted by Witzel as a
battle with the PUrus whose priest was
ViSvAmitra!
3. The names of the authors (composers) of the

hymns consist of two parts: the actual names, and
the patronymics. Witzel’s understanding, and
use, of these names and patronymics is
characterized by characteristic carelessness.
In one place, he tells us: “GArtsamada Saunaka

71
is made a BhArgava…”
Incidentally, a Saunaka cannot be “made” a

BhArgava; Saunakas are (a branch of)
BhArgavas. The proper description of
GRtsamada in the AnukramaNIs is GRtsamada
Saunahotra ANgiras paScat Saunaka BhArgava:
ie. “GRtsamada, a Saunahotra ANgiras, became
(or was adopted into the family of) a Saunaka
BhArgava.”
But, to return to the main point, Witzel refers to

the eponymous GRtsamada as GArtsamada, ie.
“Son or descendant of Grtsamada”.
A RSi belonging to a particular family can be
referred to either by the patronymic form, or by
the name of the eponymous RSi whose name
forms part of the patronymic: thus, a RSi
belonging to the ViSvAmitra family can be called
“a VaiSvAmitra” (ie. “son or descendant of
ViSvAmitra” by patronymic) or “a ViSvAmitra” (by
the name of the eponymous RSi), but the
eponymous ViSvAmitra himself cannot be called
VaiSvAmitra (by patronymic).
The failure on the part of Witzel to distinguish

between names and patronymic forms leads him
into another mistake: in referring to the genealogy
of the KaNva composers of MaNDala VIII, he
gives us the following lineage: “(Pras-?) KaNva/
KANva - KANva Ghora - PragAtha Ghaura –
72
PragAtha KANva……”
Thus, Witzel reads the name KaNva Ghaura,

“KaNva, son of Ghora” as KANva Ghora, “Ghora,
son of KaNva”! He then goes on to extend the
confusion to the other members of the family.
The actual lineage is as follows: “Ghora ANgiras -

KaNva Ghaura - PraskaNva KANva and PragAtha
KANva/Ghaura.”
Thus far, Witzel’s carelessness reflects the

attitude of a person who does not feel it is
necessary to be too finicky about details. His
carelessness, naturally, leads to a wrong picture
of the Rigveda, but it is as yet pointless
carelessness.
Now we will examine a “key parametre” in

Witzel’s analysis which is vital to his theory that
the Aryans immigrated from Afghanistan to India,
and point where his carelessness is definitely
more calculated.
V
THE CHRONOLOGY AND
GEOGRAPHY OF THE MANDALAS
The fourth and most vital “key parametre” in
Witzel’s analysis is “geographical features,
73
especially rivers and mountains…” which forms
his fourth grid of reference.
On the basis of this, he purports to formulate his

fifth grid of reference, “a grid of poets, places and
74
tribes” , and to combine it with a sixth grid, “a
chronological grid established on the strength of a
few pedigrees of chiefs and poets available from
75
the hymns” , to produce a picture of the Aryans
migrating from Afghanistan into India.
The resulting chronological and geographical

picture, as we have seen, is as follows:
MANDALA "WEST" "NORTHWEST" "PANJAB" "KURUKSETRA" "EAST"

II WEST NORTHWEST --- --- ---
IV WEST NORTHWEST PANJAB --- ---
VII WEST NORTHWEST PANJAB KURUKSETRA ---
V WEST NORTHWEST PANJAB KURUKSETRA ---
VI WEST NORTHWEST (PANJAB) KURUKSETRA EAST
III --- --- PANJAB KURUKSETRA ---
VII --- --- PANJAB KURUKSETRA ---
The chronological order of the MaNDalas,

according to Witzel, is thus: II, IV, VIII, V, VI, III
and VII.
How does Witzel get a chronological order so

completely different from our own (which is VI, III,
VII, IV, II, V, VIII)?
The answer is very simple: although Witzel

postulates the establishment of a chronological
grid “on the strength of a few pedigrees of chiefs
and poets available from the hymns,” he does not
establish any such grid.
What Witzel actually does is as follows: he draws

up a geographical picture for each MaNDala of
the Rigveda; and then, on the principle “the more
western the geography of a MaNDala, the older
the MaNDala”, he prepares a chronological grid
arranging the MaNDalas in such a way as to
show a movement from west to east. “Pedigrees
of chiefs and poets” play no role at all in this
chronological grid!
What is more, even the geographical picture for

each MaNDala, as drawn up by Witzel, is based
on the manipulation and misinterpretation of
geographical data, manipulated to show this
movement.
It would be futile to repeat all the evidence of the

“pedigrees of chiefs and poets” in the Rigveda to
show how and why Witzel’s chronological
arrangement of the MaNDalas is wrong; the
reader can simply turn back the pages of this (our
present) book and examine the evidence for
himself.
We will, instead, examine Witzel’s manipulations

and misinterpretations, step by step, on the basis
of his own assertions and admissions:
1. To begin with, Witzel’s main aim in establishing

a chronological grid is to show a movement from
Afghanistan to India. For this purpose, the
“oldest” MaNDala must necessarily be located in
Afghanistan.
Now Witzel is aware that the Family MaNDalas

are generally accepted as the oldest parts of the
Rigveda: “it appears that the Rgveda was
composed and assembled… beginning at ‘the
76
centre’ with books 2-7.” Hence the “oldest”
MaNDala has to be a Family MaNDala.
But four of the six Family MaNDalas refer to the

eastern rivers; GaNgA (MaNDala VI), JahnAvI
(MaNDala III), and YamunA (MaNDalas V and
VII). That rules out these four MaNDalas, so far
as Witzel is concerned.
Of the other two MaNDalas, MaNDala IV refers to
a key river of Afghanistan, but it also refers to two
rivers in eastern Punjab, the ParuSNI and the
VipAS. MaNDala II, however, does not refer to
either the GaNgA or the YamunA, or to any river
of the Punjab.
Hence Witzel decides that the two oldest

MaNDalas are MaNDalas II and IV, in that order.
2. Before going on, it will be necessary to clarify

the position about MaNDala III. Witzel does not
identify the JahnAvI with GaNgA, so why does he
rule out MaNDala III from being the oldest
MaNDala?
There are other factors:
a. One of the clearest “pedigrees” in

the Rigveda is the DivodAsa-SudAs
relationship. Witzel notes in his
77
“grid of royal succession” that
DivodAsa is an ancestor of SudAs.
And he also cannot escape the fact

that DivodAsa, the ancestor, is
contemporaneous with MaNDala
VI: “In book 6 of the BharadvAja,
the Bharatas and their king
78
DivodAsa play a central role.” Nor
that SudAs, the descendant, is
contemporaneous with MaNDala III
“Book 3… represents the time of
79
king SudAs.”
Hence Witzel cannot place

MaNDala III earlier than MaNDala
VI.
b. MaNDala III mentions KIkaTa in

Bihar, the easternmost location
named in the Rigveda. Witzel,
naturally, finds such an eastern
location difficult to swallow, and
asserts that the KIkaTas are “still
frequently misplaced in Magadha
(McDonell and Keith, 1912,
Schwartzberg, 1975) even though
their territory is clearly described as
being to the south of KurukSetra, in
eastern Rajasthan or western
Madhya Pradesh, and Magadha is
beyond the geographical horizon of
80
the Rigveda.”
Here, incidentally, Witzel indulges not just in

manipulation, but in outright misrepresentation:
nowhere are the KIkaTas described, clearly or
otherwise, as being to the south of KurukSetra.
But the point is that the westernmost location that

Witzel dares to place the KIkaTas is in
KurukSetra, which, in any case, he has to admit is
the area of MaNDala III: “Book 3 concentrates on
81
the Punjab and the KurukSetra area.” He does
not dare to place the kIkaTas in Afghanistan.
This naturally rules out MaNDala III from being
the “oldest” MaNDala.
3. MaNDala II does not refer to either the GaNgA

or the YamunA, or to any river of the Punjab, and
so Witzel decides that it is the oldest MaNDala in
the Rigveda.
But there is a snag: MaNDala II refers to the

SarasvatI, and frequently so. However, the
SarasvatI does not represent such a big problem,
since there is another SarasvatI (HaraxvaitI) in
Afghanistan, and this leaves scope for
manipulation.
Witzel therefore suggests that the “SarasvatI in

2.3.8 probably also refers to an ancestral home in
Afghanistan, being reminiscent of the Avestan
river HaraxvaitI rather than referring to the modem
82
Ghaggar-Hakra in the Panjab.”
Witzel says “probably”, and gives no reasons for

his suggestion. But, thereafter, he treats the
identification as an established fact, and, in his
83
Appendices A and B, he locates MaNDala II
exclusively in the West and Northwest. And his
descriptions of Rigvedic history in the period of
MaNDala II deal exclusively with the Vedic Aryans
“fighting their way through the NW mountain
84
passes.” (ie. “the passes leading into South
85
Asia from Afghanistan” ).
It is clear that Witzel is fully aware that he is

indulging in deliberate misrepresentation:
a. He uses the word “probably”

while making the suggestion; and in
his Appendices A and B, he places
a question-mark when he locates
86
“SarasvatI? 2. 41.6” in the West.
And, everywhere else in the Rigveda, he accepts

that SarasvatI refers to the river of KurukSetra:
“Many of the rivers can be identified… SarasvatI
87
= Sarsuti, Ghaggar-Hakra…”. In his Appendices
88
A and B, the SarasvatI in MaNDalas III ,
89 90
VI and VII is placed in KurukSetra. In respect
of MaNDala VIII, Witzel strangely locates the
same reference to the SarasvatI twice in the
91
West: “SarasvatI 8.21.17-18 in Afghanistan”
92
and “Citra on SarasvatI in Iran? 8.21.17-18” ,
and once in KurukSetra: “Citra on SarasvatI
93
8.21.17-18” !
And he offers no argument or piece of evidence

to explain why, only in the case of MaNDala II, he
places this river squarely in Afghanistan.
b. The particular references given

by Witzel (I1.3.8; 41.6) not only give
no cause for assuming that the river
of Afghanistan is being referred to,
but one of them in fact confirms that
it is the river of KurukSetra.
II.3.8 refers to the three Goddesses of

KurukSetra: BhAratI, ILA and SarasvatI. They
are the Goddesses of the holy pilgrim centres in
KurukSetra, of which two, ILAyAspada and
MAnuSa, are referred to in III.23.4.
And it is clear that Witzel is not unfamiliar with this

