SUPPLEMENTS
SUPPLEMENT I
With acknowledgements to the Academy Journal
"Administrator" Vol. XXVI, No 1, (January-March) Spring 1981, pp. 189-217
A SPOKE IN THE WHEEL"*
A review by Anthony J.C. de Sa
Prepared as a paper for a Russian Conference on 'Aryan Immigration into India', but withheld on technical grounds, K.D. Sethna's The Problem of Aryan Origins makes interesting, though not particularly scholarly, reading.
What follows is a review of sorts interspersed with my personal comments which may be taken for what they are worth. I am quite conscious of the fact that this piece represents the opinions of a novice on the researches of an experienced academician and it is always so much easier to criticize. I realise also that in most cases I hark back to the traditional theories, but this is not because I am wedded to the classical school or am allergic to anything novel, but chiefly due to the reason that I see no rationale in replacing an existing theory, however poor it may seem, by one in which a greater number of inconsistencies surface. It is in this light that my criticism is to be read.
The commonly held view is that the Indus Civilization, which flourished during 2400-1700 B.C., was essentially a Dravidian one. It was urban, and seems to have grown from the skilful utilization of the fertile river valleys. Its Dravidian and urban nature were the characteristic ingredients of its
* The Problem of Aryan Origins by K.D. Sethna. (S.S. Publishers, 52 Aurobindo Sarani, Calcutta-5, 1980, Rs. 35)
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progress in our researches about the Aryans and their culture then surely we will have to identify a more localised 'original home'.
*
The author quotes Sri Aurobindo at length to prove that the principal difference between the Aryans and the Dravidians was cultural and not racial. This is really contradictory to his own assumption that the Dravidian culture is not essentially, but only superficially, different from the Aryan. But even if this little inconsistency is overlooked, Sri Aurobindo's views cannot be of much use to Sethna. There is no doubt that today, as was two thousand years ago, racial differentiation is a myth, and the whole idea of a 'pure' race is farcical and vicious not only in India which has seen a vast amount of racial-intermixture, but also in predominantly 'white' Europe. However, we cannot lose sight of the fact that in the dawn of human civilization, when communities were tribal-based and demographically microscopic, language and culture coincided with race; Sethna sidetracks even this by facilely suggesting that Dravidian tongues are actually Aryan, in spite of universal opinion and incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.
At another stage in the book the author quotes Lokmanya Tilak appreciatively, even though the freedom-fighter believed solidly in the invasion-theory and also went to the extent of maintaining, mainly through astrological predictions and astronomical observations in the Rgvedic slokas, that the Aryans came from the Arctic. This appreciation of Tilak can hardly be understood. Perhaps, and here I hazard a guess, it is because Tilak, like Swami Dayanand Saraswati, was such a staunch proponent of Aryan excellence; and Shri Sethna, in spite of his bending over backwards trying to point out that his theory will eliminate Southern grievances against the North, seems to show in several places, if one reads between the lines, that what really incenses him is that
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the acceptance of the extra-Indian origins of the Aryans also entails the acceptance of the fact that:
(a)the Dravidian civilization of the Indus was at a far advanced stage, and the early Aryans comparatively 'barbaric';
(b)that modern Indian culture is far more Dravidian in its basis than has traditionally been conceded.
Right through Shri Sethna's book one notices a pro-Aryan bias; a constant, if subtle, whittling at hypotheses which substantiate these views which 'belittle' Aryan glory. I mention this only as an aside, because, as pointed out earlier, the creation or rebuttal of theories on the grounds of emotionalism is abhorrent to students of history, and so, in all fairness, what has been denied to the author ought not to be used against him either.
Far graver is Shri Sethna's undue dependence on the opinions of Sri Aurobindo and to a lesser extent, on those of Lokmanya Tilak, citing them on occasion as sole authorities. These may add colour to his statement but quite definitely detract from its authenticity. Aurobindoji and Tilakji were intellectuals and patriots of the highest order and may have been scholars in their limited academic fields, but their works do not really bear rigid scrutiny on points of historical methodology. The author has been editor since 1949 of Mother India published from Sri Aurobindo Ashram, and the book under review was published by a follower of Sri Aurobindo. Whether because of this or otherwise, I cannot tell, but Sethna is very obviously a devotee of Sri Aurobindo - and where adulation begins, scholarship ends. The Problem... is not free of this malaise.
