HALHED MANUFACTURES MANUSMRITI

He Translated it From Persian!

Nathaniel Brassey Halhed (1751 – 1830) was the person, who at the suggestion of Warren Hastings, manufactured an English version of Manusmriti. This translation from Persian was published in 1776 as A Code of Gentoo Laws. In 1778 he published A Grammar of the Bengal Language, and to print it, he set up the first Bengali press in India. (1)

Halhed was born in Westminster, in a merchant family to banker William Halhed, and was educated at Harrow School, where he began a close friendship with R B Sheridan, the Irish playwright who wrote The Rivals and School for Scandal. While at Oxford he undertook oriental studies under the influence of later Indologist William Jones. Jones had preceded him from Harrow to Oxford and they shared an intellectual relationship. Accepting a writership in the service of the East India Company, he reached India and became a crony of the Governor of Bengal, Warren Hastings. Hastings had been the first Governor General from 1772–1785.

Halhed's mother Frances was the daughter of John Caswall, a Member of Parliament. Halhed entered Christ Church, Oxford at the age of 17. He learnt some Persian. He remained there for three years but did not take a degree. Halhed's father was disappointed and decided to send him to India to work for the East India Company. His application for a writership was granted by Harry Verelst, who had been Governor of Bengal during 1767-1769.

Halhed

Halhed began work in the accountant general's office and was next used as a Persian translator. He was sent to Kasimbazar by William Aldersey, Governor, for practical experience, and also to learn the silk trade. It was in Kasimbazar that Halhed acquired his wife and Bengali, for dealing with the aurungs (weaving districts). (2) In Bengal, he had several romantic interests: Elizabeth Pleydell, a certain Nancy, Diana Rochfort, and Henrietta Yorke. (3) Elizabeth was the daughter of John Zephaniah Surgeon and temporary governor of Bengal (1760), and the wife of Charles Stafford Pleydell. Upon arriving in Calcutta, Halhed had stayed in the home of Pleydell. Diana was the wife of Sir John D' Oyly, who was Sheriff of Calcutta in 1779. In the same year, D'Oyly married Diana Rochfort, widow of William Cotes and was appointed Resident for Murshidabad.

After wooing several accomplished women, Halhed married (Helena) Louisa Ribaut, stepdaughter of Johannes Matthias Ross, the head of the Dutch factory at Kasimbazar.  

Halhed soon became one of Hastings's favourites. On 5 July 1774, the Governor asked for an assistant for Persian documents, in addition to the munshis, and Halhed was appointed. But when Hastings nominated him as Commissary General in October 1776, there was serious resistance, and Halhed found his position untenable. (4)

Just before Halhed was appointed as a writer, the East India Company's court of directors notified the President and council at Fort William College of their decision to take over the local administration of civil justice: the implementation was left with the newly appointed Governor, Warren Hastings. Hastings assumed the governorship in April 1772 and by August submitted what was to become the Judicial Plan. It provided among other things that "all suits regarding the inheritance, marriage, caste and other religious usages, or institutions, the laws of the Koran with respect to Mohametans and those of the Shaster with respect to Gentoos shall be invariably adhered to." No British personnel could read Sanskrit, however. (5) Gentoo was the term used before coining the word Hindu, either derived from the Portuguese Gentio meaning gentile heathen or native where the Portuguese used it to differentiate between the native Indians from Muslim Moors.

Hastings and his infamous Bengal Squad came forward with a proposal of setting up the Company's firm administration in India. The Bengal squad consisted of Halhed, David Anderson, Major William Sands, Colonel Sweeney Toone, Dr Clement Francis, Captain Jonathan Scott, John Shore, Lieutenant Colonel William Popham, and Sir John D Oyly, They were active members of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and later became MPs.

The colonizers were desperate to get access to the inner domain, the spiritual fulcrum of India because they knew the less strenuous way to force the rule on the outer society was to make sure that the other isn't even aware of being ruled. The inner domain consists of the language and its compositions, the societal compositions of men and women. As Bernard Cohn pointed out in his Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: In British India, Hastings knew the importance of knowing the knowledge.

