Bhishma Pitamaha of Indian History-Tribute to a Pioneer
In a career sparuiing more than half a century and covering several fields, K.D. Sethna (Amal Kiran as Sri Aurobindo called him) has been a true pioneer. His work on ancient Indian history has been characterised by originality, by an approach that combines technical data from archaeology and other sources with a mastery of ancient literary works to reveal them in unexpected light. One of his major contributions has been the correlation of technical evidence from archaeology and other sources with literary accounts to help place ancient history and chronology on solid ground. In his search for both technical and literary evidence, Sethna has not been content to limit himself to the Indian subcontinent; his search has taken him far and wide, to Sumeria, in particular to the empire founded by Saragon of Akkad in the third millennium.
Sethna has made two fundamental contributions to ancient history. First, mainly on the basis of the evidence of cotton he has shown that the Harappan civilisation, which overlapped the Sumerian and the Akkadian, belonged to the Sutra period of the Vedic Age. Second, he has also shown that the Rigveda preceded the Silver Age. Both these are of far-reaching significance, a fact that is now coming to be recognised with improved understanding of metallurgy and archaeology of Pre-Harappan sites.
His finding about silver and the Rigveda is now receiving support from the unfolding ecological picture of the Sarasvati river region and also the discovery of silver ornaments at the Pre-Harappan site of Kunal on the Sarasvati. He has also highlighted the fact that horses existed in India in prehistoric times and it is therefore wholly unnecessary to
Page 147
postulate any Aryan invasion or migration to account foi their importance in the Vedic literature. Thanks largely to Sethna's insights, we now have a sheet anchor r ancient history and prehistory in the form of the Sutra-Harappa-Sumeria equation.
More recently, following N. Jha's decipherment of the! Harappan script, this writer found Sethna's discovery of the Sutra-Harappa connection to be crucial in identifying the language of the Harappan seals to be a form of Vedic Sanskrit. This, along with the writer's own research on Vedic and Babylonian mathematics gave a determination of the Harappan language as Vedic that was independent of the decipherment.
The author of the present article met Sethna (Amal Kiran) only once, in March 1997, when he visited Sethna to present him with a copy of the book Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization by N.S. Rajaram and David Frawley, which was dedicated to him.
What follows is a summary of Sethna's work based on excerpts from two of his major works: KARPASA in Prehistoric India (KPT) and The Problem of Aryan Origins (PAO). By this the author's goal is to convey some idea of the originality and power that characterise the work of this pioneer researcher. The author's own comments are given in italics.
Introduction
Sethna terms the Aryan invasion theory a dogma and then goes on to bring together an impressive body of evidence to highlight the fact that an objective evaluation of it shows the theory to be without any basis. The following can serve as a background to his argument.
A dogma that seems to be fast fading among a number of archaeologists is that Aryan, invaders had a prominent hand in destroying the Harappa Culture of the ancient Indus Valley. But the dogma that the Aryans of the Rigveda came
Page 148
into this Valley from outside India around the middle of the second millennium B.C. still dies hard. And naturally then the 'heresy' that the Rigvedics preceded the Harappa Culture is too difficult to entertain. As difficult also appears the contention that there are not two prominent races in India -the Aryans and the Dravidians - but only one internally diversified race which we may call 'Dravidaryan' and whose original common language developed into Sanskrit and Tamil, a pair of languages disclosing on a penetrating scrutiny more affinities than common linguistics can suspect. Finally, there is the general view of the Rigveda as the record of a fight between Aryan Rishis and devilish-seeming non-Aryans who were dubbed Dasa-Dasyus. Here nobody thinks of asking: "If the Rigvedics did not destory the Harappa Culture, what enemies did they fight - enemies credited by them with an array of 'forts' (purah)?" None answering to the Rigvedics' account are to be found between the end of the Harappa Culture in c. 1500 B.C. and the postulated Aryan advent. Nor, if we make the Rigveda anterior to the Harappa Culture, do we have evidence of a confrontation of fortified Dasa-Dasyus by Rishi-led fighters. (Foreword to the Second Edition, 1992: PAO)
Having set this background, Sethna then goes on to point out:
In the field of history we must face the crucial questions:
(1) Is there any genuine evidence of what almost every history book at present takes for granted, namely, an Aryan invasion of India around 1500 B.C.?