Most of the author's archaeological thrust is on the basis of the skeletal remains of what is alleged to be a horse. Now knowledge and domestication of the horse is a hallmark of Aryan civilization. In fact some of the oldest words in Sanskrit
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relating to the horse, riding, and equine equipage (including the spoked-wheel chariot) are common to Lithuanian, Latin and Greek, suggesting that these constituted an essential factor in the original and ancient Aryan way of life. It does not follow automatically that non-Aryan cultures were ignorant of the horse - it was known to the Semites for one - but its absence would indicate a definite non-Aryan character. Thus, the fact that the Indus Civilization was a horseless one was a trenchant argument in favour of its being Dravidian, or at least non-Aryan.
The author feels that he has destroyed the very basis of this conclusion by identifying some bones found in Shah Tepe (on the Caspian coast) as those of a horse. He makes much of this find, going into the intricacies of biological classification to emphasise the point that the bones do not belong to the hemione, onager or ass, but to the true horse. So flimsy is this argument that we can dispense with it on four straightforward counts:
(a)Biochemists of international renown, far more qualified than Sethna, maintain that the bones are not equine;
(b)Even granted for argument's sake, that the bones are equine, it is not as though masses of them have been found scattered all over the place. Also Shah Tepe is on the Caspian Coast, an ancient area far removed from the Indus Valley, and so surely some skeletal remains of the horse ought to be found there:
(c)If, as the author claims, a handful of similar bones have been unearthed from a pile in the environs of Mohenjo-dāro, then can it not be likely that they belong to the beasts of the invading Aryan tribes? Surely, in the armed conflicts that ensued several horses would inevitably have perished, and these carcasses would leave behind bones! This supposition is further supported by Sethna's own claim that these bones were found in a pile of others, indicating a mass grave:
(d)Given the fact that the Indus people have depicted on
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their thousands of seals almost every creature known to them (from earthworms to rhinocerii), is it conceivable that they would omit to portray the horse, were it known to and domesticated by them, as Sethna claims? I don't think we can accept such a far-fetched assumption as feasible.
Similar is the case with the spoked-wheel chariot. This too is seen as a distinguishing feature of an Aryan civilization, and traditional Historians have held the Indus Valley Civilization to be non-Aryan because of its marked absence in the 'digs', either in actual, model or graphic form. The solid wheel had been invented and put to varied and skilful-use, but the light spoked-wheel had not been developed by the Dravidians. Again, probably due to their ignorance of the horse or an alternative fleet-footed animal, the nearest the Indus people came to a chariot was a bullock-cart. It was, perhaps, due to this drawback that they were so effectively vanquished by the comparatively more martial Aryans. Though implements, artifacts, models and toys have been found in profuse abundance, the spoked-wheel and the horse-drawn chariot are conspicuously missing. Yet Shri Sethna would have it (on the basis of 13 seals out of thousands, and some weapons and one or two potsherds) that the spoked-wheel was invented by the Indus people (who were nothing but a "later stage of Rgvedic evolution"!). On the seals in question what really appears is a circle with three cross-lines in it. This symbol, which Sethna so confidently takes to be a wheel, is more correctly interpreted, as in Sumerian and Egyptian writing, to be a star, the sun or a divinity. A substantiating factor is that these symbols are not uniformly circular, but sometimes oval-shaped and even pointed at the extremities. Could these be taken to represent a wheel?
On a solitary seal is a matchstick figure of a man with a
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'spoked wheel' at the end of each leg - or so the author tells us and even draws out a diagram. He presumes this to be a stylistic representation of a horse-drawn spoke-wheeled chariot. A Finnish research team holds that it is actually a potter turning two wheels of trade with his legs. Even if this is dismissed, as Sethna does it as an excessive flight of fancy, the glaring issue remains: the seal in question is a damaged one, with only a single 'wheel' visible. This is critical, as Shri I. Mahadevan expresses the opinion that at the end of the other leg could very well be not a wheel but quite a different symbol, giving the value 'Lord of the sun and...' whatever the other symbol connotes. What troubles one is that Shri Sethna quite neglects to warn the reader (a) about the irregular shape of his so-called spoked-wheels, and (b) about the broken condition of the "all-important" seal. This is a very serious lapse indeed as the author builds up his most devastating argument on this very point.