KurukSetra milieu: at one place, he refers to
“MAnuSa, a location ‘in the back’ (west) of
94
KurukSetra.”
c. Of particular significance is the

fact that Witzel concedes that the
SarasvatI in MaNDala VI is the river
of KurukSetra.
A “pedigree of poets” establishes that MaNDala II

is definitely later than MaNDala VI: Grtsamada,
the eponymous RSi of MaNDala II is a
descendant of Sunahotra BhAradvAja, a
composer in MaNDala VI.
Witzel himself is aware of this. He clearly admits

as much: “Theoretically, since GArtsamada
Saunaka is made a BhArgava, he could be later
95
than Book 6.”
However, he discreetly places this admission,

ambiguously worded, in a footnote, and uses the
words “theoretically… could be…” to discount its
importance.
He furnishes no explanation as to why this clear

pedigree is treated as “theoretical” and doubtful,
and not used as a basis for establishing his
chronological grid; nor does he furnish any
alternative pedigree purporting to show the
opposite case (ie. that MaNDala II is older than
MaNDala VI).
Instead, he firmly ignores the whole matter

throughout his analysis.
The reason for this suppressio veri operation is an

obvious one: MaNDala VI not only refers to the
SarasvatI (and even Witzel accepts that the
SarasvatI in this MaNDala is the river of
KurukSetra), it also refers to the GaNgA, the
easternmost river named in the Rigveda. If
MaNDala VI is older than MaNDala II, then the
SarasvatI of MaNDala II clearly cannot be
identified with the river of Afghanistan, with the
Aryans still “fighting their way through the NW
passes” on the way from Afghanistan to India.
Despite (and even because of ) his manipulations,

it is clear that Witzel’s chronological placement of
MaNDala II as the oldest MaNDala in the
Rigveda, and his geographical placement of this
MaNDala in Afghanistan, are gross
misrepresentations.
4. But MaNDala VI cannot be ignored. Witzel is

clearly aware that MaNDala VI is older than
MaNDala II, and MaNDala VI refers to the GaNgA
in a hymn which Witzel is compelled to admit is
96
“an unsuspicious hymn” (by which he means “a
97
hymn not suspected to be an addition” ). This
places MaNDala VI squarely in the east, and this
is fatal to Witzel’s claims about MaNDala II.
Witzel, as we have seen, tries suppressio veri.

But he does not leave it at that. He realizes that
MaNDala VI cannot be allowed to flourish in a
purely eastern milieu: a bit of suggestio falsi is
necessary to transport MaNDala VI also to the
west.
YavyAvatI (V1. 27.6), which, as we have seen, is

another name for the DRSadvatI river of
KurukSetra, is therefore identified by him with the
Zhob river, and firmly placed in the West in his
98
Appendices A and B. For this, he cites the
testimony of some earlier scholars: “See Geldner,
99
ad loc and Hillebrandt 1913:49 sqq.”
But is this identification valid? And, equally

important, does Witzel himself really believe it is?
This is the only river in the whole of the Rigveda

which has been consistently misidentified by the
traditional Western scholars. There seems no
sense at all in the identification of the YavyAvatI
with the Zhob; and it would almost seem as if the
earliest scholars who suggested this identification
may have been led to it by a method involving
nothing more than a map of the northwest, a
drawing pin, a blindfold, and childhood memories
of a game called “pin-the tail-on-the donkey”.
Most subsequent scholars have accepted this

identification, for lack of any alternative
suggestion, but nearly always with some
puzzlement.
Witzel himself accepts it with a doubtful “may be”

and a question-mark: “May be the Zhob river in N.
100
Baluchistan?”
However, in another context, and another book,

he is more frank. Referring to the only other
reference (anywhere outside this single reference
in the Rigveda) to the YavyAvatI, in the
PancaviMSa BrAhmaNa, Witzel notes: “the river
YavyAvatI is mentioned once in the RV; it has
been identified with the Zhob in E. Afghanistan.
At PB 25.7.2, however, nothing points to such a
W. localisation. The persons connected with it
are known to have stayed in the Vibhinduka
101
country, a part of the Kuru-PañcAla land.”
It may well be asked: does anything in MaNDala

VI “point to such a W. localisation”? The only
other rivers mentioned in this MaNDala, by
Witzel’s own admission, are the SarasvatI of
KurukSetra, and the GaNgA.
Clearly MaNDala VI can be located only in the

east.
(Incidentally, although Witzel does not expressly

say so, his identification of TRkSi as “the son of
102
Trasadasyu” would appear to constitute a
pedigree showing MaNDala VI to be a late one.
But, quite apart from the fact that TRkSi, as we
have shown, is not the name of Trasadasyu’s
son, but the name of their tribe, the relevance of
the reference to TRkSi in VI.46.8, even if it is
taken to be a reference to Trasadasyu’s son, in
the determination of the chronological position of
this MaNDala, is discounted by Witzel himself
when he notes that “Oldenberg (1888:197 sqq)
regards this hymn also as one that violates the
order at the end of a series, and as one to be
103
divided into pragAthas” ie. it is one of the
“hymns which clearly violate the order of
arrangement and thus stand out as later
104
additions.” )
5. Witzel intends to show that the Aryans

migrated from west to east, ie. from Afghanistan
to India. This migration can be shown by merely
demonstrating that they were in Afghanistan in
one MaNDala, in the Punjab in the next, and in
the KurukSetra region in a subsequent one,
thereby indicating an eastward movement. But
such a scenario becomes more credible when
actual movements can be seen taking place in
the background of specific historical events.
Witzel sees the crossing of the Indus as a specific

historical incident in the migration from
Afghanistan to India, and he finds this crossing
recorded in two MaNDalas: in the oldest of the
seven MaNDalas, MaNDala II, at the time the first
crossing actually took place; and in the latest of
the seven MaNDalas, MaNDala VII, which, by
virtue of being the last historical MaNDala, carries
out a nostalgic and summational review of the
migration of the Bharatas, the Vedic Aryans
proper.
The first migration, according to Witzel, is

recorded in II.15.6 when “the Sindhu is
105
crossed.”
Later, MaNDala VII records the full migration story

of the Bharatas and their priest VasiSTha who
“came from across the Sindhu, ie. from eastern
106
Iran (7.33.3).”
As Witzel describes it : “The geography of the

battle hymn (and later summaries as in 7.33)
clearly reflects a look back at the immigration of
the Bharatas… The process began behind the
*
Sindhu, which VasiSTha crosses in 7,33.9. Then
came the battle of the ten kings on the ParuSNI
(the modern RavI in Pakistan), near MAnuSa, a
location ‘in the back’ (west) of KurukSetra… Their
eventual arrival on the YamunA and the defeat of
the local chief Bheda are finally chronicled in
7.18.19. The whole process refers to the origins
of the Bharatas and VasiSTha in eastern Iran;
their move into the Subcontinent is also reflected
elsewhere in book 7 (7.5.3, 6) and summed up in
7.33.3: ‘thus he (Indra) transgressed with them
(the Bharata) the Sindhu, thus he soon killed
Bheda in (the YamunA battle), thus, he helped
SudAs in the Ten Kings’ Battle’… Although they
reached as far east as the YamunA, however,
their epi-centre was in the area around the
SarasvatI, previously occupied by the now
107
defeated PUru.”
An exciting story, which starts with the crossing of

the river Indus: the crossing by earlier waves of
Aryans in II.15.6; and the historical crossing by
the Vedic Aryans proper, the Bharatas, in
VII.33.3.
But a simple question arises: do these two

verses, II.15.6 and VII.33.3, actually refer to
crossings of the Indus at all, in the first place? As
we have seen in our analysis of the Rigveda,
MaNDalas II and VII do not refer to the Indus river
at all.
An examination of the two verses shows that

these verses not only do not refer to the Indus at
all, but, while they do refer to rivers, they do not
even refer to the crossings of these rivers!
The word Sindhu basically means “river”, and that

is what it means in both these verses.
In II.15.6, the reference is to a mythical clash

between Indra and USas on the banks of a river
(Griffith’s translation: “With mighty power he made
the stream move upward, crushed with his
thunderbolt the car of USas.”). And which is this
stream or river? No guesswork is required: the
Rigveda refers to this myth in one more hymn,
VI.30.11, as well (Griffith’s translation: “So there
this car of USas lay, broken to pieces, in VipAS,
and she herself fled away.”).
And, as to VII.33.3, Griffith translates the verse as

follows: “So, verily, with these he crossed the
river, in company with these he slaughtered
Bheda…”. About “the river”, he clarifies in his
footnote that it means “the YamunA”, and refers
also to VII.18.19: “YamunA and the TRtsu aided
Indra. There he stripped Bheda bare of all his
treasures.”
(Incidentally, it is no wonder that Witzel’s

reference to Griffith is a sour one: “The fact that
there has not been a new English translation
since Griffith’s inadequate effort of the late-19th
century (Griffith 1973) has particularly hindered
research in South Asian and other English-
108
speaking academic circles.” Griffith’s
reasonably honest and objective translation is
certainly a hindrance to scholarship of the Witzel
brand.)
So here we have a case of a scholar taking a

button (and an imaginary button at that) and
sewing a vest onto it:
Witzel takes up two verses which clearly refer to

eastern rivers, misinterprets them as references
to the Indus, further misinterprets them as
references to crossings of the Indus river from
west to east, and then reconstructs an entire saga
of the immigration of the Rigvedic Aryans into
India on the basis of these misinterpretations. He
109
even pinpoints the exact area “eastern Iran”
from which specific immigrants, “the Bharatas and
110
VasiSTha” , led this historical exodus across
the Indus.
Is “gross misrepresentation” an adequate word to
describe this whole exercise?
To sum up, Witzel’s analysis is based on

manipulations and misinterpretations.
Witzel claims to arrive at his conclusions on the

basis of a combination of a geographical grid and
a chronological grid, but, as we have seen, he
does not prepare a chronological grid at all: else,
he would never place MaNDala II before
MaNDala VI (when the very eponymous RSi of
MaNDala II is a descendant of a composer,
Sunahotra BhAradvAja, in MaNDala VI) or
MaNDala VIII before MaNDala III (when the very
eponymous RSi of MaNDala VIII is a descendant
of a composer, Ghora ANgiras, in MaNDala III).
His sole criterion in preparing a chronological

arrangement is his own geographical grid
prepared on the basis of deliberate
misinterpretations of Rigvedic geography.
Ultimately, Witzel only succeeds in deliberately