(2) Was the Harappa Culture of the Indus Valley, which ran for at least a thousand years and whose end has been dated in the middle of the second millennium B.C., basically non-Aryan, anterior to the oldest Aryan document in India, the Rigveda, and given its finishing stroke by hostile Rigvedic tribes, who hailed from beyond India's north-west and who came to reflect in their scripture the story of their fight with and conquest of this civilisation?
Page 149
We shall deal with these questions not always in the above order. Significant side-issues, which are not mentioned, will also arise. (PAO: 1-3)
Horse-evidence from both Outside and
Inside the Indus Valley
The horse is often regarded as the quintessential Aryan animal. The supposed absence of the horse in India before the middle of the second millennium, particularly at the Harappan sites has been pressed into service as negative evidence indicating an Aryan invasion. But Sethna produced abundant evidence to refute the claim. Here are some excerpts from his writings on the subject [Sethna's account is more detailed]:
Dr. K.R. Alur, a veterinary surgeon, has some pertinent information detailing a faunal report on the excavation at Hallur, a border village in Mirekerur taluka (county) of Dharwad district in Karnataka. His paper of 16 June 1990, Aryans and Indian History: an archaeo-zoological approach1 says (PAO: 216-22):
This site was excavated by Dr. M.S. Nagaraja Rao during February-March 1965. Excavation of two trenches showed that the occupation of the site was during the neolithic period circa 1800 B.C....
From this collection I identified the following bones of Horse:
S no. 212. Small metacarpal (splint bone).
S no. 467. Proximal extremity of small metacarpal.
S no. 497. Molar (from the middle series).
S no. 517. Second phalanx.
1. This paper was apparently a publication of the Karnataka Department of Archaeology. Sethna does not provide a reference but quotes extensively from it. Nevertheless it became widely known for understandable reasons.
Page 150
When I wrote this report, I least expected that it might spark off a controversy and land me in the witness box before the Indian historians' jury.... I was apprised of the gravity of the situation when I began to get letters asking me for clarification of the situation against the prevalent belief that the horse is a non-indigenous species and was introduced into India only by [invading] Aryans....
To make my position clear, I wrote in my article... "whatever may be the opinion expressed by archaeologists, it cannot either deny or alter the find of a scientific fact that the horse was present at Hallur before the [presumed] period of Aryan invasion..."
The find of this fact put the Indian archaeologists and historians in a predicament in which they could not deny a scientific fact, yet could not accept it. So those on whom the responsibility lay made a reasonable approach and ordered a second excavation near the original site to avoid a probable introduction of an artifact. I examined the fauna! collection of this excavation also and found the presence of some more bones of the Horse'.
.. .Dr. Alur [later] touches on how the Indian tradition, which knew nothing of an invasion and took the horse's presence in India to be natural from the beginning, got flouted further by "the report written by S. Sewell and B. Prasad on the fau-nal study from Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa". This report declared "that there is no evidence of the presence of the horse in the Indus valley" though "they declared that they had recovered a few metacarpals of the domestic Ass".
Then Dr. Alur brings to light a little-known riposte to that report: "Dr. J.C. George of the M.S. University of Baroda stated that the study of the above table of the comparative measurements shows beyond doubt that the metacarpals recorded by Prasad are definitely not of the domestic Ass and it is therefore possible to conclude that the smaller size horse did exist in Harappa. He further states: 'It is rather
Page 151
incredible that in a great civilisation like India, the horse alone should be conspicuous by its absence, while allied species like that of the Ass have been identified....'"
By this Sethna established that the horse was present in Harappa. He then produced even more decisive evidence to show that the horse was present in India even in prehistoric times. As he observed in PAO (ibid)
Still more devastating is the report published in 1980 by the Department of Ancient History, Culture and Archaeology, University of Allahabad: History to Prehistory: Archaeology of the Vindhyas and the Ganga Valley by G.R. Sharma.2 Co-workers with Sharma were not only Indian archaeologists but also Dr. M.A.J. Williams and Keith Royce, who were members of the team led by Professor J. Desmond Clark of Allahabad University. The following passages from Sharma are well worth study:
The explorations in the valley of the Belan and Son have resulted in discoveries of thousands of animal fossils. From the Belan section these fossils have been obtained from four Gravels as well as from the red silt overlying Gravel II. Most of the fossils, however, have been obtained from Gravels I & II. The species include bos-nomadicus, bos-bubalis, gavialis, sus, elephas, antelope, bos-elephas, stag, deer, equus, chelonia (tortoise) and unio...