Quite apart from all this, should we concede all that Shri Sethna contends (which is a bit too much) it can still be postulated that depicted on this seal is a picture of the 'enemy'. In fact, this may be supported by two arguments:
(a)It only appears on one seal, whereas all other themes recur, and so it probably belongs to the later period of Indus civilization, possibly just before the overpowering of the city in which this particular seal was manufactured;
(b)The picture is hardly accurate with no hint at all of a chariot - only a man travelling on two 'wheels': this confusion is likely to have occurred if the sight (as would the sight of an enemy on a strange and fearful contraption) was fleeting, swift and awe-inspiring. If it was an object of great familiarity it would have been more accurately and detailedly depicted - also, at least some clay models and toys would have survived.
Surely, it is not so much the Finnish researchers (who may well be wrong), but Shri Sethna who launches on a flight of excessive fancy!
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And now we come to Aryan scripture, the most potent and fruitful area of research, strangely cold-shouldered by Shri Sethna. The author seems to be in confusion as to the nature of composition and the mode of authorship of the Rgveda. All along he presumes that a select band of Rishis applied themselves to the task of composition. This, in my opinion, is doing a grave injustice to the oldest Indian scripture. While the later Vedas, consisting largely of mantras and sacrificial incantations, could perhaps be the deliberate product of priests and pandits, the major portions of the Rgveda were surely the spontaneous outpourings of a virile and nomadic people, lovers of nature and a way of life unhindered by urban constraints. Of course, their formal arrangement must have obviously been done by a few sages who very likely modified the metre and rhyme in the process (as later Brahmins quite certainly doctored some of the contents), but this does not detract from their popular origins.
Again, Shri Sethna contends that Indian tradition knows nothing of any Aryan invasion of India from the north-west and outside of India, nor of any advance of the Aryan from west to east, and proffers in this regard the verse (Rgveda X, 75) which mentions rivers in their order from the east to the north-west beginning with the Gangā. He also cites references of Sudas, an Aila King, who is described as pushing his conquest westwards into the Punjāb. I cannot emphasise too much that we must never forget that the Rgveda was composed over centuries and by different sets of persons and compiled in its 'unchangeable' form even later. The verse cited was obviously composed when the focus of settlement was in the Gangā-Yamunā doab, and it was natural for the rivers to be enumerated beginning with the closest. It is also significant that rivers further east are not mentioned in this verse. As to the Aila expansion, I see no difficulty in accepting it without complications, for surely the mere fact that the Aryans entered from the north-west and west does not mean that they established an empire whilst doing it. Complex social organization, in fact, came much later, and
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the Aila kingdom could well have then been established and expanded in any direction.
I admit that at this stage it is my opinion against the author's. There is the fact that I could substantiate my views by quoting from Max Müller and others of his ilk, but that would be neither here nor there, as still it would be Sethna's views against Müller's conception. So I would rather let this issue remain to be seen in linkage with the battery of linguistic arguments, quite well worked out already, and none the less valid merely because they are traditional: from those relating to the retroflexive dentals to those concerning Vedic geography, which can be so used as to arraign and seriously contradict Shri Sethna's theories single-handedly. But since the present book prefers to deal with them summarily, I too will pass them over - reluctantly. Suffice it to say that even when the author does wish to poke holes in them his objections are so minor and irrelevant as to be totally ineffective beyond raising some very superficial doubts.
In this connection I would very much like to refer the reader to Mahadevan's attempts at breaking the Indus . script. His theory is not only coherent, but allows an inter- pretation of the seals which is corroborated by a remarkable consistency - and so cannot be off-handedly dismissed -, while also conforming broadly with views expressed by leading Indologists about the general differences between the Aryan and Dravidian tongues and cultures. Mahadevan's methodology is published in Ancient Cities of the Indus (Ed. Gregory L. Possehl. Vikas, 1979), but unfortunately his interpretations yet await publication. The views held by Sethna are as revolutionary as Mahadevan's are brilliant, but one finds a greater overall consistency in the latter's thesis as compared to the somewhat sketchy nature of the former's arguments - and it is because of this that I prefer the framework accepted by Mahadevan.
Furthermore, as to the age of the scriptures, Shri Sethna goes along with Sri Aurobindo's orthodox view that the Rgveda be dated around 3500 B.C. making it almost 6000
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years old which is 2000 years older than many modern scholars are willing to concede.