doing what he accuses others of doing: his
writings turn out to be very effective in “further
cloud (ing) the scientific evolution of textual
111
sources.”
VI
GEOGRAPHICAL MISREPRESENTATIONS
The sole aim of Witzel’s papers is to show that

the Aryans migrated from west to east, ie. from
Afghanistan to India.
Hence everything in his writings is slanted to

produce this picture before the mind’s eye of the
reader, either through direct statements,
insinuations, or subtle nuances of expression and
description.
It is not necessary to list out every single such

geographical misrepresentation on the part of
Witzel, since his papers are dotted with them.
The following examples will suffice to illustrate his
general method:
1. Witzel’s geographical analysis is supposed to

encompass “geographical features, especially
112
rivers and mountains……”
However, mountains figure in the Rigveda in a

general, rather than a specific sense. That is,
specific mountains, geographically identifiable,
such as MUjavat, etc., appear only in the late
MaNDalas. The Family MaNDalas do not refer to
a single mountain by name.
But Witzel, far from being put off by this, finds this
very convenient from the point of view of his own
particular method of geographical analysis: every
single, direct or indirect, reference to a mountain,
or mountains, anywhere in the Rigveda, is treated
by him as a reference to Afghanistan.
Thus: “They have ‘crossed many rivers’ and ‘have
gone through narrow passages’, which once
again indicates the mountainous terrain of
113
Afghanistan.”
Likewise, in his Appendices A and B, the following

constitute some of his “Geographical Data in the
Rgveda” indicating the West and Northwest:
114
“Mountains, 2.12.1”
115
“Mountains and Plains, 6.24.8”
116
“Mountains, Rivers, 8.31.10”
117
“Mountains, Sea? 8.38.13”
118
“Mountains, 8.88.3; 8.94.12”
And so on. It would appear there are no

mountains in India. So any reference to
“mountains” can only mean Afghanistan.
Practically the only reference to “mountains” east

of the Punjab (in KurukSetra) in Witzel’s
“Geographical Data in the Rgveda” is the
reference to “SarasvatI from the Mountains to the
119
Sea. 7.95.2”. The fact that the Harahvaiti of
Afghanistan does not flow into the sea apparently
constrains him from locating these particular
“mountains” (and, therefore, also this SarasvatI)
in Afghanistan, but nothing else does: we also
120
have “River, Mountains, Sea, 8.6.28-29,”
without the SarasvatI, and “Mountains, Rivers,
121 122
8.31.10” and “Mountains, Sea? 8.38.13,”
located in the Northwest.
But it is not only the word “mountains” which

constitutes 64 geographical data” indicating the
West and Northwest. The following are some of
the other “data” which also indicate these areas:
123
“UrjayantI 2.13.8”
124
“7 streams 2.12.12”
125
“7 streams 4.28.1”
126
“Rivers to the sea 6.17.12”
127
“Ayu clan 2.2.4; 2.20.4”
128
“5 PEOPLES 2.2.10”
129
“TurvIti, Vayya cross streams 2.13.12”
130
“USij crosses waters 2.21.5”
131
“KRIVI defeated”
132
“riding 2.32.3”
133
“Sons of BHARATA 2.36.2”
134
“DASA and ARYA enemies 6.33.3”
135
“Bharata Agni, DivodAsa 6.16.9”
In this manner, Witzel manages to uncover plenty

of vital “geographical data”, even in MaNDalas
like MaNDalas II and VI, which clearly point to the
West and Northwest!
Needless to say, Witzel himself sometimes

forgets the exact geographical area indicted by
“geographical data” of the above kind: thus
136
“SuyamA” indicates the Northwest in one
137
place, and KurukSetra in another.
138
Likewise “5 PEOPLES” indicates the Punjab in
139
some places, the Northwest in some others,
140
and the West in yet others.
The same reference “Rivers, Mountains, Sea

141
8.6.28-29” indicates the Punjab in one place,
142
and the Northwest in another!
2. Witzel’s general geographical statements are

cleverly worded.
In one place, he tells us: “the world of the Rgveda

contains the Punjab and its surroundings: eastern
Afghanistan, the valley of the Kabul (KubhA,
Greek Kophen), Kurram (Krumu), Gomal
(GomatI), Swat (SuvAstu), and… probably Herat
(Sarayu, Avestan Haraiiou) rivers; also the valley
of the rivers of SistAn: the SarasvatI (Haraxvaiti/
Harahvaiti) and the Helmand (*Setumant). In the
east, the GangA and the YamunA are already
143
mentioned…”
Elsewhere, he describes “the famous nadistuti of

the late book 10” (X.75) as follows: “in this
relatively late hymn, the Rgvedic territory covers
only the area between the GangA and S.E.
Afghanistan (Gomal and Kurram rivers) and
between the Himalayas and the northern border
of the modem province of Sind. Most of
Afghanistan, including Bactria and Herat
144
(Arachosia), is already out of sight.”
Are these misleading descriptions in tune with the

geographical data in the Rigveda?
Calling it “the world of the Rgveda”, Witzel

practically gives a description of Afghanistan,
after mentioning the Punjab in passing; and in the
end, he adds: “In the east, the GangA and the
YamunA are already mentioned.” And when
describing the geography of a “relatively late
hymn” in “the late book 10”, he tells us that, now,
“most of Afghanistan, including Bactria and Herat
(Arachosia) is already out of sight”.
Note the subtle use of the word “already” in both
the above descriptions. The impression given is
that the areas of Afghanistan constitute the core
and original areas of the Rigveda, which are
slowly moving out of its ken, while the areas of
the GaNgA and the YamunA are slowly moving
into its ken: “the newly emerging GaNgA
145
Valley” as he puts it elsewhere.
The GaNgA and the YamunA are certainly

mentioned (not “already mentioned”): four of the
six Family MaNDalas (MaNDalas III, V, VI and
VII) mention them; while only two (MaNDalas IV
and V) mention the rivers of Afghanistan, and
about one of the two (MaNDala V), Witzel himself
admits that the rivers named are not necessarily
indicative of the core area of the MaNDala: “all
these geographical notes belonging to diverse
hymns are attributed to one and the same poet,
SyAvASva, which is indicative of the poet’s
146
travels.”
At the same time, no part of Afghanistan is

“already out of sight” in “the late book 10”.
Practically every single river of Afghanistan
named in any Family MaNDala is named in
MaNDala X as well: Sarayu (X.64.9), RasA
(X.75.6; 108.1,2; 121.4), KubhA (X.75.6) and
Krumu (X.75.6); alongwith many others not
named in the Family MaNDalas: TRSTAmA,
Susartu, Sveti, GomatI and Mehatnu (all named in
X.75.6).
(Incidentally, about JahnAvI in MaNDala III, which

Witzel does not identify with the GaNgA, his
failure to make the identification, while it may not
be deliberate, is strange, since a strong clue to
this identity is the word SimSumAra, “dolphin”,
which is found in I.116.19 in association with the
word JahnAvI in I.116.18. In another context, and
another book, Witzel immediately recognizes the
geographical connotations of a reference to a
dolphin in the JaiminIya BrAhmaNa: “A dolphin
lying on the sands, dried out by the North wind,
could refer to the Gangetic dolphin, as in fact it
147
does at 1.17.6 § 62” .)
3. Witzel is not satisfied with identifying “the world

of the Rgveda” with Afghanistan. He tries to take
the Rigveda as far west as possible, at least in
the form of “vague reminiscences of foreign
localities and tribes in the Rigveda” - even as far
west as the Urals:
“Taking a look at the data relating to the

immigration Of Indo-Aryans into South Asia, one
is struck by the number of vague reminiscences
of foreign localities and tribes in the Rgveda, in
spite of repeated assertions to the contrary in the
secondary literature… Indirect references to the
immigration of Indo-Aryan speakers include
reminiscences of Iran, Afghanistan and Central
Asia. Thus the mythical Indo-Iranian river *RasA
corresponds to the Vedic RasA (RV, JB), the East
Iranian RanhA and the North Iranian RahA, which
is preserved in Greek as RhA, where it
designates the river Volga. This is a good
example of the migration of river-names… In the
same category might fall the rather vague
identification of Rgvedic rip- with the Rhipaean
mountains, the modern Urals (Bongard-Levin
1980)… A cosmological myth locates the
primordial cows in a cave (Vala, cf. Iranian Vara)
on an island in the RasA, where they were
guarded by a group of demons referred to as
PaNis, which reminds one of the North Iranian
*Parna (found in Greek as Parnoi). Another North
Iranian tribe occurs in Skt. as DAsa; Iranian
(Latin) Dahae, (Greek) Daai. A related form is
dasyu, Iranian dahyu, dainhu ‘foreign country,
enemy’ and Vedic dAsa ‘slave’, Iranian dAha(ka),
Mycaenean Greek doero, Greek doulos ‘slave’. …
More connections are indicated, for example, by
Vedic Sindhu, with a possible Greek cognate
Sindoi, designating a people along the Koban
River in the Caucasus… Further hydronomic
evidence, also referred to in the previous paper,
also points to earlier Indo-Aryan settlements in
Afghanistan: SarasvatI, Sarayu, GomatI etc. The
names, considered together, retain a vague
memory of the route followed, and of the enemies
encountered, by the migrating Indo-Iranian
speaking tribes… The ParSu may be equated
with the historical Pashtuns living in the Northwest
Frontier and in Afghanistan.... DRbhIka (2.14.3)
may be compared with the Iranian tribes of
Derbikes, and the incoming USij (2.21.5)
represents an ancient Iranian clan as well as an
Indian one… An Iranian connection is also clear
when camels appear (8.5.37-39) together with the
Iranian name KaSu ‘small’ (Hoffman 1975), or
with the suspicious name Tirindra and the ParSu
(8.6.46)… They have crossed many rivers’ and
‘have gone through narrow passages’, which
once again indicates the mountainous terrain of
Afghanistan. That they had to fight their way
through some of these passages is suggested by
numerous references to the storming of the
mountain fortresses (pur) of Sambara (eg.
2.19.6); echoed in later history by the campaigns
148
of Alexander in Nuristan and Swat Kohistan.”
Witzel is apparently “struck” by the number, and

conclusive nature, of these “vague reminiscences
of foreign localities and tribes”, but the only thing
they leave us “struck” by is Witzel’s seeming, and
convenient, credulousness (for a person who
refuses to accept even the well-documented and
established identification of the KIkaTas with
Magadha):
a. The reference to “the rather

vague identification of rip- with the
Rhipaean mountains, the modern
Urals” is intriguing. Where is the
word rip- found in the Rigveda?
What does it mean? In what
context is it used? And what, in the
name of heaven, shows that it has
the faintest connection with the
Rhipaean (Ural) mountains?
And, finally, does Witzel himself really believe that

this identification has the faintest credibility? Not
only does he call it a “rather vague identification”
here, but, elsewhere, he again refers to this word
as representing “perhaps, a very faint recollection
of the Rhipaean (Ural) mountains”, and adds the
wry rider “if we want to believe the Russian author
149
G. Bongard-Levin (1980)”. Clearly, whether
Witzel really believes it or not, he certainly wants
to believe it.
The identification, needless to say, is a spuriour

one. And not a well thought out one either (P.N.
Oak could have taught Bongard-Levin a thing or
two in such matters). What is surprising is that
this kind of nonsense has “nevertheless found its
way into even otherwise respectable scholarly
150
publications.”
b. Apart from rip-, Witzel cannot

pinpoint one single “foreign locality”
named in the Rigveda. The only
names he points out are four river-
names; the SarasvatI, Sarayu,
GomatI, and RasA, which are
names of rivers to the west of the
Indus, but also, in the first three
cases, names of other rivers within
India.
So far as the Rigveda is concerned, not one of

these four names represents either
“reminiscences” or “foreign localities”. The
SarasvatI named in the Rigveda is the river of
KurukSetra and not the river of Afghanistan.
The Sarayu, GomatI and RasA named in the