The excavations of neolithic sites of Koldihwa and Mahagara have brought to light evidence of domestication of animals and cultivation of plants. The domesticated animals include cattle, sheep, goat and horse...
Mahagara and Koldihwa have yielded evidence of both wild and domesticated cattle, thus presenting an interesting picture of transition from wild variety to
2. Published by the University of Allahabad, Department of Ancient History, Culture and Archaeology.
Page 152
domesticated ones. The change in size and bone structure attest to nature's law of selection. Evidence of wild sheep/ goat and equus has also been found from Cemented Gravels III&IV in the Belan Valley. They are still wild at Mahadaha and Sarai-Nahar-Rai, the Mesolithic sites of the Ganga valley. The Neolithic Mahagara offers evidence of their domestication, suggesting a natural selection and domestication of these animals almost parallel to that of cattle....
With the help of a number of radiocarbon dates obtained from the Belan and the Ganga valley, Stone Age Cultures from Upper Palaeolithic to Mesolithic have been dated. The Cemented Gravel III which has yielded the Upper Palaeolithic tools has also yielded the C-14 dates - 23,840 B.C. and 17,765 B.C. As the earliest date is not from the lowest horizon, the Upper Palaeolithic in this area had possibly still an earlier antiquity.
For the pre-pottery Geometric Mesolithic we have two dates, one from the Belan valley and the other from the Ganga valley. The date obtained from Shari-Nahar-Rai is 8395±110 B.C. We have two dates from the Neolithic levels of Koldihwa reading 5440+240 B.C. and 4530 ±185 B.C.
Within the chronological framework provided by C-14 dates for terminal Upper Palaeolithic reading 17,765±340 and for the pre-Neolithic 8080±115 and the early Neolithic levels reading 6570 ±210 and 5540 ±240 B.C., the totality of evidence furnished by these excavations and explorations... presents a continuous story of human achievements...
To judge finally whether this whole picture is plausible we have to revert to Sharma's History to Prehistory. The Neolithic sites of Koldihwa and Mahagara which have evidenced the domesticated horse are dated by radiocarbon to 6570 B.C. With the possibility of adding 210 years we reach 6780 B.C.... (PAO: 278-9)
Page 153
By this Sethna showed that the horse was -present in India going back to Neolithic times. To this must now be added the information that the capture of a horse has been depicted in the rock paintings of Bhimbetka near Bhopal in Central India discovered by V.S. Wakankar of the Sarasvati River fame. These paintings are at least 30,000 years old. Thus, as Sethna pointed out, no Aryan invasion is necessary to account for the importance accorded to the horse in the Rigveda.
[Added Note: Some readers will be familiar with the recent storm of controversy over the 'Harappan horse' whipped up by Michael Witzel and his associates following the publication of The Deciphered Indus Script by N. Jha and N.S. Rajaram in 2000. As Sethna had observed a while back, the issue had been settled years, even decades earlier. In fact, as far back as 1931, no less a person than John Marshall had noted the presence of the smaller "country bred" Indian horse at Mohenjo-daro. Further, it has been noted that the 17-ribbed horse described in the Vedas is anatomically different from the 18-ribbed Central Asiatic horse. The Indian horse is probably descended from the 'Siwalik horse' (Equus Sivalensis), also with 17 ribs, fossils of which have been found in India going back to untold antiquity. It is time to stop flogging this dead horse.]
KARPASA and the Case for Cotton
In his book KARPASA in Prehistoric India - now a classic -Sethna made a major contribution to Vedic chronology by establishing that the archaeology of the Harappan Civilisation belongs to the Sutra period. This now is strengthened by the connections found between the mathematics of the Sulba Sutras - also from the Sutra period - and the mathematics of Old-Babylonia and the Egyptian Middle Kingdom brought to light by A. Seidenberg. All this now receives further support from metallurgy and ancient ecology, particularly the picture that is emerging of the drying up of the Sarasvati River. It now becomes possible to speak of a new sheet anchor for the Vedic Age - the Harappa-Sutra-Sumeria equation. Here are some excerpts from Sethna's work leading to that important chronological landmark.