Thus, the Hastings squad decided to govern the natives with their own personal laws, that could be derived from native compositions. To rule the Gentoos, a committee of 11 Brahmin pandits was formed, who were given the task of compiling the Hindu personal law. The pandits began to assimilate a text from multiple sources which they named Vivadarnavasetu (A Bridge on the Sea of Litigations). As mentioned in Theodor Aufrecht’s Catalogus Catalogorum, an alphabetical register of Sanskrit works and authors, it is a digest compiled by the order of Hastings, by Bāṇeśvara and others. Since Halhed was not proficient in Sanskrit and knew little Persian, the Sanskrit text prepared by the pandits was translated into Persian by Zaid ud -Din Ali Rasai. Then Halhed translated it from Persian to English, working with Hastings.

The completed translation was available on 27 March 1775,  which Halhed named, A Code of Gentoo Laws or Ordinations of Pandits. This is the first translation of Manusmriti into English, and this is the background of the reincarnation of Manusmriti in India. The East India Company had it printed in London in 1776. This was an internal edition, distributed by the East India Company. A pirate edition was printed by Donaldson the following year, followed by a second edition in 1781; translations in French and German appeared by 1778, using the Company's Translation Fund.

The book begins with a letter from Hastings to the Company directors: " I have now the satisfaction of to transmit to you a complete and corrected copy of a translation of the Gentoo Code, executed with great ability diligence and fidelity by Mr Halhed, from a Persian version of the original Shanscrit which was undertaken under the immediate inspection of the pundits or compilers of this work...the pundits when desired to revise them, could not be prevailed upon to make any alterations, as they declared, they had the sanction of their Shaster, and were therefore incapable of amendment."

It contains a letter of thanks from Halhed to Hastings which speaks of a plan: "Indeed, if all the lights, which at different periods have been thrown upon this subject, by your happy suggestions, had been withheld, there would have remained for my share of the performance nothing but a mass of obscurity and confusion; for that in your own right, the whole result of the execution is yours, as well as the entire merit of the original plan".

In the preface to the book, Halhed says that for the commerce of India and the territorial establishment in Bengal, "a well-timed" toleration in matters of religion is necessary and to achieve it, the adoption of original Institutes of the country, which do not clash with the interests of the conquerors is essential. "To a steady pursuance of this maxim", he continues, "much of the success of the Romans may be attributed, who not only allowed to their foreign subjects the free exercise of their own religion, and the administration of their own jurisdiction, but sometimes by a policy still more flattering, even naturalized such parts of the mythology of the conquered, as were in any respect compatible with their own system."

The plan of the conquerors is clear: invent a personal law which has its roots in religion. 

Further, Halhed says: "With a view to the same political advantages, and in observance of so striking an example, the compilation was set on foot; which must be considered as the only work of the kin, wherein the genuine principles of the Gentoo Jurisprudence are made public, with the sanction of their most respectable pundits (or lawyers) and which offers a complete confutation of a belief too common in Europe, that the Hindoos have no written laws whatever, but such as relate to the ceremonious peculiarities of their superstition."

Since there was no written personal law for Hindus like the Sharia of Muslims, Halhed invented one. 

How was it compiled? Halhed describes the process: "The professors of the ordinances here collected still speak the original language in which they were composed, and which is entirely unknown to the bulk of the people, who have settled upon those professors several great endowments and benefactions in all parts of Hindostan, and pay them besides a degree of personal respect little short of idolatry, in return for the advantages, supposed to be derived from their studies. A set of the most experienced of these lawyers was selected from every part of Bengal for the purpose of compiling the present work, which they picked out sentence by sentence from various originals in the Shanscrit language, neither adding to nor diminishing any part of the ancient text. The articles thus collected were next translated literally into Persian, under the inspection of one of their own body; and from that translation were rendered into English with equal attention to the closeness and fidelity of the version."

So, a single text of the Hindu personal law was not available; a new text was compiled from various originals!