There are dozens of other erroneous assumptions and unwarranted presumptions which Shri Sethna makes with sweeping and unabashed inaccuracy. When criticizing the 'invasion-theory' he treats the Aryan migration as one event - something which nobody does today. In another place he asks us to "look at the uniformly Aryan culture" of India. His pièce-de-résistance is, of course, when he firmly asserts that the whole issue of Devas and Dasyus, the recurring theme in the Rgveda of Aryas versus "black-skinned, snub-nosed, phallic-worshipping" Dāsas, and the monstrous Asuras, is merely allegorical - not something which was a dramatization of events actually occurring and situations actually obtaining, but only something which went on solely in the minds of the wise Rishis of yore. Perhaps this contention is based on Sri Aurobindo's Secret of the Veda. With all due respect, I find it exceedingly naive.
One last issue remains to be dealt with, if only for the reason that in this case at least, the author makes a strong point. He indicates that Indian scriptures maintain a complete silence on the extra-subcontinental origins of the Aryans, and talk about Northern India itself as their eternal abode. While denying that there exists a complete silence, it must be conceded that the author's point is well taken - that is, provided we are willing to accept the entirely allegorical nature of the issues of war, conflict, race and worship in the Rgveda. But, for reasons pointed out earlier, this is not entirely acceptable, principally because it would be illogical to imagine a scripture of the nature of the Vedas as having no roots in reality but a product mainly of philosophical
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fantasy. It can be postulated, equally satisfactorily, and more concretely, that two related tribes - the Ahuras (Sanskrit: Asuras) and the Devas - engaged in internecine conflict in what is today Iran, the Devas getting the worse of it (though the confrontation was probably pyrrhic), resulting in their migration eastwards into the Indian subcontinent, not as one group, but as several separate tribes over a period of centuries, perhaps. While the Irānians characterized their forefathers (Ahuras) as godly (Ahura-mazda) and their hostile cousins (Devas) as demoniac (Devils), the Vedics did the exact opposite, telling of the monstrous Asuras and the Divine Devas. (Incidentally, in the Graeco-Latin Christian tradition we have the paradoxical fact of the words for God 'Deus' and 'Devil' coming from the same Aryan root!)
To come back: since our forefathers lost the 'war' it was but natural that overt reference to the issue be not directly made, and the traumatic experience of having to flee be not unnecessarily resurrected. This issue is specifically analysed rather brilliantly by Nirad Chaudhuri in his Continent of Circe. Chaudhuri may be branded (and with good reason) as unpatriotic, but his credentials as a scholar of the Aryan classics (Indian, as well as European) are stout. We have his word for it that the whole of Vedic literature is borne under by a deep and inexplicable psychological longing for something undefined. He very fascinatingly links up ritual cleanliness, worship of rivers and mountains, and the value attached to cows and horses as also a host of other characteristic Vedic customs and predilections and prejudices (skin-colour, for example) with this constant harking back to another 'cradle land', the more strong because it is repressed.
Admittedly, the acceptance of the Aryan-invasion theory does not offer a solution to every problem... but then, its rejection raises a greater number of unanswered questions
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and a multiplicity of inconsistencies - which is exactly what The Problem of Aryan Origins by Shri K.D. Sethna ends up doing. The author's style may not be either fluid or engrossing, but he deserves the congratulations of "the general public of thoughtful readers" for focusing attention on a subject of such gripping interest and historical importance; and it is on this score that his book is well worth reading.
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K. D. SETHNA'S REPLY
I am amazed at Mr. Anthony J.C. de Sa's lengthy onslaught on my book. He is quite modest in his introductory passage as to his qualifications but in the body of his article he lays about him with the confidence of an authority. Unfortunately the air of certainty is not matched by an accuracy of procedure. Almost everywhere I see an inaccurate representation of my views and an inadequate understanding of my arguments.
Thus, to begin with, he roundly attributes to me the thesis that the Rigvedics were autochthones in India - that is, indigenous inhabitants. He fails to appreciate certain fine shades. I have said that there is no indication in the Rigveda of any entry by foreigners. From this I infer that we have to take the Rigvedics as being, for all practical purposes, autochthonous. We have no definite means of determining whether they came from anywhere. Their origins from abroad, if any, are lost in antiquity. We find them where the Rigveda shows them to be. But this does not foreclose the question of ultimate origins.
With Sri Aurobindo I grant the possibility that the Rigvedics may have hailed from more northern latitudes, perhaps even the Arctic Circle if some hints in the Hymns about the dawn and the sun could be given a physical meaning and regarded not only as spiritual symbols but also as half-mythologised memories. What seems positively deducible from the Rigveda is that we cannot put the advent of its composers into India anywhere near the time of its composition nor even in any calculable historical period.