Rigveda are certainly western rivers, being
western tributaries of the Indus (and not, in the
first two cases, the rivers of eastern Uttar
Pradesh), but they do not represent
“reminiscences” either; on the contrary, they are
rivers which appear relatively late in the Rigveda,
after the Vedic Aryans had expanded westwards:
not one of these three rivers is named in the three
oldest Family MaNDalas (by our reckoning, not
Witzel’s), while all of them are named in the late
MaNDala X.
But Witzel not only treats these four names as

“reminiscences”, but he decides, broad-mindedly,
that they represent reminiscences not just of the
western banks of the Indus (where these rivers
are located) but “of Iran, Afghanistan and Central
151
Asia.”
c. Witzel also names some tribes:

“PaNis… the North Iranian *Parna
(found in Greek as Parnoi)…
Another North Iranian tribe…
Dasa… Iranian (Latin) Dahae
(Greek) Daai… Vedic Sindhu… a
possible Greek cognate Sindoi,
designating a people along the
Koban River in the Caucasus… The
ParSu… Paktha… DRbhIka
(2.14.3) may be compared with the
Iranian tribe of Derbhikes, and the
incoming USij (2.21.5) represent an
ancient Iranian clan as well as an
Indian one… the Iranian name
152
KaSu… Tirindra and the ParSu.”
All these names, according to Witzel, represent

“reminiscences of their stay in Central Asia, or, at
least, of old connections with people whom we
know to have lived in there from old Iranian
153
sources and classical authors”.
Witzel must explain how this kind of interpretation

constitutes a “scientific evolution of texual
sources”:
Does one, after reading a nineteenth-century

biography of Abraham Lincoln, conclude that
Abraham is an American name, and that the
name of the Biblical patriarch Abraham, in the Old
Testament, represents (to paraphrase Witzel): “a
reminiscence of the ancient Hebrews of their stay
in America, or at least of old connections with
people whom we know to have lived there from
nineteenth-century sources.”?
According to Witzel, the Rigveda is definitely older

than 1500 BC: “Prominent in book 7: it flows from
the mountains to the sea (7.95.2) - which would
put the battle of 10 kings prior to 1500 BC or so,
due to the now well documented dessication of
154
the SarasvatI (Yash Pal et al 1984)”
Surely it is not Witzel’s claim that the “old Iranian

sources and classical authors” (ie. Greek and
Roman authors) are equally old, or even older
than the Rigveda?
When the Rigveda is so much older than the

Persian, Greek and Roman sources cited by
Witzel, and when these tribes are clearly
described as being present in eastern areas (the
PArthavas, ParSus and Pakthas are participants
in a battle on the ParuSNI in the Punjab, the very
battle dated by Witzel “prior to 1500 BC or so”),
surely the testimony of much later texts which
locate these tribes at a later date in Afghanistan,
Iran or Central Asia, should be interpreted as
evidence that they migrated from east to west?
What is more, the PaNi, whom he identifies with

the Parnoi of northern Iran, are a mythological
entity in the Rigveda, corresponding to the Vanir
of Teutonic (particularly Scandinavian) mythology
and Pan of Greek mythology. Our very next
chapter (Appendix 3) deals with this subject in
detail.
Does this also then constitute (to paraphrase

Witzel) “reminiscences of the Scandinavians and
Greeks of their stay in Central Asia, or, at least, of
old connections with people whom we know to
have lived in there from old Iranian sources and
classical authors”?
Delving into the nostalgic memories of the

Rigvedic Aryans does not prove very profitable for
Witzel.
5. Finally, we can conclude our examination of

Witzel’s analysis of Rigvedic geography with a
classic piece of Witzel’s logic. In an incidental
reference to a verse, II.11.18, which contains the
phrase “on the left”, Witzel tells us: “on the left…
can also mean ‘to the north’, and indicates that
Vedic poets faced the east - their presumed goal -
155
in contemplating the world.”
In short, since “left” can also mean “north” in the

Vedic language, it means that the Vedic people
were facing the east, and therefore, that they
migrated into India from the west.
At another point, Witzel seems to make the same

inference when he refers to “MAnuSa, a location
156
‘in the back’ (west) of KurukSetra.”
If we reject conventional logic that directional

words in most languages are naturally oriented
towards the east (since the sun rises in the east),
and accept Witzel’s superior logic, we can arrive
at the following solution to the problem of the
location of the original Indo-European homeland:
a. The Vedic Aryans had common

words for “left” and “north”, and
likewise common words for “right”
and “south”. This proves that the
direction of their migration into India
was from west to east: ie. via
Afghanistan.
b. The Irish people also have

common words for “left” (tUath) and
“north” (tUascert), and likewise for
“right” (dess) and “south” (descert).
This proves that the direction of
their migration into Ireland was also
from west to east: ie. across the
Atlantic.
c. The Irish are the westernmost of

the Indo-European groups. All
other Indo-European groups are
located to their east. If the Irish
migrated into Ireland from the west,
the original homeland of the Indo-
Europeans as a whole must be
located to the west of Ireland: ie
across the Atlantic, in America!
Any takers for this kind of logic?
VII
VIOLATION OF BASIC PRINCIPLES
Witzel, as we have seen, violates every single

norm and basic principle, set up by himself, in the
analysis of the Rigveda. And yet, he manages to
get nowhere. The Rigveda, basically, refuses to
yield to his cajoling.
When examining the so-called “reminiscences” of

the Vedic Aryans, Witzel tells us: “one is struck by
the number of vague reminiscences of foreign
localities and tribes in the Rgveda, in spite of
repeated assertions to the contrary in the
157
secondary literature”.
The second sentence appears to imply that the

authors of the secondary literature were aware of
“reminiscences of foreign localities and tribes in
the Rgveda” and were deliberately out to
suppress or deny them by “repeated assertions to
the contrary” - which is a serious accusation to
make.
If, however, Witzel merely means that the

secondary literature, unlike (according to him) the
Rigveda, yields no evidence of memories of any
foreign past, then he is, so far as the secondary
literature is concerned, right: it does not.
Witzel is very clear in his mind about the value

which is to be placed on the testimony of later
texts so far as they concern the period of the
Rigvedic or pre-Rigvedic past.
The Rigveda is followed, in chronological order,

by the SaMhitAs of the other three Vedas: the
SAmaveda, the Yajurveda, and the Atharvaveda.
Next come the BrAhmaNa texts, followed by the
AraNyakas, and much later the UpaniSads. Long
after this come the SUtra texts (Srauta SUtras,
GRhya SUtras, Dharma SUtras).
These texts, as Witzel clearly points out, are

already so remote from the events of the Rigvedic
period that even so very important a Rigvedic
event as the Battle of the Ten Kings appears to
be a mystery to the authors of these later (ie. post-
Rigvedic) texts: “it is interesting to note that later
texts show confusion about the participants in the
battle, notably JB 3.244 which speaks of PratRd
158
instead of his descendant SudAs.”
The BrAhmaNas (notably the JaiminIya

BrAhmaNa) are relatively early texts in the stream
of Vedic literature, and the SaMhitAs of the
Yajurveda (notably the MaitrAyaNI SaMhitA and
the KaTha SaMhitA) are even earlier: “However,
even these relatively early texts manage to garble
the evidence. Thus the JB (§ 205) calls SudAs
KSatra, while KS 21.10: 50.1 has Pratardana and
159
MS 37.7 Pratardana DaivodAsI.”
Again, Witzel reiterates: “the shifting of the

tradition (has) already (taken place) in the early
YV SaMhitAs: MS 3.40.6, JB 3.244, PB 15.3.7
have substituted other names for SudAs and
160
VasiSTha.”
And, in consequence, Witzel sets out what may

be called the principle which forms the very
fundamental basis of his whole exercise of
analysing the Rigveda: “In light of these problems,
one could hardly expect the later, heavily inflated,
Epic and Puranic traditions to be of help. Clearly,
Rgvedic history will have to be reconstructed
161
principally from the Rgveda itself.”
But, after failing miserably in his efforts to produce

any direct evidence from the Rigveda, Witzel
goes scouring for evidence in later and later texts
and finally claims to have struck gold in the
BaudhAyana Srauta SUtra: “there is the following
direct statement contained in the (admittedly
much later) BSS, 18.44:397.9 sqq which has
once again been over-looked, not having been
translated yet: ‘Ayu went eastwards. His (people)
are the Kuru-PañcAla and the KASI-Videha. This
is the Ayava (migration). (His other people)
stayed at home in the West. His people are the
GAndhArI, ParSu and AraTTa. This is the
162
AmAvasava (group)’.”
This incredible assertion represents the most

blatant violation of the most basic principle laid
down by Witzel himself: “there has been a
constant misuse of Vedic sources and some
historical and pseudo-historical materials, not only
by nationalist politicians, but also by
archaeologists, and historians. Most serious is
the acceptance of much later materials as
163
authoritative sources for the Vedic period.”
Witzel, on the one hand, strongly indicts “the

acceptance of much later materials as
authoritative sources for the Vedic period”, and,
on the other, advocates the evidence of an
“admittedly much later” text in overriding that of all
the previous texts, including the Rigveda itself!
And what exactly is the value of this “evidence”?
1. The passage mis-translated by Witzel is as

follows:
“PrAn Ayuh Pravavraja, tasyaite Kuru-PañcAlAh

KASI-VidehA iti, etad Ayavam; Pratyan
amAvasus, tasyaite GAndhArayas ParSavorATTA
iti, etad amAvAsyavam”
The actual translation is: “Ayu went eastwards,

the Kuru-PañcAlas and KASI-VidehA are (his
descendants) the Ayavas; (And) AmAvasu (went)
westwards, the GAndhAras, ParSus and AraTTas
are (his descendants) the AmAvasyavas.”
A very clear case of a division of the relevant

peoples into two groups: a western group
comprising the people of Afghanistan
(GAndhAras), Iran (ParSus) and the Punjab
(AraTTas. referring to the people of the Indus
Valley), and an eastern group comprising the
people of Haryana (Kurus), western Uttar
Pradesh (PañcAlas), eastern Uttar Pradesh
(KASIs) and Bihar (Videhas); a neat division
tallying exactly with that of the Anus (Iranians)
and PUrus (Indoaryans) respectively.
The passage very definitely does not speak about

the western group having “stayed at home in the
west” in contrast with the eastern groups who
“went eastwards”.
(Incidentally, Witzel, whose cognitive abilities

seem to sharpen and flatten at will, does not
recognize the identity of the ParSus and AraTTas:
“The identity of the ParSu is unclear, and the
164
exact habitat of the AraTTas is unknown.” )
2. The passage is found in the BaudhAyana