The book made Halhed's reputation, but was controversial, given that the English translation was remote from its original. It failed to become the authoritative text of the Anglo-Indian judicial system. Its impact had more to do with Halhed's preface and the introduction to Sanskrit than the laws themselves. The Critical Review of London recorded in September 1777: (6)

"This is a most sublime performance ... we are persuaded that even this enlightened quarter of the globe cannot boast anything which soars so completely above the narrow, vulgar sphere of prejudice and priestcraft. The most amiable part of modern philosophy is hardly upon a level with the extensive charity, the comprehensive benevolence, of a few rude untutored Hindoo Bramins ... Mr Halhed has rendered more real service to this country, to the world in general, by this performance, than ever flowed from all the wealth of all the nabobs by whom the country of these poor people has been plundered ... Wealth is not the only, nor the most valuable commodity, which Britain might import from India."

But the output completely violated the spirit of actual practice. The result was a magnification of the problem of caste hierarchy in India, which helped the British to divide and rule.

Halhed stated in the preface that he had been "astonished to find the similitude of Shanscrit words with those of Persian and Arabic, and even of Latin and Greek: and these not in technical and metaphorical terms, which the mutation of refined arts and improved manner might have occasionally introduced; but in the main ground-work of language, in monosyllables, in the names of numbers, and the appellations of such things as would be first discriminated as the immediate dawn of civilisation." This observation was heralded as a major step towards the "discovery" of the Indo-European language family.

Hastings

In 1785 Halhed returned to England, and from 1790–1795 was Member of Parliament for Lymington, Hants. For some time he was a disciple of Richard Brothers, a teacher of British Israelism, and a speech in parliament in defence of Brothers made it impossible for Halhed to remain in the House of Commons, from which he resigned in 1795. He subsequently obtained a home appointment under the East India Company.

Leaving Bengal, Halhed went to Holland, and on to London. The financial crunch forced him to consider a return to India, but he tried to do so without overt support from Hastings. On 18 November 1783, he asked the Company's directors to appoint him to the Committee of Revenue in Calcutta. He was successful, but when he reached Calcutta, Hastings was in Lucknow. (7)

Halhed presented his credentials to Edward Wheler, the acting governor-general, but there was no vacancy in the committee and no other appointments could be made without Hastings. Summoned by Hastings to Lucknow, Halhed made a futile journey, since Hastings had by then decided to leave for England and was bound for Calcutta. (8) Hastings was planning to bring supporters to England and wanted to have Halhed there as an agent of the Nawab Wazir of Oudh. At this point, Halhed threw in his lot with Hastings. (9)

The East India Company lacked employees with good Bengali. Halhed proposed a Bengali translatorship to the Board of Trade and set out a grammar of Bengali, the salaries of the pandits and the scribe who assisted him being paid by Hastings. The difficulty arose with a Bengali font. Charles Wilkins undertook it, the first Bengali press was set up at Hugli, and the work of creating the typeface was done by Panchanan Karmakar, under the supervision of Wilkins. (10)

Wilkins informed the Council on 13 November 1778 that the printing of Halhed's Bengali Grammar has been completed, by which time Halhed had left Bengal. Halhed's Grammar was widely believed at the time to be the first grammar of Bengali, because the Portuguese work of Manuel da Assumpção, published in Lisbon in 1743, was largely forgotten.

In creative writing, Halhed's early collaboration with leading playwright Sheridan was not a success, though they laboured on works including Crazy Tales and the farce Ixiom, later referred to as Jupiter, which was not performed. One work, The Love Epistles of Aristaenetus, translated from Greek into English metre, written by Halhed, revised by Sheridan and published anonymously, did make a brief stir. The friendship with Sheridan came to an end, Elizabeth Linley chose Sheridan over Halhed, and later they were political enemies. 

Elizabeth (1754-1792) English singer who was known to have possessed great beauty. She was the subject of several paintings by Thomas Gainsborough, who was a family friend, Joshua Reynolds and Richard Samuel. An adept poet and writer, she became involved in Whig politics. The second of twelve children and the first daughter of the composer Thomas Linley and his wife Mary Johnson, Elizabeth became the wife of Sheridan. She was one of the most noted soprano singers of her day, though Sheridan discouraged her from performing in public after their marriage. The Sheridans' relationship was stormy, and both parties had affairs; Elizabeth also had several miscarriages and a stillborn baby before producing a son, Thomas, born in 1775. One of Elizabeth's lovers was Lord Edward FitzGerald, who was the father of her daughter born in 1792. Elizabeth had suffered ill health for some time, which the traumatic labour exacerbated. She died of tuberculosis in 1792.

