Intersting Post of the Week - 6

This week's most interesting post comes from Padma Sree Iravatam Mahadevan on The Hindu Magazine dated Sunday, 3rd may 2009. The article titled "The Indus non-script is a non-issue" concentrates on the recent findings of a team of scientists from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and the Indus Research Centre of the Roja Muthiah Research Library (both at Chennai), and backed by a team from the University of Washington at Seattle. JK on Varnam had discussed the findings in brief. These finding were challenged by historians interested in Indus Valley civilization. Michael Witzel and Steve Farmer vehemently disagreed with the findings. Mr. Mahadevan in this article tries to prove that Indus Valley Civilization was infact literate with well defined script and that also it is pre-aryan. This article deserves a rigorous study by those interested in the history of civilization of India.

First, briefly about Iravatham Mahadevan. The Hindu in the same article:

Iravatham Mahadevan is a well-known authority on the Indus and Brahmi scripts. He is the author of The Indus Script: Texts, Concordance and Tables (1977) and
Early Tamil Epigraphy (2003).

From wikipedia, we get to know of a littel more about Mr. Mahadevan. Harappa dot com quotes this about Mr.Mahadevan

A Tamil speaker, he has used historical linguistics and statistical studies to examine the Dravidian components in Vedic Sanskrit, and how these might point to interpretations of the Indus Valley script. Known for his breakthrough decipherments of the earliest Tamil Brahmi writing, his thoughts on the relationship between ancient Indus writing and Brahmi writing bear weight. A longtime civil servant, he used a fellowship opportunity to put together the first script concordance of Indian seals in 1970.

The article goes at first into some history of how the 2004 paper in Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies 11: 2, 2004 titled "The collapse of the Indus script thesis: the myth of a literate Harappan civilization" by Richard Sproat of Oregon Health and Sciences University, Portland and Michael Witzel of Harvard University. Pavan of Dont Panic shared, via e-mail, this huge document* which has a series of articles written by Michael Witzel, N.S.Rajaram, David Frawley and others discussing about Indus Valley Civlization and Harrappa Civilization with Vedas as the backgroud. This document would serve as a good started to see how the world historians look at History of India.

Mr.Mahadevan in his article tries to point out his personal perspectives about how the archealogical, lingustic evidence is good enough to believe that indus was not illiterate. However towards the end of the article, Mr. Mahadevan explains why he thinks Indus Valley Civlization was non-aryan and pre-aryan.

• The Indus civilisation was urban, while the Vedic was rural and pastoral.

• The Indus seals depict many animals, but not the horse. The chariot with the spoked wheels is also not depicted. The horse and chariot with the spoked wheels are the main features of Aryan-speaking societies. (For the best and most recent account, refer to David W. Anthony, The Horse, the Wheel and Language, Princeton, 2007).

• The Indus religion as revealed in the pictorial depictions on the seals included worship of buffalo-horned male gods, mother-goddesses, the pipal tree, the serpent, and probably the phallic symbol. Such modes of worship are alien to the religion of the Rigveda.

He then gives a linguistic account of why Indus Valley Civlization might be Dravidian. After reading these article, many questions pop up in my mind.

If Indus Valley Civilization was not literate, how did they administer well planned cities like Mohenjo-daro. Without a proper mechanism for written communication, would this have been possible? If we do believe that Indus Valley Civlization was Dravidian as Mr. Mahadevan points out, would it have been that Aryan Invasion Theory, which has been questioned and many theses prove it wrong, is infact true? If Aryan Invasion Theory were also to be false, then would it be true that Sukracharya's descendants moved towards Iran, as has been mentioned here,

The fact that the Devasur conflict was among two sections of Aryan kings and ages(Rushis) out of which one section was worshiping divinity under the name of eva and the other section worshiping divinity under the name of Asur. Ushanas shukra along with the petty king Vrushparvan, was the presepter of the section worshiping divinity under the name of Asur. These difference were aggravated in
such a magnitude that at a later period his descendants and followers had to leave saptasindhu and settle elsewhere, probably in Iran. The priests of ahur worshiping sect of ahur Mazda of Iran are called atharvan.

moved towards Iran from North after some difference in opinion with Brihaspati. May be that is the reason why traces of dravidian language were found in Afghanistan, Iran and Brahui regions and might it be that Sukracharya and his followers were the originators of Dravidian civlization as a protest against the other sages or may be they simply wanted to establish a seperate branch? It is certain that Sukracharya was in Kerala for some time if one looks at Asura King Bali's story and Vamana avatara of Sri Maha Vishnu. A lot of questions! We can only wait and watch to see the untouched secrets unravel as further studies continue.

*Many thanks to Pavan for sharing a wonderful document with me. It is a very pleasent coincidence that just weeks after I started reading this document, the paper on Indus Script got published and the consequent train of events happened.