Srauta SUtra, which is not only a “much later”
text, but whose geographical area is also located
in the east. According to Witzel himself, “one
would be inclined to locate it somewhere in
165
Eastern U.P,” more specifically: “in the Vatsa
country between the GangA and the
166
Sarayu” of Uttar Pradesh; and “while its author
knew details of KurukSetra, his connection with
the KANvas and textual correspondences with JB
and SB make it probable that he belonged to the
167
more Eastern parts of the PañcAla country.”
And it is this text, according to Witzel, which gives

a “direct statement” about details, unknown to the
168
Rigveda itself (“only known to BSS” , Witzel
assures us), of the migration of the Vedic Aryans
eastwards from Afghanistan and beyond in the
pre-Rigvedic period; while elsewhere he admits
that even as early a text as the very next
SaMhitA, the Yajurveda SaMhitA, has forgotten
the details of the most important historical event
of the Rigvedic period, the battle of the ten kings!
It is up to the readers to decide whose motivated

writings are “devoid of scholarly value” and “cloud
the scientific evaluation of textual sources”.
To be fair to Witzel, although he tries to achieve
his objective of countering those who “deny that
any movement of Indo-European into South Asia
169
has occured”, on the basis of “evidence” in the
Rigveda, by manipulations, misinterpretations and
misrepresentations; nevertheless, it is significant
that we were able, throughout our entire critique
of his work, to expose the falsity of his
contentions without having to quote from any
other scholar (apart from one or two references to
Griffith’s translations) against Witzel, except
Witzel himself! Clearly, Witzel does have a
scholarly conscience which compels him to
unwittingly let the truth slip out every now and
then.
Then why does Witzel carry on this whole

exercise in the first place?
The answer is that Witzel, like most other

Western scholars, implicitly believes that the Indo-
Europeans originated in and around South
Russia, or, at any rate, that they certainly did not
originate in India. His belief in this is practically
equivalent to a dogma: it is as unthinkable to him
that India could be the original homeland of the
Indo-Europeans as it would be that the earth is
flat.
In these circumstances, writers, particularly Indian

ones, who stake claims for India only arouse his
contempt. By and large, he would prefer to
ignore this riff-raff; but when a few Western
academicians also start saying the same things, it
is time, in Witzel’s opinion, to put a stop to this
nonsense.
In putting a stop to it, if Witzel finds that he has to

stretch or bend the facts a little, or to ignore,
suppress or distort them, it is all in the cause of
“TRUTH”. A few in-convenient facts cannot be
allowed to prevent the “TRUTH” from prevailing.
Clearly, this kind of attitude is not conducive to

any “scientific evaluation” of anything. Nor is it
conducive to any academic debate.
An academic debate on any subject should

concentrate on the pros and cons of the
arguments presented by the two (or more)
opposing sides in the debate; it should be
conducted in an open and sincere atmosphere;
and the natural desire (not academically wrong in
itself) to win the debate should not be allowed to
overpower the academic desire to arrive at the
truth.
And an academic debate cannot be won by the

simple expedient of name-calling and label-
sticking, and consequent disqualification of the
opposing side from even taking part in the debate.
Our earlier book was dismissed without a reading

or debate by classifying it, among other things, as
an “example of modern Hindu exegetical or
170
apologetic religious writing”. Hopefully, better
sense will prevail next time.
Footnotes:
1GDI, p.477.
2VAOC, P.246.
3IASA, pp.307-352.
4ibid., pp.85-125.
5IAW, pp.173-211.
6IASA, preface, p.x, footnote.
8ibid., pp.116-117.
10ibid.,p.123.
11ibid.
12ibid., preface, p.xi.
13ibid., preface, p.x.
15ibid., preface, p.x,
16ibid., p.116.
17ibid., preface, p.x
18ibid.
19ibid., preface, p.xv.
20ibid., p.324.
21ibid., p.87.
22ibid., p.91.
23ibid., p.88.
24ibid., p.92.
25ibid.
26ibid., p.87.
27ibid., p.307.
28ibid., p.87.
29ibid., p.115.
30ibid., pp.307-308.
31ibid., p.308.
32ibid., p.322.
33ibid., p.323.
34ibid., pp.338-339.
35ibid., p.320
36ibid.
37ibid., p.313.
38ibid., p.339.
39ibid.
40ibid., p.320.
41ibid., p.328.
42ibid., pp.326,329.
43ibid., p.327.
44ibid., p.331.
45ibid., p.328.
46ibid., p.332.
47ibid.
48ibid., pp.307-308.
49ibid., pp.317-318.
50ibid., p.320.
51ibid., pp.343-352.
52ibid., p.309.
53ibid.
54ibid., p.326.
55ibid., p.328.
56ibid., p.337.
57ibid., p.327.
58ibid., p.319.
59ibid., p.337.
60ibid., p.329.
61ibid., p.319.
62ibid., p.90.
63ibid., p.331.
64ibid., p.308.
65ibid., p.310.
66ibid., p.316.
67ibid., p.334.
68ibid., p.310.
69ibid., p.334.
70ibid.
72ibid., p.315.
73ibid., p.308.
74ibid.
75ibid.
76ibid., p.309.
77ibid., p.319.
78ibid., pp.332-333.
79ibid., p.317.
81ibid., p.317.
82ibid., p.331.
83ibid., pp.343, 346.
84ibid., p.331.
85ibid., p.327.
86ibid., pp.343, 346.
87ibid., p.318.
88ibid., p.347.
89ibid., p.343.
90ibid., p.344.
91ibid.
92ibid., p.350.
93ibid.
94ibid., p.335.
96ibid., p.317.
97ibid.
98ibid., pp.343, 348.
99ibid., p.317.
100ibid.
101IAW. p.193.
102ASA, p.330.
104ibid., p.311.
106ibid., p.334.
*misprint for 7.33. 3
107ibid., p.335.
108ibid., p.87.
109ibid., pp.334, 335.
110ibid., p.335.
111ibid., p.117.
112ibid., p.308.
113ibid., p.322.
114ibid., p.343
115ibid.
116ibid., p.344.
117ibid.
118ibid., p.345.
119ibid., pp.344,349.
120ibid., p.350.
121ibid., p.344.
122ibid.
123ibid., p.343.
124ibid., pp.343, 346.
125ibid., p.343.
126ibid., pp343, 348.
127ibid., p.346.
128ibid.
129ibid.
130ibid.
131ibid.
132ibid.
133ibid.
134ibid., p.349.
135ibid., p.348.
136ibid., p.345.
137ibid., p.352.
138ibid., pp.347, 349.
139ibid., p.348.
140ibid., p.349.
141ibid., p.344.
142ibid., p.350.
143ibid., p.317.
144ibid., p.318.
145ibid., p.339.
146ibid., p.317.
147IAW, p.189.
148IASA, pp.320-322.
149ibid., p.110.
150ibid., p.116.
151ibid., p.321.
152ibid., pp.321-322.
153ibid., p.110.
155ibid., p.324.
156ibid., p.335.
157ibid., p.320.
162ibid., pp.320-321.
163ibid., p.88.
164IAW, p.202.
165ibid., p.201.
166IASA, p.95.
167IAW, p.203.
168ibid., p.201.
169ibid., p.324.
170ibid.,117.
Back to Home
SaramA and the PaNis: A Mythological Theme

in the Rigveda
The myth of SaramA and the PaNis is found in

the Rigveda X.108.
The hymn, as Griffith notes, “is a colloquy

between SaramA, the messenger of the Gods or
of Indra… and the PaNis or envious demons who
have carried off the cows or rays of light which
1
Indra wishes to recover”.
But, according to Macdonell, the hymn is about

“the capture by Indra of the cows of the PaNis…
(who) possess herds of cows which they keep
hidden in a cave far beyond the RasA, a mythical
river. SaramA, Indra’s messenger, tracks the
cows and asks for them in Indra’s name, but is
2
mocked by the PaNis.”
Clearly, there is a basic difference in the above

descriptions of the myth: Griffith’s description
suggests that the cows were stolen by the PaNis,
and are sought to be recovered by Indra;
Macdonell’s description suggests that the cows
belong to the PaNis and are coveted by Indra.
The myth is a complex one, which has developed

many shades and facets in the Rigveda itself. We
will examine this myth as follows:
I. Development of the Vedic myth.