The opening of the Calcutta Theatre in November 1773 gave Halhed the occasion to write prologues. A production of King Lear also spurred him to write more pieces. He produced a humorous verse: A Lady's Farewell to Calcutta was a lament for those who regretted staying in the mofussil.

Halhed returned to England, on 18 June 1785, identified as a close supporter of Hastings, and as a member of the Bengal Squad of 1780–1784, in Britain that supported Hastings. (11) There the "Bengal Squad" was a group of Members of Parliament, who looked after the interests of East India Company officials who had returned to Great Britain, from India. From that position, they became defenders of the Company. (12)

Halhed wrote an anonymous tract in 1779 in defence of Hastings's policies with respect to the Maratha War. He began to write poetry, also, expressing his admiration for the governor, such as a Horatian Ode of 1782. Under the pseudonym of "Detector," he wrote a series of open letters that appeared in newspapers, as separate pamphlets and in collections. These letters span over a year, from October 1782 to November 1783.

When Edmund Burke, philosopher and MP, brought 22 charges against Hastings in April 1786, Halhed was in the middle of the defence. For the Benares charge, Halhed drafted a reply for Scott, not in accord with Hastings's chosen line. He also cast doubt on some of Hastings's accounts when he was called on to testify. As a result, Halhed became unpopular with the defence team. (13)

The impeachment of Hastings was attempted between 1787 and 1795 in Parliament. Hastings was accused of misconduct during his time in Calcutta, particularly relating to mismanagement and personal corruption. The impeachment prosecution was led by Edmund Burke and became a wider debate about the role of the East India Company and the expanding empire in India. The impeachment trial became the site of a debate between two radically opposed visions of empire—one represented by Hastings, based on ideas of absolute power and conquest in pursuit of the exclusive national interests of the colonizer, versus one represented by Burke, of sovereignty, based on a recognition of the rights of the colonized.

Halhed's book

The trial did not sit continuously and the case dragged on for seven years. When the eventual verdict was given Hastings was acquitted. It has been described as "probably the British Isles' most famous, certainly the longest, political trial."

Halhed failed as a Tory candidate for Parliament, at Leicester in 1790, and it cost him a great deal. He succeeded in acquiring a seat in May 1791 at the borough of Lymington, in Hampshire. (14) His life was changed in 1795 by Richard Brothers and his prophecies. A revealed knowledge of the Prophecies and Times appealed to Halhed and resonated with the style of antique Hindu texts. (15) He argued for Brothers in parliament, but he was arrested for criminal lunacy, severely damaging his reputation. (16)

Thereafter, Halhed became a recluse for 12 years. He wrote on orientalist topics but published nothing. From 1804 he was a follower of Joanna Southcott (1750-1814), a self-described religious prophetess from Devon, England. In poverty, he applied for one of the newly opened civil secretary posts at the East India Company and was appointed in 1809. (17) With access to the Company library, Halhed spent time in 1810 translating a collection of Tipu Sultan's dreams written in the prince's own hand. He also made translations of the Mahabharata as a personal study, to "understand the grand scheme of the universe". (18)

Hastings died in 1818. In the spring of 1819, Halhed resigned from the Company, and he was allowed a £500 pension and recovered some of his early investments. [22] Halhed lived on for another decade, without publishing anything further, and quietly died in 1830. At his death, his assets were estimated to be around £18,000. Louisa Halhed lived for a year longer. (19)

Halhed's major works are those he produced in Bengal, in the period 1772 to 1778.  British Museum bought Halhed's collection of Oriental manuscripts, and his unfinished translation of the Mahabharata went to the library of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. (20)

Among his works, The Upanisad (1787) was based on Dara Shikoh's Persian translation. He wrote and distributed a Testimony of the Authenticity of the Prophecies of the Richard Brothers, and of his Mission to recall the Jews. Scandalously, he identified London with Babylon and Sodom and was judged eccentric or mad. He was also mad when he manufactured the Hindu personal law.