Page 154
' We may sum up: a general survey of the popular invasion-theme lights upon so many factors to the contrary that : we are led to give the Rigveda such antiquity as would perforce show the Harappa Culture as posterior to it and draw it broadly into the fold of Aryanism in however modified a form.
This historical perspective passes even beyond extreme probability and becomes a certainty the moment we concentrate on the topic with which we have initiated our research: Indian cotton. The crucial point deciding the issue of precedence as between the Indus Valley Civilisation and the Rigveda and thus constituting a clue both chronological and cultural, of vital importance is the question: "Where does the word karpasa, which is the sole one available for Indian cotton, first occur in the literature of India?" (KPI: 16-17)
Over fifty years ago Sir John Marshall announced the discovery of cotton cloth at Mohenjo-daro. Wheeler says:3 "The occurrence [of cotton], with another reputed example at Lothal, is by far the earliest known; in Egypt cotton, though abundant today, was not cultivated in ancient times.".. .Excavations at Mehrgarh on the Bolan River in Central Baluchistan have uncovered a series of agricultural settlements more than 3000 years older than Mohenjo-daro and there... dating back to the fifth millennium B.C. some seeds of cotton (Gossypium) have been found. Jean-Francois Jarrige and Richard H. Meadow write:4 "...Their presence in association with the seeds of other cultivated plants near a structure apparently used for storage, however, suggests that cotton was indeed cultivated by the farmers of Period II at Mehrgarh because they prized either its fiber or its oil-rich seeds."
Yes, the Indus Valley Civilisation's cotton is fairly later, but what is pertinent to our purpose is not mere antiquity: it is what is remarked by Rao Bahadur Dayaram Sahni, a colleague of Marshall's and the actual discoverer of the woven cloth in which a silver vase had been wrapped and which
3. The Indus Civilization, Cambridge University Press, 1968, p. 2.
4. "The Antecedents of Civilization in the Indus Valley", in Scientific American, August 1980, pp. 131-32.
Page 155
was scientifically ascertained to have the typical convoluted structure of true cotton-fibre. Sahni writes in relation to India:5 "When cotton cloth first came into use and whether it continued to be worn right through the historic period is as yet uncertain. The Vedic literature from the Rigveda down to the Sutra period contains numerous references to weavers, the art of weaving, the weaver's shuttle, wearing of clothes like turbans, shirts, etc., soiled garments and washermen. But whereas wool (samulya) and silk (tarpya) are mentioned, cotton {karpasa) is unknown from early texts." (KPI: 18-19)
Here indeed is a strange situation. ...it is impossible to think that cotton cloth, once in use in the Indus region for a millennium (2500-1500 B.C.) could fall entirely out of use in the same region soon after and then again, after a long interval, come into use. It becomes all the more unreasonable if we credit the theory that the Rigveda records the Aryan invasion and destruction of the Indus Valley cities; for then the Vedic Aryans must know of cotton, and their actual ignorance of it mean something else than the sudden start of its disuse down to the Sutra period. But Sahni's query would not even arise if we considered the Rigveda anterior to the Harappa Culture. And logically the presence of cotton cloth in this Culture and its non-mention in the Vedic texts should raise the question: "Did not these texts precede in time that Culture?" (KPI: 19-20)
Yet, if the Rigveda and its documentary progeny are set after this Civilisation, we have literature glaringly contradicting archaeology. Consistency is achieved solely on our affirming that the Rigveda came before. (KPI: 23)
The sequel in general may be spotlighted by stating that even in the texts which succeed the Rigveda over a lengthy period it [cotton] is not to be found: none of the three other Vedas, none of the numerous BrShmanas and Aranyakas, none of the early principal Upanishads contain the word
5. Indian Archaeological Survey 1926-27, p. 65.
Page 156
karpasa.... This extraordinary silence, significantly continued and sustained, must imply that throughout the period concerned - about a thousand years by the present chronology - nobody knew of cotton. The Cotton Age, in which the Harappa Culture flourished and which in a distinctly developed form would seem to have been brought about by it, was definitely posterior to the Rigveda and, by the same token, to everything down to the Sutras. (KPI: 24)
Now we may briefly draw up our chronological scheme in general. A cue may be taken from the current chronology and applied anew in respect of interrelations.