II. The PaNis in Teutonic Mythology.
III. SaramA and the PaNis in Greek Mythology.
IV. Mythology and History.
I
DEVELOPMENT OF THE VEDIC MYTH
Primitive myths came into being out of efforts to

arrive at explanations for the phenomena of
nature.
One very common phenomenon in nature is the

daily transition from day to night and night to day.
This was conceived of in mythical terms as an
eternal struggle between the forces of light and
the forces of darkness: the forces of darkness,
with unfailing regularity, stole away the Sun or its
rays, leading to the onset of night. The forces of
light, with equal regularity, rescued the Sun, or
recovered its rays, leading to the onset of
daytime.
The forces of light had a specific name: Devas

(from div-, “light”). The forces of darkness,
however, did not have such a clear-cut name, as
darkness (being merely the absence of light) is a
negative phenomenon. The action of stealing
and hiding away the Sun or its rays was likened to
that of the miserly traders and merchants who
hoarded goods and money, hence the name
PaNi, originally meaning trader or merchant, was
applied to them.
In the course of time, a regular phenomenon of

nature was converted into a single mythical
incident: the incident involving SaramA and the
PaNis.
The progressive development of the three main

mythical entities in the SaramA-PaNi myth (ie.
SaramA, the PaNis, and the cows) may be noted:
1. SaramA is progressively:
a. “the Dawn who recovers the rays

of the Sun that have been carried
3
away by night.”
b. “the hound of Indra and mother

of the two dogs called after their
mother SArameyas who are the
watchdogs of Yama the God of the
4
Dead.”
c. “the messenger of the Gods or of
5
Indra.”
2. The PaNis are progressively:
a. “in accordance with the original

meaning of the word, merchants or
6
traders.”
b. “a class of envious demons

7
watching over treasures.”
c. “the fiends who steal cows and

8
hide them in mountain caverns.”
3. The cows are progressively:
a. “the rays of light carried off and

concealed by the demons of
9
darkness,” the PaNis.
b. “the rain-clouds carried off and

10
kept concealed by the PaNis.”
c. “the PaNi’s hoarded wealth, the

cattle and the wealth in horses and
11
in kine.”
The myth starts off with the idea of the PaNis, the
demons of darkness, stealing the rays of light and
hiding them away at night, and SaramA, the
Dawn, recovering them in the morning, as a
matter of daily routine.
The original concept of the rays of light is still

present in early hymns (VI.20.4; VII.9.2), but
these rays of light are more regularly depicted as
cows.
SaramA, who searches out and recovers the rays

of the Sun is soon conceived of as a kind of
hound, “the hound of Indra, who tracked the
12
stolen cows”.
A regular phenomenon gradually becomes a

single incident: SaramA’s searching out and
tracking of the cows stolen by the PaNis becomes
a major incident in itself, and develops new
angles. In some versions, the PaNis, merchants
and boarders of wealth, now become the owners
of the cows, and Indra becomes the covetous
God who covets these cows. SaramA now
becomes a messenger of Indra and the Gods in
their quest for the cows of the PaNis. This is the
myth represented in hymn X. 108.
The further development of this myth may be

noted:
1. In X. 108, as D.D. Kosambi points out, “the

hymn says nothing about stolen cattle, but is a
direct, blunt demand for tribute in cattle, which the
PaNis scornfully reject. They are then warned of
13
dire consequences.”
As we have seen, Macdonell notes that the PaNis

“possess herds of cows which they keep hidden
in a cave far beyond the RasA, a mythical river.
SaramA, Indra’s messenger, tracks the cows and
asks for them in Indra’s name, but is mocked by
14
the PaNis.”
The gist of the hymn is as follows:
a. SaramA makes her way over

long paths and over the waters of
the RasA and conveys to the PaNis
Indra’s demand for their “ample
stores of wealth”.
b. The PaNis refuse, and tauntingly

offer to make Indra the herdsman of
their cattle.
c. SaramA warns them of dire

consequences if they refuse Indra’s
demand.
d. The PaNis express their

willingness to do battle with Indra.
But they offer to accept SaramA as
their sister if she will stay on with
them and share their cattle and
wealth.
e. SaramA, however, rejects the

offer, and issues a final warning.
Here, the hymn ends; and the battle which

follows, in which Indra defeats the PaNis, is to be
assumed.
2. The myth is also found in the JaiminIya

BrAhmaNa, II.440-442. Here, the cows are again
clearly referred to as. the cows of the Gods stolen
by the PaNis. This time, the Gods first send
SuparNa, the eagle or the “Sun-bird”. However,
the PaNis bribe him into silence, and he accepts
their gifts and returns without any information.
The enraged Gods strangle him, and he vomits
out the curds, etc. received from the PaNis.
Then the Gods send SaramA. She crosses the

RasA and approaches the PaNis. She is also
offered bribes, but ( as in the Rigveda) she
refuses their blandishments and returns to Indra
with the information that the cows are hidden
inside the RasA. She and her descendants are
then blessed by a grateful Indra.
3. The myth is found, finally, in the BRhaddevatA,

viii 24-36.
Here, the myth develops a curious twist. The

same. sequence of events takes place, but this
time SaramA accepts the bribe of the PaNis, and
apparently transfers her loyalties to them. When
she returns to Indra and refuses to disclose the
hideout of the cows, Indra kicks her in a rage.
She vomits out the milk received as a bribe, and
then goes back trembling to the PaNis.
Thus, as the myth develops, we find a radical

transformation in the relationship between
SaramA and the PaNis. From being initially
hostile to each other, the two are increasingly
identified with each other, and the nature of the
original myth is completely lost.
A side development in this whole myth is the

development of the concept of the SArameyas,
the sons of SaramA, as the hounds of Yama.
They are a pair of four-eyed hounds who guard
the pathway leading to the Realm of the Dead,
and conduct the souls of the dead to their
destination.
It will also be necessary to examine the

characteristics of another Vedic God, PUSan,
who represents one of the forms of the Sun.
PUSan is one of the older deities in the Rigveda,
being more prominent in MaNDala VI than in later
MaNDalas (five of the eight hymns to PUsan in
the Rigveda are in MaNDala VI), and many of his
characteristics later devolve onto SaramA and the
PaNis in Vedic as well as in other mythologies.
The main characteristics of PUSan are:
1. PUSan is basically an Aditya or Sun-God, and

it is clear that he represents the Morning Sun:
“according to SAyaNa, PUSan’s sister is USas or
15
Dawn.” Moreover, in I.184.3, the ASvins are
called PUSans; and the ASvins, as Griffith notes
in his very first reference to them “are the earliest
bringers of light in the morning sky who in their
chariots hasten onward before the dawn, and
16
prepare the way for her”.
2. PUSan’s main function, however, is as the God

of roadways, journeys and travellers: “As knower
of paths, PUSan is conceived as a guardian of
roads. He is besought to remove dangers, the
wolf, the waylayer from the path (1.42.1-3)… He
is invoked to protect from harm on his path
(6.54.9) and to grant an auspicious path
(10.59.7). He is the guardian of every path
(6.49.8) and lord of the road (6.53.1). He is a
guide on roads (VS.22.20). So, in the SUtras,
whoever is starting on a journey makes an
offering to PUSan, the road-maker, while reciting
RV 6.53; and whoever loses his way turns to
PUSan (AGS 3.7.8-9, SSS 3.4.9). Moreover in the
morning and evening offerings to all gods and
beings PUSan the road-maker receives his on the
17
threshold of the house.”
3. Another important function of PUSan is as the

God who helps find lost objects, particularly lost
animals, and especially lost cattle: “As knower of
the ways, he can make hidden goods manifest
and easy to find (6.48.15). He is in one passage
(1.23.14-15; cp. TS 3.3.9.1) said to have found
the king who was lost and hidden in secret… and
asked to bring him like a lost beast. So, in the
SUtras, PUSan is sacrificed to when anything lost
is sought (AGS 3.7.9). Similarly, it is characteristic
of PUSan that he follows and protects cattle
(6.54. 5,6,10; 58.2; cp. 10.26.3)… and drives
18
back the lost.” Moreover, “PUSan is the only
god who receives the epithet paSupA ‘protector of
19
cattle’ (6.58.2) directly (and not in comparison).”
Hymn VIII.29, which refers (in riddle form) to the

particular characteristics of various Gods, refers
to PUSan, in its sixth verse, as follows: “Another,
thief like, watches well the ways, and knows the
places where the treasures lie.”
4. A very distinctive characteristic of PUSan is his

close association with the goat: “His car is drawn
20
by goats (ajASva) instead of horses.” This
feature is emphasised throughout the
Rigveda: I.138.4; 162.2-4; VI. 55.3,4,6; 57.3;
58.2; IX.67.10; X. 26.8; etc.
5. Another very important function of PUSan is

that “he conducts the dead on the far path to the
Fathers…… and leads his worshippers thither in
safety, showing them the way (10.17.3-5). The AV
also speaks of PUSan as conducting to the world
of the righteous, the beautiful world of the gods
(AV 16.9.2; 18.2.53). So PUSan’s goat conducts
21
the sacrificial horse (1.162.2-3).”
In post-Vedic Indian mythology, all these entities

more or less faded away: neither SaramA nor the
PaNis nor PUSan have any important role to play
in Puranic mythology.
However, the word PaNi and its variant form VaNi

(found only twice in the Rigveda: I.112.11; V.45.6)
persisted into later times and provided the
etymological roots for a very wide range of words
pertaining to trade, commerce and economics,
and business activities: paN, “to barter, purchase,
buy, risk”; ApaNa, “market, shop”; ApaNika,
“mercantile”; paNa, “a coin vANI/baniA, “trader”;
vANijya, “commerce”, etc.
II
THE PANIS IN TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY
The PaNis are found in Teutonic mythology as the

Vanir:
1. The word Vanir is clearly cognate to the word

VaNi which is a variant form of PaNi, found twice
in the Rigveda (I.112.11; V.45.6) but increasingly
more frequently later. As YAska points out in his
Nirukta (II.17), the word VaNi is derived from the
word PaNi: paNih vaNij bhavati.
2. The Gods (Devas) and the PaNis are two equal

and opposite forces (being the forces of light and
the forces of darkness in the eternal struggle
between day and night). However, the Devas,
since they represent the more positive and more
desired phenomenon of light, are considered to
be desirable and worthy of worship; while the
PaNis, who represent the more negative (ie.
being merely the absence of light) and less
desired phenomenon of darkness, are considered
to be demonic and unworthy of worship. In
I.151.9, the PaNis are depicted as hankering after
the divinity (devatvam) of VaruNa and Mitra (who
are called Asuras or Great Gods in the fourth
verse of the hymn).
In Teutonic mythology, “besides the Aesir… there