____________________

1. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Halhed, Nathaniel Brassey" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 12 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press

2. Rosane Rocher (1983). Orientalism, Poetry, and the Millennium: The Checkered Life of Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, 1751–1830. Motilal Banarsidass. p. 38.

3. ibid, pp. 40–1

4. ibid, pp. 92–6

5. ibid,. pp. 48 and 51

6. Dalrymple, William (2004). White Mughals: love and betrayal in eighteenth-century India. Penguin, p 40 

7.  Rocher, pp. 119–121

8. ibid, pp. 121–2

9. ibid

10. Dalrymple, p 40

11. C. H. Philips, The East India Company "Interest" and the English Government, 1783–4: (The Alexander Prize Essay), Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Vol. 20 (1937), pp. 83–101, at p. 90; Cambridge University Press 

12. Rocher,  p. 131

13. ibid, pp. 132–4.

14. ibid,  pp.141–2

15. ibid,  p. 157

16. ibid,  pp. 168–9

17. Rocher, Rosane. "Halhed, Nathaniel Brassey". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press.

18. Rocher, p. 214

19. ibid, p. 228

20. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Halhed, Nathaniel Brassey" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 12 (11th ed.)

Cambridge University Press.

© Ramachandran 

ARYAN INVASION IS A CONCOCTED MYTH

A Civilization Around River Sarasvati

The great sage Vyasa dictated the Mahabharata to Ganesha, on the banks of the River Sarasvati. While dictating, the sage asked the river goddess to flow more gently. She didn't listen and that is when Ganesha cursed her that she will one day completely vanish. Thus, the disappearance of the river is also there in Hindu scriptures. 

Sarasvati originated amid the Aravalli mountain range in Rajasthan, as a tributary of the Alaknanda River, which has an origination point near Badrinath in Uttarakhand. The river passed through Patan and Sidhpur before merging with the Rann of Kutch. The remains of the river are there in the Mana village, the last village on the Ind0-Tibetan border in the Chameli district, located around 4.4km from Badrinath. The river Sarasvati is mentioned in both the Rig Veda and Manusmriti, and it is important for India to prove the Aryan invasion theory is just humbug.

In the year 1886, Moniere Williams made the process of translating Sanskrit to English easier by the publication of Sanskrit to English and English to Sanskrit dictionaries. Earlier, William Jones had "discovered" that Sanskrit was similar to many other European languages and almost "founded" comparative linguistics. In 1786, in his address to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Jones said: "The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is a wonderful structure, more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin and more exquisitely refined than either: yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident". Thus, a diabolic design to invent the "Aryan invasion and civilization" was born. (1) 

In 1794, after the Manusmriti  (Law Code of Manu) was "discovered" and translated by Jones, the Rig Veda, the most ancient work of Indian philosophy that predated Manusmriti, was translated by Max Muller in 1856. (2) Both texts open the doors to ancient India.  

Both the Rig Veda nor Manusmriti had not been written down when they were composed. The people of ancient India did not use a writing system to preserve the texts or ancient compositions. They never wrote on paper or wood or another medium, in the heat of tropical India. Though many wooden boats were constructed by the people living in ancient India, none has survived until today or yet been found by archaeologists excavating the remains of the cities of ancient India. (3)

Maybe they wanted to control the flow of information for political or religious reasons. A different method of preserving knowledge was invented- memorization. Certain individuals dedicated their life to memorising long passages of information: a type of poetry or hymn was easy to memorise if chanted to a particular rhythm. There are individuals in India today who memorise many of these hymns, especially Rig Veda, recite them every day and teach them.  

Geography of Rig Veda

Whether for ignorance or because of the colonial psyche, the British rulers created a theory that the native people of India did not invent the sophisticated language of Sanskrit and the Manusmriti, and did not compose the spiritual Rig Veda, but all of it came from civilizations outside of India. They ruled that the uncivilised native population of India was forced to submit to these sophisticated invaders, inter-marry and be overtaken by the invading army's agenda.