Here we are borne out by both archaeology and literature - the latter including, besides the Hymns themselves, all subsequent Indian writing This double point, to which Mr. de Sa appears to attach little importance, is made by all just-minded scholars, be they in favour or not of the invasion-hypothesis. T. Burrow is one of the latest to admit it: "The Aryan invasion of India is recorded in no written document,
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and it cannot yet be traced archaeologically."1
When I touch on the topic of Indian writing in my book, Mr. de Sa again is unable to focus his attention. He makes a loose reference to Pusalker and his "contention". What Pusalker really says is that the Indian tradition, especially in the Puranas, makes India itself the home of the Aryans, from where they expanded in different directions to various countries. Neither Pusalker nor I offer this statement off our own bat. We are citing Indian documents and I do so to support my own "contention" which is based on other data too. Besides, as Mr. de Sa admits, my vision is of a long extensive Aryan belt in ancient times. India to me is not the sole seat of Aryanism. No doubt, this does not answer the question of the ultimate origins. But the ultimate origins have never been established so far. It is sheer dogmatism and wishful thinking to speak of "the autochthonous Central-European habitation" of the Aryans. All we can affirm is that they have been found in Central Europe at a particular epoch of antiquity, but nobody can assert that here was their original home. Some linguistic arguments tend to point towards it, but Mr. de Sa may be interested to read what James Anderson, a philologist of note, has remarked in general apropos of such arguments: "In spite of a number of theories concerning the Indo-European homeland, varying from Asia to Scandinavia, none are satisfactory from all points of view .... Linguistic considerations alone cannot answer the question of the homeland or period of dispersion...."2
The main query relevant to my book is: Is the Harappa Culture or the Rigveda earlier in time? Here the evidence for the domesticated horse is of central importance. Mr. de Sa thinks that I credit the. Harappā Culture with the horse because of some bones found at Shah Tepe on the Caspian
1."The Early Aryans", A Cultural History of India, edited by A.L. Basham (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1975), p. 21.
2.Structural Aspects of Language Change (Longman Group Ltd., London, 1973), p. 43
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coast. But why would I need to fare so far afield? Not only have the bones of equus caballus Linn, been found in the upper stratum of Mohenjo-daro but they have also been unearthed in the lower strata of Surkotada going back to at least 2000 B.C. It is impossible to hold that this Harappān site in Kutch was not in contact with the great cities in Sind and the Punjāb. Mr. de Sa refers us to the Harappān seals and reminds us that no equine has been depicted there. He drives home his point by asking us: "Given the fact that the Indus people have depicted on their thousands of seals almost every creature known to them (from earth-worms to rhinocerii), is it conceivable that they would omit to portray the horse if it was known to and domesticated by them, as Sethna claims? I don't think we can accept such a far-fetched assumption as feasible." I wonder why the writer, being so sure of himself, uses the qualifying adverb "almost". Perhaps he knows, yet does not want to tell, some facts which render his argument ineffective? If he does not, let me quote a few words from F. R. Allchin and then turn to the seals. Allchin observes: "The remains of a camel at Harappān sites are surely certain proof that the single-humped camel was domestic."3 Still, there is no representation of camelus dromedarius on any seal. Even the terracottas which represent a variety of animals show no sign of the camel. And there is another notable absence. Sir Mortimer Wheeler writes: "Nearly three-quarters of the terracottas represent cattle; normally humped bulls, althought the short-horn and the buffalo also occur. Strangely, cows are never represented."4 The seals too are devoid of them. Are we to believe that there were bulls without cows in the Indus Civilization? Mr. de Sa's reasoning is faulty in itself on the basis of the available evidence. And in the face of the actual horse-bones in abundance at Surkotada throughout the
3."Early Domesticated Animals in India and Pakistan", Ancient Cities of the Indus, edited by Gregory L. Possehl (Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, 1979), p. 240, col. 2.
4.The Indus Civilization (Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 92.
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Harappan occupation - not to mention a terracotta horse-figure at Lothal as well as horse-figurines and paintings at Rangpur5 - it is sheer perversity, these attempts to press the seals into service of a negative conclusion.* Possibly it is not perversity but ignorance; in which case the reviewer's tone of downright criticism becomes absurd to the nth degree.