22
was a second race of Gods, the Vanir.” This
race was considered less divine than the Aesir
(Asura), and less worthy of worship. Hence, the
overriding concern of the Vanir was “that their
rank should be recognised as equal to that of the
Aesir so that they… would receive an equal right
23
to the sacrifices made by the faithful.”
The rivalry between the Aesir and the Vanir is

reflected throughout Teutonic mythology, and the
Aesir come out triumphant in every skirmish. This
includes the struggle for the sacred mead
(reflected in Indian mythology as the struggle
between the Gods and demons for Soma, or for
Amrita, the divine nectar): “Odin used trickery to
obtain the sacred mead, source of wisdom and
poetry, which he then shared with the Äsir… the
message is clear: the Äsir gained wisdom, while
24
the Vanir proved themselves incompetent.”
The Rigveda, it must be noted, represents an

analogous situation, where the Gods are the
Devas or Asuras (Aesir) and the demons are the
PaNis (Vanir). In later Indian mythology, the
PaNis fade away, and the demons acquire the
name Asura.
3. There is a shift in nuance between the status of

the PaNis in the Rigveda and the Vanir in
Teutonic mythology: while the PaNis are outright
demons (the forces of darkness), the Vanir are a
second, if inferior, race of Gods.
However, the field of association and operations

of the Vanir is exactly the same as that of the
PaNis, but in a positive sense:
25
The PaNis are associated with “the rays of light”
26
and with “the rain-clouds”, but they are
associated as demons who steal these rays of
light and these rain-clouds, and try to prevent
mankind from receiving the benefits of these gifts
of nature. At the same time, they are associated
with trade and commerce, and with “hoarded
27 28
wealth” , as “demons watching over treasures”
and, again, denying mankind the benefit of this
wealth and these treasures.
However, in the case of the Vanir, these negative

features have become positive: “They provided
the fields and pastures and forests with sunlight
and life-giving rain… From them came the
harvests, game, and all kinds of riches in
29
general.” They are also identified with traders
and merchants, and with maritime activities: “the
Vanir were also the protectors of commerce and
30
navigation.”
4. The main incident of hostilities between the

Gods (Devas) and the PaNis described in the
Rigveda is the SaramA incident in which a female
messenger passes between the two (and which is
followed by a war in which Indra and the Gods
defeat the PaNis). The provocation for this
incident, as depicted in X.108, is nothing but the
wealth of the PaNis which is coveted by Indra and
the Gods.
In Teutonic mythology also: “One Nordic tradition

represents that war broke out between the
31
belligerent Aesir and the peace-loving Vanir.”
This war is preceded by an incident involving a
female messenger: “One day, the Vanir sent to
the Aesir - on a mission which is not explained - a
Goddess by the name of Gullveig. This Goddess
was highly skilled in all the practices of sorcery,
and by her art had acquired much gold. When,
alone, she reached the Aesir, they were, it is
supposed, tempted by her riches. They seized
32
her and submitted her to torture.” Later she
returned to the Vanir in a battered state.
In the BRhaddevatA, SaramA has shifted loyalties

and is now close to the PaNis. In the Teutonic
myth, Gullveig is already one of the Vanir. She is
now a messenger from the Vanir to the Gods
(rather than from the Gods to the PaNis). But she
is still the key to the coveted wealth of the Vanir,
and she is tortured by the Gods until she yields
this wealth (as SaramA is kicked by Indra until
she vomits out the milk received from the PaNis).
III
SARAMA AND THE PANIS IN GREEK
MYTHOLOGY
SaramA and the PaNis are found in Greek

mythology as Hermes and (his son) Pan, who
also represent, at the same time, PUSan and his
goat.
It will be noted that all the concerned Vedic

entities, SaramA, the SArameyas, the PaNis, and
PUSan, are merged into the character of Hermes:
1. The word Hermes is an exact cognate to the

word SaramA: the correspondence between the
names (though not that between the identities or
functions) has been noted by many scholars,
including Max Müller; and the Larousse
Encyclopaedia of Mythology tells us that “many
etymologies have been proposed for the name
Hermes. Some suggest a connection with the
33
Vedic Sarameyas derived from SaramA.”
The word Pan is clearly cognate to PaNi.
2. SaramA in the Rigvedic hymn is “the

34
messenger of the Gods or of Indra”, and
specially of Indra.
Hermes is also primarily “the messenger of

35
Zeus”, thereby corresponding to SaramA in
both name and function.
3. The SArameyas, the offspring of SaramA, are

the guides to the Realm of the Dead: their main
function is “to guard the path of the departed spirit
36
and lead it to the place of Yama”. This is
originally one of the functions of PUSan who
“conducts the dead on the far path to the
37
fathers”.
38
Hermes is “concerned with the underworld”, and
consequently he is also “charged with conducting
39
the souls of the dead to the underworld”.
(Incidentally, the Atharvaveda 18.4.55 refers to

40
the “harmya of Yama” , which is taken to mean a
tomb.)
4. The PaNis are basically concerned with trade

and commerce: they are “in accordance with the
original meaning of the word, merchants or
41
traders”. This original meaning of the word has
survived to this day in different words pertaining
to trade and commerce, as we have seen.
Another “meaning of paN (is) to risk, to wager, to
42
bet”.
An important and special function of Hermes is as

“the God of Commerce, the God of Profit - lawful
and unlawful - and the God of games of
43
chance”.
This characteristic of Hermes is even more

pronounced in the related South European
mythology of the Romans (the Greeks and
Romans shared a common pantheon, with
different names for basically the same Gods), in
the name. of his Roman counterpart
Mercury: “The name Mercury is connected with
the root merx (merchandise) and mercari (to deal,
trade)”, and he is “exclusively the God of
merchants… preside(s) over messages and over
44
commerce”.
5. PUSan is first and foremost a God of travellers:

as we saw, “PUSan is conceived as a guardian of
roads. He is besought to remove dangers, the
wolf, the waylayer from the path… He is invoked
to protect from harm on his path… and to grant
an auspicious path… He is the guardian of every
path… and lord of the road… So, in the SUtras,
whoever is starting on a journey makes an
offering to PUSan, the road-maker… and
whoever loses his way turns to PUSan…
Moreover in the morning and evening offerings to
all gods and beings PUSan the road-maker
45
receives his on the threshold of the house.”
Likewise, “Hermes was above all thought of as

the god of travellers, whom he guided on their
perilous ways. His image was placed where
country roads branched and at crossroads in
46
towns.”
6. SaramA is originally “the Dawn who recovers

the rays of the Sun that have been carried away
47
by night”.
Hermes is not directly identified with the dawn -

he has developed further from his roots - but
traces of this origin can be seen in his attributes:
48
He is a “God of the twilight”. This can mean
either dawn or dusk; here it means dawn: Hermes
has “the epithet Argephontes, a probable
deformation of Argeiphantes, ‘he who makes the
49
sky clear’.”
Mercury, the Roman counterpart of Hermes, also

retains traces of his origin: “among animals, the
50
cock was especially sacred to him”.
7. The canine motif is very prominent in the

Rigvedic myth: SaramA and the SArameyas are
conceived as hounds, and even the PaNis, in one
place at least (VI.51.14) are conceived as wolves.
Hermes, however, is conceived as a handsome

young man wearing winged sandals and a
helmet, and carrying a staff with two entwined
serpents facing each other. The reason for this is
simply that in Classical Greek art and
iconography, all the Gods and Goddesses, unless
ugliness is a specified attribute in their
description, are depicted as men and women of
perfect form and classic beauty.
However, the functions and characteristics of

Hermes show that he must originally have been
conceived as a kind of dog before the
compulsions of Greek art and iconography took
over:
a. Hermes was “particularly

honoured by the shepherds… his
mission was to watch over their
flocks and protect their huts. From
this doubtless arose the Greek
habit of placing at the doors of
houses a more or less crude image
51
of this God.”
Writing in a different context, Malati Shendge

makes a point which is relevant here: “Although in
Avesta no dog is associated with Yama, an
indirect link may be seen in his being described
as ‘a good shepherd’. To a shepherd, a dog is an
important mate who helps him to look after and
52
protect his flock.”
b. Hermes, as we saw, is “charged

with conducting the souls of the
53
dead to the underworld”.
This function is performed by dogs in most

mythologies of the world: not only in the Rigveda
and the Avesta, but even in Egyptian mythology
where we have “Anubis, ancient jackal-headed
Egyptian deity… His name means watcher, and
guardian of the dogs. With Upuant, he presides
over the abode of the dead and leads them to the
54
judgement hall…”
c. SaramA, the hound of Indra,

helps track down and recover
Indra’s cows stolen by the PaNis. A
dog, as we shall see presently,
figures in a different way in a
jumbled version of this myth found
in Greek mythology.
8. The main myth pertaining to SaramA and the

PaNis, as we have seen, is the one represented
in one whole hymn (X.108) in the Rigveda, and in
other developed versions in the JaiminIya
BrAhmaNa (II.440-442) and the BRhaddevatA
(viii, 24-36).
Incredibly, this myth is found in Greek mythology

in three different forms, all of which are
individually traceable to the original Vedic myth:
a. The PaNis, as per the myth,

“possess herds of cows which they
keep hidden in a cave beyond the
55
RasA,” to protect them from
Indra, the thunder-God or God of
rain.
The Encyclopaedia of Classical Mythology tells us

that “in the mountains (of Greece) there were
numerous ‘caves of Pan’ into which the cattle
56
were herded in bad weather”. (ie. to protect
them from the rain).
b. Greek mythology relates a myth

in which a golden dog belonging to
Zeus (the Greek thunder-God and
counterpart of Indra) is stolen by a
man significantly named Pan-
dareus: “It was Hermes who, with
the help of Iris, found in the abode
of Tantalus the golden dog
57
Pandareus had stolen from Zeus.”
The first point to be noted is that Zeus (like Indra)

possesses a dog. This dog itself is stolen. It is
found jointly by Hermes and Iris (who is a female
58
“messenger of the Gods” ).
As per the original myth, Hermes should have
been both the dog of Zeus as well as the female
“messenger of the Gods” who finds the stolen
cows of Zeus. However, Hermes has been
transformed so that he is neither a dog nor a
female. Hence, the original SaramA-PaNi myth is
found in a jumbled form: cows are absent in this
version, and Hermes finds the dog of Zeus with
the help of the female “messenger of the Gods”!
c. Greek mythology relates another

incident which contains motifs of
the original myth which are missing
in the above version, but now the
original identity of the thief is
missing: in the first version, as we
saw, cows are herded into caves
called the “caves of Pan,” and in the
second version, the thief is Pan-
dareus.
Here, however, Hermes, who combines in himself

the characteristics of both SaramA and the PaNis,
is himself the thief: “On the very day of his birth,
Hermes… displayed his mischievous nature by
stealing the cattle which had been confided to the
care of Apollo… He separated fifty heifers which
he drove before him under cover of the night to
the banks of the Alpheus… shutting up the heifers
in a cavern... (later) Zeus… instructed Hermes to
59
return the heifers.”
Here, we find all the distinctive motifs of the