In our time-scheme the type of work exemplified by the existing Sutras would begin somewhere in the early period of the Harappa Culture: between 2500 and 2000 B.C. The end of the Rigveda's composition would be about 3000 B.C. or a little after: the commencement of it would go back to at least 3500 B.C. The intervening age - say, from c. 3000 to c. 2300 B.C. - would see "the great development in culture, religion and language" of "the later Vedic literature". (KPI: 38-39)
Everything up to the cotton-mentioning Sutras must be taken as anterior to and anticipatory of the Indus Valley Civilisation even when certain aspects are in common. And in this hypothesis of ours we are confirmed from another side also: Sutra-material apart from mention of cotton.
The Cambridge History of India informs us:6 "We find in the Sutras for the first time the recognition of images of the gods." There we have the characteristic iconism of the Harappa Culture thrown into relief as never before in Indian literature. Surely, parallel contemporary developments of the Indian religious life confront us. (KPI: 50)
Thus the Sutras and the Indus Valley Civilisation stand face to face, products of a single Zeitgeist for all their differences as between Aryan and semi-Aryan. They are proved contemporaries in vision and attitude in various ways that support our synchronisation of them on the score of cotton. (KPI: 53)
6. Cambridge History of India, Vol. I, p. 228.
Page 157
Having used combined technical and literary arguments to establish that the Indus Valley Civilisation corresponds to the Sutra period, Sethna goes on to identify them as the people referred to as the Mlechchhas in the Brahmanas and the Sutras. These Mlechchhas were looked upon with disapproval by the orthodox Indians. This allowed him to establish a connection between India and West Asia. But the Sarasvati ecology was unknown at the time and Sethna did not realise that the division of the Vedic civilisation into the Eastern and the Western is accounted for by the gradual drying up of the Sarasvati River and the relentless advance of the desert. But he did note the cleavage in the Vedic civilisation and its significance.
And the attitude of all the Indian books of the post-Rigvedic epoch of the Indus Valley Civilisation may be gauged from what Pusalker7 has written apropos of the shift of the Vedic culture "to the east of the land of five rivers": "The Punjab and the west not only recede in importance but the tribes of the west are looked upon with disapproval in the Satapatha and the Aitareya Brahmanas."
To these Brahmanas the process leading to the formation of the Harappa Culture must seem deserving of disapproval, for various forces at work from outside the Vedic ethos have found expression in that Culture side by side with the line of natural development and change from the Rigveda. Forces from Mesopotamia and Iran have been traced in the Indus Valley Civilisation even while the general structure and shape of it have been seen as essentially Indian and may be considered by us as an unusual Rigvedic derivative, at once a development and a deviation. The mixture may be expected to provoke a broad semi-condemnatory label from the post-Rigvedic civilisation proper to the east of the Indus Valley. So we may ask the momentous question: "Can we not find from post-Rigvedic literature, in combination with Mesopotamian
7. Pusalker, A.D., "Interrelation of Culture between India and the Outside World before Asoka", The Cultural Heritage of India, Calcutta: The Ramakrishna Mission, 1958.
Page 158
sources, who the authors were of the Harappa Culture?" (KPI: 64)
And these were known as Mlechchhas both to the Indians and in the Mesopotamian sources. It is likely that the word Mlechchha is itself of foreign origin applied by the Harappans to their own language - a term that later became a derogatory term in the Indian literature. It is worth noting that according to the Mahabharata, in conveying a secret message to Yudhishtira, Vidura used the language of the Mlechchhas.
The Sutras seem to have borne in mind the Satapatha Brahmana's point about language. The Vasistha Dharmasutra (VI.41)... states that an Aryan should not learn the Mlechchha speech. And the first thing the hoary Gautama Dharma-sutra enjoins about the subject is that one should not speak with Mlechchhas.