Verging on the absurd also is the attempted denial of the spoked wheel. Just because on a few seals the symbol is not circular but oval-shaped or pointed at the extremities, the critic refuses the testimony of quite a number which are clearly wheel-like. And what is the alternative he suggests? We are told: "This symbol, which Sethna so confidently takes to be a wheel, is more correctly interpreted, as in Sumerian and Egyptian writing, to be a star, the sun or a divinity." May I ask whether a star, the sun or a divinity can be sometimes circular and on a few occasions oval-shaped and even pointed at the extremities? I should imagine such a modification would suit them as little as it would a spoked wheel. Surely some other explanation of the rare oddity is required for all of them than that they are not what we take them to be? In the second place, does Sumerian or Egyptian writing actually have the same symbol? In Egyptian hieroglyphics, the sun-symbol is a circle with a circlet within it at its centre.6 As far as I am aware, the Sumerian syllabary does not know of such a sign as I take to be a spoked wheel. Only the Mycenaean syllabary has anything like it. And there it definitely stands for a wheel,7 though the number of
5.H. D. Sankalia, Indian Archaeology Today
* Postscript in 1989. There is also a terracotta figurine from a late though not surface level at Mohenjo-dāro which Mackay and Pusalker have taken to be of a horse. B.B. Lai considers the head to be a dog's. But Wheeler, who would be the last to see any Aryan trait at Mohenjo-dāro, says that the figurine "seems to represent a horse" (The Indus Civilization,
6.P. E. Cleator, Lost Languages (Mentor, New York, 1959), p. 51.
7.Ibid., p. 155, Fig. II .
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spokes are four and not six as in the Harappān script. Of course, the Harappān sign may have served as a sun-symbol in India, but without ceasing to indicate also a wheel with spokes.
I may remind Mr. de Sa that even Iravatham Mahadevan whose admirer he is and who opts for sun-symbolism does not refuse to see a distinct wheel-like sign here. He8 speaks of the sign as appearing "at first sight to be the 'wheel' " and he proceeds to call it "a circle with six radial lines or 'spokes' within". He further states: "... the resemblance between the sign and the wheel is so strong that we may, as a first approximation, take the sign to represent the wheel and look for parallels." The "parallels" are the Indian tradition's "Wheel of God" (Vishnuchakra), "Wheel of Law" (Dharma-chakra) and "Wheel of King" (Chakravartin). There is also the Vedic "solar wheel". What we should stress is that all these wheels of the Indian tradition are spoked. Mahadevan ultimately decides in favour of a Dravidian Sun-god who, despite all appearances, has nothing to do with a spoked wheel, because Mahadevan believes that such a wheel was not known to the Harappāns and was introduced into India by post-Harappān Aryan invaders. According to him it is these invaders and not the Harappāns who thought in terms of the spoked wheel. Why does he hold this view? "There is no evidence," he pleads, "for the spoked wheel at Harappā or Mohenjo-dāro, where all the toy-carts so far found have solid wheels." But about this fact there are two points to be made.
First, the use of solid wheels does not necessarily preclude that of spoked ones. The Rigvedic chariot is known for the latter and yet, as we learn from Macdonell and Keith,9 "sometimes a solid wheel was used." We may also look
8."Study of the Indus Script through Bi-lingual Parallels", Ancient Cities of the Indus, p. 264, col. 2. For my later references to Mahadevan see ibid., p. 264, col. 2 and p. 265, col. 1.
9.The Vedic Index of Names and Subjects (John Murray & Co.,London, 1912) , II , p. 201.
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around in contemporary rural India to be convinced of the co-existence of the two kinds. Secondly, to counterbalance the testimony of the toy-carts we have the wheel-like signs with spokes in the script. If they have validity, we can aver that in the making of toy-carts the solid wheel was found preferable and therefore used: its use is merely a convenience and cannot argue against the co-existence of the spoked wheel. Whether the script-signs are valid or not depends wholly on the comparative dating of the Rigveda and the Harappā Culture. If the Harappāns were post-Rigvedic, there is nothing incongruous in what I have proposed.
