Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History (Paperback)

by Edwin Bryant (Author) "In the course of the early excavations at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro in the 1920s-1930s, the Indus Valley civilization came to be recognized by the world..." (more)
Key Phrases: autochthonous theory, linguistic paleontology, linguistic substrata, New Delhi, Central Asia, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

In her excellent introduction, coeditor Laurie Patton provides...a summary of the key issues involved in the debate...This monograph is an important step toward reappraising this field of enquiry and generating, as Patton suggests in her introduction, the sort of questions that could lead to rethinking the available evidence and structuring new field research. - Traditional Yoga Studies

Product Description
The major questions considered in this book are these: Are the Indo-Aryans outsiders or insiders? Did they migrate into India from Central Asia, and if not, where did they originate? Even more crucially, what is at stake in these accounts of ancient history? What issues of South Asian identity are involved? Can those of Indo-Aryan descent claim indigenous status? To what extent are the accounts of colonial historians valid? What is the role and authority of Indian scholarship in the post-colonial period? The scope and purpose of this volume is not to resolve this debate, but to survey the field and to include major figures from differing points of view, from archaeology and philosophy as well as political and intellectual history.

Product Details

• Paperback: 536 pages
• Publisher: RoutledgeCurzon; 1 edition (September 22, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0700714634
• ISBN-13: 978-0700714636
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,201,231 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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9 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Indian Challenges to White Mythologies: The Aryan Problem, September 22, 2007

By	Mr Sutapas Bhattacharya (London, UK) - See all my reviews

I must first state that I am not a member the Hindutva movement, indeed, I denounced the BJP for its sectarian rabble-rousing and Semitization of Hinduism in my The Oneness/Otherness Mystery: The Synthesis of Science and Mysticism (MLBD, 1999)
However, I am associated with a more fundamental Indian challenge to Western thought, attacking Materialist metaphysics after having identified the physical correlate of the yogic Pure Consciousness (Divine Light, cit; Atman, Buddha Nature, al haqq etc.) with the brainwaves of the Reticular Activating System, which supports the Brahmanic view of the ontological primacy of Consciousness. The vast majority of Westerners do not question the fact that Materialist science is based on the Christian myth of Creatio ex nihilo and it is easy to show epistemologically that the "physical world" is never experienced directly, outside consciousness. Furthermore, as J.L. Mehta states in his phenomenology of the Rg Veda, the "Arya" is one who seeks the (Divine) Light.
In 1997 as I finalized the manuscript of O/OM a bookseller showed me a copy of What is Enlightenment magazine featuring a Georg Feuerstein on the front cover (I had never heard of him). Synchronicitously, I found in the shop a copy of Feuerstein, Kak and Frawley's In Search of the Cradle of Civilization (published by the Theosophists) which introduced me to the new ideas about the Harappans being the Vedic Aryans. Their arguments included that the Vedic word for Man "Purusa" came from pur (town/city) dweller and the recently discovered LANDSAT images of the extinct great river in what is now the desert of Rajastan which seems to tie in with the Rg Vedic river Saraswati etc. However, the attempt to deracialise the "Aryans" as merely "nobles" seemed suspect and PC.
As I had written about colonialist distortions of Indian history (as in Inden's "Imagining India etc.) and knew that the self-hating pro-colonialist Indian N.C. Chaudhuri had argued that the Indus civilisation must have been an offshoot of Sumer, these new ideas were very appealing even though I had no problem with Aryans being invaders of India. Indeed, in 1989 on a trip to the USA an American woman asked if I was Iranian as I did not look Indian". I replied that as a brahman, I am an Aryan as are the Iranians, we are a branch of the Indo-Europeans. I was born in Assam where the natives are Thais and tribals and the majority of my fellow Bengalis show non-Aryan S.E. Asian and dark-skinned features.
In 2000 I attended the World Association of Vedic Studies conference in Hoboken where H.H. Hock and Konraad Elst were amongst the speakers on the Aryan Invasion debate. As the only UK-based Indian I was taken aback by the ferocity of the BJP-supporting USA Indians shouting down liberals. I was publicly denounced by one as a "self-hating Hindu" for telling an American that I was not a Hindu in a simple orthodox or henotheist sense but that my scientific and philosophical researches led me to Yoga, Advaita and Nondual Kashmir Saivism etc. in support of my ideas. Like many open-minded scientists, I found that Yogic mysticism contained essential truths about Reality cloaked in mythology (see [e-mail]). A US Bangladeshi Hindu loudly berated me for questioning his teenage daughter's ferociously sectarian speech about Muslim intolerance in Bangladesh.
In 1998 I read in India Today about the Rajastan "Saraswati" discovery linking it to Rg Veda ("Saraswati do not kick us away, do not force us to migrate to foreign lands"). At the same time I came across Western put-downs of such New Age or Hindu Revisionist "mythology". Even Thomas McEvilley who in The Shape of Western Thought argues powerfully for the Indian Jain origins of Greek philosophia (whose mystical nature is suppressed by Western academia) and transcendental monism, was sceptical of the Vedic Aryans as the Harappans claim. In August 2007, Indophile Michael Wood began his BBC Story of India asserting that a few thousand Aryans invaded from Central Asia. He also completely misrepresented Yoga as thinking and Hinduism as ritual in his effort to glorify his favoured Buddhism (ignoring its roots in Brahmanism) and, whilst focusing on "tolerant" Sufi Islam completely ignored the central role of the Brahmanical Ideology in unifying India's diverse little traditions (the idea of India is largely a Brahmanic one).
Following Wood's advocacy of the Aryan Invasion I searched and found this book and am pleased to see that this debate is clearly not just Hindu mythological revisionism trying to Indianize the Aryans even though Witzel et al. claim it is. As Colin Renfrew said in Archaeology and Language, Linguists and Archaeologists have used each others' tenuous speculations unquestioningly to concoct ever more fanciful speculations posing as "science". The LANDSAT images, the recently discovered submerged cities in the Gulf of Cambay etc. are much harder science than Linguistic theorizing! The Vedic 100-oar boats and fully Aryan (not Sankritized) river names in N.W. Indo-Pak and the archaeological evidence of BMAC cities and post-Harappan towns makes "nomadic Aryans" very suspect! Lars Fosse's critique of simplistic Hindu revisionism and nation-building myths whilst valid, is also revealing in his patronizing view that India is a "wounded civilization" on the brink of social and "economic disaster". Does the phonological hard scientist Fosse think 8-9% growth and the never-so strong sense of Indian national unity is a complete disaster or his he like other Western scholars imagining the India he would like to see!
Sutapas Bhattacharya