The Harappa Culture, with its Mesopotamian and Iranian elements superimposed on the Vedic Aryan, could very well have been based on a Mlechchha language not only Prakrt in form, a kind of popularised or corrupt Sanskrit, but also infused with foreign words and phrases so that the Prakrt itself became corrupt... (KPI: 66)
Cuneiform texts from Mesopotamia, inscribed on clay-ablets, speak often of a far-away kingdom called Meluhha. ean Bottero,8 in his introduction to the French translation of he famous Assyriologist S.N. Kramer's History Begins at smer, tells us that in Sumerian the h, by itself, is aspirated and hard, like the German ch or the Spanish jota: we may say this equivalent to kh. Thus Meluhha is to be pronounced Melukhkha. Gordon Childe9 uses the form: Melukha. Here is a name which could very well be the Sumerian pronun-iation of "Mlechchha".
8. Bottero, J., L'histoire commence a Sumer, p. II: "Note sur la pographie et la prononciation des mots sumeriens", France: 1957.
9. Childe, Gordon, What Happened in History ?, Harmondsworth: Pen-uin,1971, p. 150.
Page 159
All the more precisely could it be this pronunciation if we should look at the Prakrt version of "Mlechchha"... He [Mookerji10] quotes the Prakrt equivalent of "Mlechchha": "Melakha." Have we not in "Melakha" a sound as good as identical with Childe's "Melukha"? (KPI: 69)
After having established the identity of the Harappans of the Indus Valley as being the same as that of the people known as Melukha to the Sumerians, Sethna, in a remarkable tour-de-force showed that Indian articles including karpasa-coffon were imported into Mesopotamia. As evidence of trading articles he noted:
(1) A couple of pieces of ivory work from Meluhha - a comb and two human-headed bulls mounted on a pedestal supported by wheels - were found in a grave of the Akkad period of Kish. Ivory combs and model oxen mounted on wheels as well as human-headed animal figurines are familiar Indus articles.
(2) At Lothal, the most important Harappan site in Saurashtra, archaeologists have dug up not only what in all probability is a complete port with docks, etc., showing the Harappa Culture to have been strikingly maritime,...The Harappa Culture is thus directly linked to Mesopotamia's Persian-Gulf trade with far-away Meluhha.
(3) In a Mesopotamian text of approximately the same period the peacock (dha-ja-musen) is described as a bird of Meluhha - the peacock which is a characteristic Indian bird and often depicted on Indus objects. (KPI: 79-80)
All things considered, the Harappan realm and Meluhha must have been one. (KPI: 81)
After this Sethna goes on to point out the existence of kapazum in Mesopotamian records, the equivalent of the Sanskrit karpasa.
10. Mookerji, R.K., Ancient India, Allahabad: University Press, 1956, p. 121.
Page 160
In this connection Leemans,11 who also credits the Meluhha-Mlechchha equation we have elaborated, has a number of highly suggestive remarks which could serve as our starting-point:
If, indeed, Meluhha was western India, the region of the Indus civilisation, in the period of the Larsa dynasty [of Mesopotamia] and before, it may perhaps be assumed that some of the unknown names of articles mentioned in the texts... and also occurring in other Ur texts, were (prae-Indo-Aryan) Indian words, e.g., words like kapazum and lahakitum,... arazum and tuharum. It may be observed that most of these words have an Akkadian and not a Sumerian form. On the other hand, if Meluhha was western India, one could expect to find cotton among the imports in Ur. An impression of it on clay has been found at Ur but no Sumerian word for it is known unless it was among the unidentified names of articles. (KPI: 142-3; emphasis ours)
About these words the prime question to be asked is: "Does any suggest the Indian term we employ for cotton?" The merest glance at Leeman's list should bring kapazum leaping to the eye. The Sanskrit word for cotton in Indian post-Rigvedic literature is karpasa, and its Prakrt version which would naturally omit the r would be something whose very likely echo in Mesopotamian mouths would be kapazum. (KPI: 143-4)
This correspondence would, for one thing, clinch our position that Meluhha was the land of the Indus Civilisation.