SaramA-PaNi myth: the stolen cattle of the Gods,
the cave hiding place on the banks of a river, the
connection of the theft with night time, etc.
Hermes (in the role of the PaNis) steals the cattle;
and Hermes himself (in the role of SaramA)
recovers them at the instructions of Zeus.
Even without noticing the SaramA-PaNi

connection, the Larousse Encyclopaedia of
Mythology notes that Apollo’s heifers are
60
“analogous to the cows of the Vedic Indra”.
IV
MYTHOLOGY AND HISTORY
The study of the mythology of the Rigveda is

definitely of great importance in the study of Indo-
European history. But it is necessary to
understand the exact sense in which it is
important: it is important in the sense that a proto-
Indo-European mythology can be reconstructed
from a comparative study of different Indo-
European mythologies, but not in the sense that
the mythology is itself an actual representation of
history.
Unfortunately, an entire academic industry has

been built up on the basis of the interpretation of
mythology as an actual representation of history,
with mythological entities and events being
interpreted as actual historical entities and events.
Thus, the PaNis of the Rigveda, who are identical

with the Vanir of Teutonic mythology (as the Gods
or Asuras of the Rigveda are with the Aesir) are
clearly purely mythical entities, and have nothing
whatsoever to do with historical entities or events
either in India or in northern Europe.
Nevertheless, at the eastern end of the Indo-

European belt, the PaNis of Vedic mythology are
identified as the non-Aryan inhabitants of India,
conquered by invading Aryans entering India from
the northwest; and at the same time, at the
western end of the Indo-European belt, the Vanir
of Teutonic mythology are identified as the non-
Aryan inhabitants of Scandinavia, conquered by
invading Aryans entering Scandinavia from the
southeast!
The Everyman’s Encyclopaedia of Non-Classical

Mythology tells us: “In Nordic myth, the Vanir
were the culture heroes of a race which seems to
61
have preceded the Aesir in Scandinavia”.
Likewise, Shan M.M. Winn tells us about

Scandinavia: “we must consider the possibility
that the region was once inhabited by a people
who were neither Indo-European nor patrilineal.
The mythical subordination of the Vanir may echo
a historical conquest, in which a matrilineal,
agrarian society was disrupted and finally
replaced by a new Indo-European ideology
62
originating from elsewhere.”
After all that we have discussed, is any comment

required on this kind of “historical” interpretation
of mythology?
The importance of mythology in the study of Indo-

European history, it must be repeatedly
emphasised, lies in the comparative study of
different Indo-European mythologies.
As we have seen, modified or transformer

versions of fragments of the SaramA-PaNi myth
are found in Teutonic mythology as well as in
Greek mythology.
What is crucial to our analysis is the fact that the

versions of Teutonic and Greek mythology bear
absolutely no discernible similarity to each other.
If not for the common point of comparison with
Vedic mythology, it would be virtually impossible
to guess that the Vanir of Teutonic mythology are
even remotely connected to Hermes and Pan of
Greek mythology; or that the Teutonic mythical
incident is in any way connected to any of the
three versions in Greek mythology.
We have already made clear in our earlier book

that any comparative study of the different Indo-
European mythologies (Vedic, Iranian, West
Asian, South European, West European, North
European, East European) shows a situation
where:
1. Practically all the elements in any

reconstructed proto-Indo-European mythology are
found in Vedic mythology, whereas only a few of
them are found in any other Indo-European
mythology.
2. The common elements are found in Vedic
mythology in their most primitive forms, closest to
the original nature-myths; while fragments of the
original myths, in later developed versions, are
found in the other Indo-European mythologies.
3. Each of the other Indo-European mythologies

has several elements in common with Vedic
mythology, but hardly any with any of the others
(not counting historical borrowings, such as Greek
Apollo in Roman mythology).
4. In respect of common elements, the Vedic

version provides the connecting link, often the
only one, between the versions in the other
mythologies.
Furthermore, considering the theory that the Indo-

Iranians had a common history after their
separation from the other Indo-Europeans, till
they separated into India and Iran respectively,
Iranian mythology has no connection with any
other mythology except Vedic.
This situation does not fit in with any model of

Indo-European origins and dispersals which
places the Indo-European homeland outside
India.
In fact, the particular myth we are examining, that

of the PaNi/Vanir/Pan, goes far in corroborating
our case for an Indian homeland:
The Teutonic Vanir and Greek Pan are definitely

derived from the Vedic PaNi, both linguistically
(since VaNi is a later form of PaNi), as well as
from the point of view of mythical development.
But, in the Rigveda itself, the word PaNi refers to

two distinct entities: firstly, it refers to actual
merchants and traders, and, secondly, it refers to
the mythical PaNis or demons of darkness. So
the question arises: which came first, the
merchants or the demons?
The fact is that almost all the Western scholars
are unanimous in placing the merchants first:
Griffith tells us that “the original meaning of the
63
word” is “merchants or traders”; and that from
first being used in reference to “a miser, a
niggard, an impious man who gives little or
nothing to the Gods,” the word PaNi came to be
“used also as the name of a class of envious
demons watching over treasures, and as an
epithet of the fiends who steal cows and hide
64
them in mountain caverns”.
Macdonell also tells us that “the word PaNi

occurs… in the sense of a ‘niggard’… from this
signification it developed the mythical meaning of
demons… who primarily withhold the treasures of
65
heaven”.
If the word PaNi in the Rigveda, which is the

precursor of the Teutonic Vanir and Greek Pan,
originally meant “a merchant or a trader” in the
earlier part of the Rigveda, then it certainly means
that the Vedic people were already a settled and
commercially prosperous people in the
geographical region indicated by the Rigveda
before the development of the mythical concept of
the PaNis (and consequently of the Vanir and of
Pan).
Footnotes:
1HOR, fn.X.108.
2VM, p.63
3HOR, fn.I.62.3
4ibid.
5HOR, fn.X.108.
6HOR, fn.VI.45.31.
7HOR, fn.I.32.11.
8ibid.
9HOR, fn.IX.111.2.
10HOR, fn.I.121.4.
11HOR, fn.I.83.4.
12HOR, fn.IV.16.8.
13CCAIHO, p.80.
14VM, p.63.
15HOR, fn.VI.55.4.
16HOR, fn.I.3.1
17VM, pp.35-36.
18ibid., p.36.
19ibid., 37.
20ibid., p. 35.
21ibid.
22LEM, p.257.
23ibid., p.275.
24HHH, p.64.
25HOR, fn.IX.111.2, etc.
26HOR, fn.I.121.4, etc.
27HOR, fn.I.83.4.
28HOR, fn.I.32.11.
29LEM, p.275.
30ibid.
31ibid.
32ibid.
33ibid.,p.133.
34HOR, fn.X.108.
35LEM, p.133.
36CDHR, p.39.
37VM, p.35.
38LEM, P.136.
39ibid., p.133.
40VM, pp. 173-174.
41HOR, fn.VI.45.31.
42CDHR, p.46.
43LEM, p.133.
44ibid., p.220
45VM, pp.35-36.
46LEM, p.133.
47HOR, fn.I.62.3.
48LEM, p.133.
49ibid.
50ibid., p.220.
51LEM, p.133.
52CDHR, p.39.
53LEM, p.133.
54EDNCM, p.13.
55VM, p.63.
56ECM, p.110.
57LEM, p.136
58ibid., p.157.
59ibid., p.135.
60ibid., p.133,
61EDNCM, p.224.
62HHH, p.64.
63HOR, fn.VI.45.31.
64HOR, fn.I.32.11.
65VM, p.157.

Back to Home

Rig Veda A Historical Analysis Shrikant Talageri PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Rig Veda A Historical Analysis Shrikant Talageri PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Rig Veda A Historical Analysis Shrikant Talageri PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

What is the book about?

What is the book about?

What are some of the topics covered in Section I?

What are some of the topics covered in Section I?

THE RIGVEDA

Bibliography and Bibliographical Index

SECTION I : THE RIGVEDA

2. The Composers of the Rigveda

3. The Chronology of the Rigveda

4. The Geography of the Rigveda

5. The Historical Identity of the Vedic Aryans

SECTION II : BEYOND THE RIGVEDA

6. The Indo-Iranian Homeland

7. The Indo-European Homeland

SECTION III : APPENDICES

8. Misinterpretations of Rigvedic History

9. Michael Witzel - An Examination of Western Vedic

10. SaramA and the PaNis: A Mythological Theme in the

Prominent place-names in Rigveda

Back to Home Back to VOI Books Back to Top

So far as the first section of this book is

However, in respect of the second and third

This, of course, is apart from the debt owed by

Also, I am very grateful to two Indian students in

And my deepest gratitude is to Shri Sita Ram

[The numbers represent footnote-numbers in this

A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the

A Grammar of the Sinhalese Language by Prof.

The Arctic Home in the Vedas by B.G. Tilak,

Ch. 8:70-73, 82-84,1 03-110, 116, 120-122, 131-

Ancient Indian Historical Tradition by F.E.

Ch. 8:19, 42, 46, 52, 55-56, 172-180, 196-207.

Aryan Invasion: A Myth by NR Waradpande,

Archaeology and Language, Vol. I: Theoretical

The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Peoples of

Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Writings and

Ch. 8: 130, 181-195, 208-225, 260.

Bhishma’s Study of Indian History and Culture by

Volume I: Beginnings of Life, Culture and History,

The Civilized Demons: The Harappans in Rigveda

The Cambridge History of Iran, Volume 3(1)

Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda,

The New Encyclopaedia Britannica in 30

The Encyclopaedia o Classical Mythology by Dr.

Everyman’s Dictionary of Non-Classical

An Etymological Glossary of the Sinhalese

Genèse de L’Inde, Bernard Sergent, Bibliothèque

The Geography of Rgvedic India by Manohar Lal

Gods, Priests and Warriors: The BhRgus of the

The Gathas of Zarathushtra and the Other Old

The History and Culture of the Indian People, Vol.

Heaven, Heroes and Happiness: The Indo-

Ch. 7: 7-14, 43-48, 51, 57, 59, 61-65, 76-78, 83,

Hindutva by V.D. Savarkar, Veer Savarkar

The History of Mankind - Cultural and Scientific

Hymns of the Rigveda (complete translation) by

Ch. 10: 1, 3-12, 15-16, 25-28, 34, 41, 47, 63-64.

The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia:

Ch. 9: 3-4, 6-100, 102-146, 148-163, 166, 168-