“The ideas of the ruling class are, in every epoch, the ruling ideas”

                                                                        ----Karl Marx

THE VEDIC RIVER SARASWATI  

The British rule of about 200 years over India has left behind several lasting legacies which will remain a subject of debate for a long time. The discussion of the long term consequences of the British rule for India is progressively moving towards becoming more balanced as the Indian scholarship is acquiring breadth, diversity and sophistication and is gaining in self confidence to independently examine what really happened and to put forward its own conclusions without being overawed  by the theses evolved and handed down by our erstwhile rulers and their kinsmen who have been dominating the world scene for the last few of centuries.

One of the major fields in which the given theories are being challenged is Indology –the study of India’s ancient history and culture. Although the Persian scholar Al Biruni who came to India following the invasion of Mahmood Ghaznavi is generally regarded as the first Indologist, the western school of Indology was founded by a group of inquisitive scholarly employees of the East India Company including Sir William Jones (1746-1794) and Thomas Colebrooke (1765-1837). Jones was a distinguished linguist and jurist and his position as a judge of the Supreme Court at Calcutta led him to study and translate the texts of ancient Hindu law books. Sanskrit literature, both religious and temporal, equally received his attention as also of his peers. However the one who received the highest acclaim was the German philologist-orientalist Friedrich Max Muller who moved to EnglandOxford. Discovery of the Upanishads, the Vedas and the similarities between Sanskrit and the European languages gave rise to considerable theorizing about the origins of the composers of the Vedas, and the origins and inter- flow of philosophical, and religious knowledge and beliefs between India and the west. to study the Sanskrit texts in the collection of the East India Company and ended up as a Professor at

PREJUDICED SCHOLARSHIP  

While the western scholars did a commendable job in learning Sanskrit and trying to understand the past of the people who came to be governed by the British few among them could be objective in their assessment of India’s history, culture and people. In an age of European and Christian ascendancy most of the scholars too believed in the superiority of the western values and heritage. James Mill whose “History of India” was prescribed reading for those likely to serve in India believed that “The people of India were never advanced and that they had no right to claim a glorious past”. William Jones, a devout Christian, speculated that the Bhagavad Gita came from the Christian Gospels (!) And Max Muller made no secret of his purpose in translating the Vedas. In a letter (dt Dec 9,1867) to his wife Max Muller wrote “..I feel convinced....that the translation of the Veda will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India,...It is the root of their religion and to show them what that root is, I feel sure, the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last 3000 years”.

THE INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION   

The discovery of archaeological sites at Harappa and Mohanjodaro in early 1930s was another milestone in the development of Indology. The ruins of the two well planned  cities containing fortified citadels  provided evidence of a highly developed civilization (called the Indus Valley Civilization) which was visualised to have existed between 3300 and 1300 BCE. Max Muller and the other western Indologists postulated that the Vedas were produced by Aryans---- a fair skinned Caucasian origin nomadic people who used horse drawn chariots. Later western Indologists identified the Harappans as Dravidians and ascribed the demise of the Indus Valley Civilization to invasion by Aryans whose warrior chief Indra had the appellative purandara (destroyer of cities). During the last sixty years. a lot of research on the subject has been carried out in India as well as in Pakistan. Most of the assumptions of the western Indologists are being seriously contested by modern scholars on the basis of evidence provided by recent advances in archaeology, geology, glaciology, hydrology, remote sensing etc. The Indian Indologists believe that the Indus Valley Civilization should more appropriately be designated as the Saraswati Civilization or at least the Sindhu-Sarasvati Civilization in as much as the Vedas were composed by those who lived on the banks of river Sarasvati. More than 80% of some 2,600 plus Harappan  sites unearthed by recent archaeological excavations lie in the Sarasvati river basin in India  However, as the Vedic river Sarasvati dried up long ago there is some dispute about the identity of the river to which the composers of Rig-Veda paid glorious compliments. For example, the prominent Marxist School historian Professor R.S. Sharma holds that the Vedic Saraswati is identical with the Afghanistan river Helmand, referred to as Harakhwati in the Avesta.

Last update : 09-04-2009 01:02

Keywords : Some Unresolved Issues in Indology, The Vedic River Saraswati, Jai Prakash Sharma

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