Secondly, it would confirm the chronology we have offered for the Sutras. If the word karpasa occurs for the first time in that part of Sanskrit literature which is known as the Sutras and if it is also an element in the language of the first cotton-cultivating civilisation, namely, the civilisation of the Indus Valley, then the age of the earliest Sutras must be the same as the age of this civilisation. (KPI: 144)
11. Leemans, W.F., Foreign Trade in the Old Babylonian Period, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960, pp. 165-66.
Page 161
Sethna's conclusion has now been strengthened by the discovery of the connections between the Sutras and the mathematics of Old-Babylonia and Egypt. This combined with the most recent data from ancient ecology suggests that the early Sutra literature may have to be moved back by several centuries. The date for the Indus Valley Civilisation current when Sethna wrote this (B.c. 2500-1500 B.C.) will now have to be moved back by several centuries. The Sarasvati dried up more or less completely by 1900 B.C. The ending of the Indus Valley Civilisation must be placed before that date. But his fundamental contribution - the Sutra-Harappa-Sumeria equation - is being confirmed by every new discovery, the latest being Jha's decipherment of the Indus (Harappan) script.
Other Technical Evidence: Metals and Silver
While the evidence of cotton allowed Sethna to place the Sutra period in the same general time frame as the Sumerian and the Harappan Civilisations, his study of the knowledge of metals, particularly silver, now places the Rigveda in the fourth millennium. This is now strengthened by the discovery of silver ornaments at the pre-Harappan site of Kunal on the ancient Sarasvati dating to the fourth millennium B.C. His conclusions are supported also by the absence of any reference to bricks in the Rigveda.
The fire-altars at Kalibangan, in Sankalia's words,12 "consist of shallow pits oval or rectangular in plan" and he adds: "around or near about were placed flat rectangular or circular terracotta pieces, known hitherto as 'terracotta cakes'." All these structures definitely indicate Aryanism. Yet they cannot be related to the Rigveda. Stuart Piggott13 correctly says about the Rigvedic Age: "There is no evidence that any temples were built, and the altar is nothing more elaborate than a pile of turf." Parpola14 himself notes in one context: "Besides
12. Sankalia, H.D., Prehistory and Protohistory of India and Pakistan, Poona: Deccan College, 1974, p. 360.
13. Piggott, S., Prehistoric India, Harmondsworth: A Pelican Book, 1960, p. 283.
14. Parpola, Asko, "The Coming of the Aryans to Iran and India and
Page 162
the implements needed in the preparation of Soma and the sacrificial fire, the sacrificial place contained little beyond a shallow bed dug out and covered with grass for the gods to sit on." .. .he informs us that "the brick-built fire altar... is never mentioned in the Rigveda." In fact, even the existence of bricks -such a marked feature of the Indus Valley Civilisation - cannot be traced in the Rigveda. The Rigveda, flourishing in the same locale - the valley of the Indus - has no word for 'brick': istaka occurs only in later literature. (PAO: 233)
Sethna then points out that the Vedic Aryans knew metallurgy but not iron. The Rigvedic people in addition had no knowledge of silver. And this is an important chronological marker. He notes:
"The Rigvedic Indo-Aryans" writes A.L. Basham15 "were ...acquainted with... metallurgy, although they had no knowledge of iron.... Gold was familiar and made into jewelry." He refers bronze and copper implements to Vedic times, but is silent about silver. At another place he tells us: "where the Rigveda speaks only of gold and copper or bronze the later Vedic texts also mention tin, lead, and silver, and probably iron." A.A. Macdonell16 makes the statement:
Among the metals, gold is most frequently mentioned in the Rigveda.... The metal which is most often referred to in the Rigveda next to gold is called ay as (Latin aes).... In most passages where it occurs the word appears to mean simply 'metal'.... It seems quite likely that the Aryans of that period were unacquainted with silver, for its name is not mentioned in the Rigveda....
______________
the Cultural and Ethnic Identity of the Dasas, Studia Orientalia, Vol. 64, Helsinki, 1988, pp. 225 & 250.
15. Basham, A.L., "Ancient India", The Oxford History of India, 3rd revised edition, 1970, p. 516.
16. Macdonell, A.A., A History of Sanskrit Literature, London: Heineman, 1928, p. 151.
Page 163
No scholar of India's most ancient scripture breathes a word about silver. (PAO: 234-5)
From this it follows that the introduction of silver in the Vedic literature provides a chronological lower limit for the Rigvedic Age. This, Sethna shows, occurs for the first time in the Yajurveda.