The greatest prop to my proposal, however, is that for which Mr. de Sa reserves his greatest scorn: my line-drawing of a seal in which a man is shown standing astraddle - with each of his feet on a spoked wheel. I am scolded for "neglecting to mention (or graphically indicate with the help of a broken line) that the seal is a damaged one (as claimed by Shri I. Mahadevan) and all the portions are not exactly as they really appear". To be honest, I did not know of any damage. I copied the design from a booklet by four Finnish scholars who in their turn had reproduced their drawing from a well-known study published in 1934 by G.R. Hunter. Mahadevan has said that only a single object like a spoked wheel is visible and he "expresses the opinion that at the end of the other leg could very well be not a wheel but quite a different symbol, giving the value 'Lord of the sun and whatever the other symbol connotes". My showing a second wheel is considered "a very serious lapse indeed as the author builds up his most devastating argument on this very point". I am sorry I cannot sit in sackcloth and ashes for what I have shown. The whole design is a markedly symmetrical one. The man is depicted with two similar arms stretched out and with his legs poised in exactly the same manner on two sides: the natural suggestion is that the identical symbol is at the end of each leg. Mr. de Sa does not quote from Mahadevan what the "different symbol" might
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be like. If its presence is apt to conjure up the value "Lord of the sun", why should we not think of a spoked wheel here also, since Mr. de Sa has already proposed that what I regard as a spoked wheel is "more correctly interpreted to be", among other things, "the sun"? But then the total effect would certainly be of a man driving a chariot of two spoked wheels rather than anything else. Moreover, my denigrator overlooks the remark I cite from S.R. Rao, in connection with the important Harappān site Lothal which he excavated: "Relevant to the subject of chariots is the graffito on the potsherd from Lothal wherein a figure is seen standing on two wheels resembling the Assyrian chariot-drivers painted on pottery."10 Hunter's reconstruction of the damaged part of the seal strikes one as absolutely justified and so should the meaning read by Rao and me.
Mr. de Sa himself has a moment of second thought. He writes at the close of his condemnation of me: "Quite apart from all this, should we concede all that Shri Sethna contends (which is a bit too much) it can still be postulated that depicted on this seal is a picture of the 'enemy'." In clearer language, what the seal is taken to depict is not a Harappān but an Aryan invader glimpsed as he rode by on his chariot of two spoked wheels. The crucial point here would be, as our critic well realises, that the depiction should belong "to the later period of the Indus Civilization". In other words, the period should synchronise with the time of the supposed Aryan invasion. This time is generally put at "about 1500 B.C."11 Our seal is from the collection found at Mohenjo-dāro and Harappā. The C-14 date obtained for the latest level of Mohenjo-dāro is 1960 B.C.12
The general time-bracket Mr. de Sa himself gives for the Indus Civilization is: 2400-1700 B.C. This puts Harappā too
10.Lothal and the Indus Civilization (Asia Publishing House, Bombay,1973), p. 124.
11.T. Burrow in "The Early Aryans", A Cultural History of India, 20.
12.Ancient Cities of the Indus,
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out of court. Thus everywhere the "enemy" seems ruled out. Furthermore, the wheel depicted on the seal is exactly like those on seals which do not have the human outlined figure. Nine of the latter were recovered, as I have recorded in my book, from a part (DK area) of the lower city of Mohenjo-dāro.13 The lowest layer of Surkotada, as I have noted, has yielded a seal of the kind concerned.14 No ground at all exists for differentiating the controversial wheel-seal from the rest as non-Harappān.
Another piece of Mr. de Sa's confused thinking is related to his fling against Sri Aurobindo for "inconsistency". He attributes to Sri Aurobindo the view that "the difference between the Aryans and the Dravidians was cultural and not racial" and then goes on to comment: "This is really contradictory to his own assumption that the Dravidian culture is not essentially but only superficially different from the Aryan." What in fact Sri Aurobindo has said is apropos of the Rigveda, and it runs: "The distinction between Aryan and non-Aryan, on which so much has been built, seems on the mass of the evidence to indicate a cultural rather than a racial difference."15 But nowhere does Sri Aurobindo equate the Rigveda's "non-Aryan" with "Dravidian." On the contrary he argues that "there is nothing in the present ethnological features of the country" to prove the common theory that there was, from outside India, a penetration of "a small body of fair-skinned barbarians into a civilized Dravidian peninsula".16 The Rigveda's "non-Aryan" - its Dasa-Dasyu - is for Sri Aurobindo not human foes of a different race but supernatural beings of a demoniac darkness opposed to the
13.E. J. H. Mackay, Further Excavations at Mohenjo-dāro (New Delhi,1937), Vol. II, PIs. LXXXIII and LXXXXIV.
14.J. P. Joshi, "Exploration in Kutch and Excavation at Surkotada and New Light on Harappān Migration", Journal of the Oriental Institute (M. S. University of Baroda), Vol. XII, Sept.-Dec. 1972)., Nos. 1-2, PI. VII facing p. 121.