Furthermore, as regards silver, we can go beyond the mere though significant fact of its absence. From the linguist A.C. Greppin17 we gather the following information. In the early Sanskrit texts the word rajata which has the same root as the Greek arguros, the Latin argentum, the Armenian arcat' and the Celtic argat does not by itself denote silver as do all the other terms. It simply means 'white'. In those early texts the expression for silver is rajatam hiranyam, literally 'white gold'. The next step after Greppin is to note that the common word for 'white' in the Rigveda, the earliest Sanskrit text, is svetd or sukra. But rajata does occur just once in 8,25,22 [Rigveda, VIII.25.22]. The verse concerned along with its successor reads, in Ralph T.H. Griffith:18
From Uksanayayana a bay, from Harayana a white
steed,
And from Susaman we obtained a harnessed car.
These two shall bring me further gain of troops of
tawny-coloured steeds,
The carriers shall they be of active men of war.
In the original, we have rajatam without any noun to qualify; but the general context of the first verse and even more that of the second where steeds of tawny colour are mentioned after a reference to 'these two' make an implied white steed
17. Greppin, A.C., Review of J.P. Mallory's In Search of the Indo-Europeans, Times Literary Supplement, August 11-17,1989, p. 881, col. 4.
18. Griffith, R.T.H., The Hymns of the Rigveda, New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, reprinted 1976, p. 417.
Page 164
pair with a bay. The sense of silver is impossible with a horse, especially in the company of other horses with common colours. And if early Sanskrit knows silver only as rajatam hiranyam, the Rigvedic rajatam - whatever it may qualify -can denote nothing else than 'white'. There cannot be the slightest suspicion of silver in the Rigveda's period. (PAO: 243-4)
Based on this Sethna concluded that the Rigveda must be dated to before 4000 B.C. He had this to say:
But an important fact has come to my notice which would necessitate the dating of the Rigveda to beyond c. 4000 B.C.
We have shown, on the basis of the term rajatam hiranyam as the name for silver in early Sanskrit texts, that the Rigveda's solitary use of rajata simply as an adjective for a horse proves the existence of this scripture prior to the Silver Age.... Turning to the Encyclopaedia Britannica19 we gather the earliest date available for this metal.. ."Silver ornaments, vessels for ceremonial services, and decorations have been found in royal tombs dating back to 4000 B.C." So the silverless Rigveda must go past this date. (PAO: 264)
In this, as in other essays (like the 'Harappan horse') Sethna proved to be remarkably prescient: silver ornaments found at the Sarasvati site of Kunal dating to the fourth millennium indicate that the 4000 B.C.E. date arrived at by Sethna is entirely reasonable. This is supported also by the fact that the perennial Sarasvati described by the Rigveda as flowing from 'the mountain to the sea' had ceased to exist long before 3000 B.C.E. But the existence of the Sarasvati as the greatest of the rivers of North India is clear from satellite photos. This however belongs to a phase several centuries before 3000 B.C.E. So Sethna's date for the Rigveda is remarkably close to the mark.
19. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1977 ed., Vol. 16, p. 776, col. 2.
Page 165
In summary: his two main contributions-the Sutra-Harappa-Sumeria equation, and the chronology of the Rigveda - are fully in agreement with the latest findings from archaeology, metallurgy and ecology. And every new discovery from silver ornaments at Kunal to Jha's decipherment of the Indus script is adding to the lustre of his discoveries.
References
The main references are:
Sethna, K.D., The Problem of Aryan Origins: From an Indian Point of View. Second extensively enlarged edition with five supplements, New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 1992.
Sethna, K.D., KARPASA in Prehistoric India: a Chronological and Cultural clue, New Delhi: Biblia Impex, 1981.
Jha, N. and Rajaram, N.S., The Deciphered Indus Script, New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 2000.
Rajaram, Navaratna S. and Frawley, David, Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization, New Delhi: Voice of India, 3rd edition, 2000.
Page 166
Home
Disciples
Amal Kiran
Books
Share your feedback. Help us improve. Or ask a question.