15.The Secret of the Veda (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1971),p. 24.
16.Ibid.
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inner spiritual adventure of the Rishis: "The language of the hymns clearly points to a particular worship or spiritual culture as the distinguishing sign of the Aryan, - a worship of Light and of the powers of Light and a self-discipline based on the culture of the 'Truth' and the aspiration to Immortality, - Ritam and Amritam."
To Mr. de Sa the Rigveda is a purely naturalistic document, "the spontaneous outpourings of a virile and nomadic people", occupied with wars and booty and physical phenomena and outward ritualistic worship. If we take it to be anything else, it becomes for him "merely allegorical - not something which was a dramatization of events actually occurring and situations actually obtaining, but only something which went on solely in the minds of the wise Rishis of yore". Putting his opinion in other terms, he declares: "It would be illogical to imagine a scripture of the nature of the Vedas as having no roots in reality but being a product mainly of philosophical fantasy". He has never paused to ask why the hymns were called Veda, which means "Knowledge" and "Insight", or why its composers were known as Rishis whom the hymns themselves define as "truth-seers and truth-hearers". What about the persistent tradition that the Riks were not human inventions but discoveries of eternal words? Side by side with such interpretations as Mr. de Sa favours, there has been the living sense that, behind all the Indian literature of God-realisation and of inmost Spirit-exploration, are the Mantras, the sacred inspired revelatory utterances, going under the name of the Rigveda. If even Mr. de Sa designates the Rigveda as "Scripture", he should be able to understand that it does not lack "roots in reality" but that its reality is something deeper, truer, more lasting than the physical world while not necessarily rejecting this world as an illusion. The Rigveda does not become "a product mainly of philosophical fantasy" just by being the poetic expression of a spiritual quest conveying in terms borrowed from the external life no less than in those of super-nature its journey and labour and conquest in the
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domain of a more-than-human consciousness. To discern a secret spiritual significance through a symbolism which often seems outwardly orientated is not to be, as our critic announces, "exceedingly naive": it can be perfectly logical in the perspective of India's religious history and against the background of an Age of Mysteries which, with its double aspect of the esoteric and the exoteric, preceded in ancient times the Age of philosophical mysticism and religious metaphysics as well as devotional ritualism.
The way Sri Aurobindo has worked out his symbolic reading of the Rigveda combines the thrill of a detective story with the illumination of a profound research in Yogic psychology armed with multi-linguistic expertness. The same thoroughness cannot quite be claimed for his exposition of affinities and relationships between the so-called Indo-European and the alleged Dravidian tongues. The detailed study projected by him in this sphere was never completed and we can well understand the sceptical attitude adopted by the majority of philologists to whose opinions Mr. de Sa finds himself bowing. Still, if whatever is extant of Sri Aurobindo's writings on the subject is keenly scrutinised, the path will be thrown open to consider Tamil and Sanskrit not only far closer than Caldwell and his successors can imagine but also suggestive of a remote common ancestor. A substantial help in this direction may be drawn from a book very little recognised as yet, the recent collection of Unguis-tic surveys by R. Swaminatha Aiyar under the title Dravidian Theories.11 Aiyar breaks new ground with remarkable ingenuity and vividly points in the direction almost of showing the Dravidian languages and particularly Tamil to be an ultra-Prakritic derivative of Sanskrit. Perhaps Aiyar overshoots the mark in places, but he richly deserves attention. His minute demonstrations, linked with Sri Aurobindo's penetrating insights, can go a long way towards disturbing the "views expressed by leading Indologists about the general
17. Published by the Madras Law Journal Office, Madras, 1975.
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differences between the Aryan and Dravidian tongues and cultures".
Let me now cry halt and take stock. Nothing urged by Mr. de Sa renders the hypothesis of an Aryan invasion less incredible than I have made it out to be. Neither has he succeeded in discrediting some of the "Aryan" signs he has picked out for censure from the fairly large number I have put forth to characterise the Indus Civilization. My long refutation of the supposedly non-Aryan nature of the Harappān religion he has completely bypassed. Hence his reader will have no idea how this religion could derive most easily from the Rigvedic. Even so, my central thesis appears to stand unshaken by his assaults - the thesis that the Harappa Culture is posterior to the Rigveda and that the common dichotomy of Aryan and Dravidian Indias is based on a superficial impression.
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