The Europeans found some support for their theories, in the Rig Veda itself: In the Rig Veda, there are many references to battles between forces, especially the "Arya versus the Dasyu." But, several scholars of today point out that it was not a battle between the white and the black, but a reference to a never-ending fight between good and evil, since the Veda is a spiritual text.

The Aryan invasion theory, developed by many European scholars said that powerful warriors called "Aryans" from outside of the northwest of India, perhaps southern Russia, invaded India in about 1500 BCE, developed the Sanskrit language and compiled the Rig-Veda in 1200 BCE. Though the sophistication of Sanskrit shows that it took many years to develop, the  '"Aryan invasion theory" said that no other type of modernism was developed in ancient India until Alexander came with his army in about 326 BCE. Now, in light of scientific discoveries, we are certain that the Aryan invasion theory is a myth.

It is difficult to believe that mighty warriors who had travelled thousands of miles and conquered India would suddenly tum their swords into ploughshares and switch from war to spirituality. It is also difficult to believe that these "linguistically sophisticated warriors" would never mention in their (?) compositions like the Rig Veda their nativity or native language prior to their supposed invasion of India. There is no mention of how they easily developed the complicated Sanskrit. There is no mention of how they pressurised the native population to learn complicated Sanskrit, giving up their native one, recruiting large numbers of uncivilised native people to dedicate their lives to learning, memorizing, reciting and teaching the difficult foreign language.  

Though the Rig Veda doesn't contain the word Aryan, (it has only Arya), the European evangelists called the invaders '"Aryan" and their native enemies "Dasa" or '"Dasyu".  The enemies of the Vedic king, Sudas, are described in the Rig-Veda as being both Aryas and Dasas. Why not the Aryan Invasion theorists found this confusing? Dasyus are sometimes described as dark-skinned, and this came in handy for the  Aryan invasion theorists. They were quick to reason that if the enemies were "dark", that could refer to the native population of India. Conversely, the Europeans in India claimed to be more directly related to the white "Aryan civilised invaders".

It is evident that the Rig Veda never meant skin colour. The darkness of Dasyus and the lightness of Arya in the Rig Veda speak of a symbolic battle between light and darkness, good and bad. (4) 

The word, Arya is defined by Monier-Williams in his Sanskrit to English dictionary as: "a respectable or honourable or faithful man, an inhabitant of Aryavarta; one who is faithful to the religion of his country; Name of the race which immigrated from Central Asia into Aryavarta (opposed to {anArya}, {dasyu}, {dAsa} .. a man highly esteemed, a respectable, honourable man... a master, an owner; a friend...of a good family; excellent; wise... [see Old German {era}; Mod(ern) Germ(an) {Ehre}; Irish {Erin}.]  (5)

Thus, Williams invented a meaning for Arya, a "politically-correct" invention, designed to drive a wedge between the people of India, the upper and lower rungs of society, to divide and rule, or divide and destroy. So, what does Arya really mean?

Each Sanskrit letter actually is a root sound (dathu) that makes up simple words and the roots of more complicated words. In the case of Arya, it comes from the following Sanskrit letters (there are two possibilities for spellings using one of two different "R" sounds): (6)

A-a ... prefix of verbs, near, near to, towards 

R-...in heaven, to go, move, rise, tend upwards (or) 

ra- acquiring...giving...fire, heat, love, brightness, splendour

ya- joining, restraining... attaining  

Taken together, the roots indicate: "one who is near towards acquiring and joining splendour or is rising upwards to attain heaven", which could mean spiritual or special or "heaven-oriented" people. It will never mean white foreign warriors. 

 The composers of Rig Veda often referred to themselves as "Arya". The Westerners took it as "Aryan" and translated the word as being "white-skinned",  just because in Rig Veda, the enemies of the Aryas were sometimes described as "dark". As we have seen, the names of the "dark" enemies of the "Aryas" were "Daasas" or "Dasyus". After World War II, Western scholars found scholars from India, like Sri Aurobindo, more credible- he believed that Daasas were not human beings at all, but "dark" spirits versus spirits of light; even the British Indologists Arthur MacDonnell and Arthur Keith said that the word "Dasyu" is applied to "superhuman enemies" and that the word "Daasa sometimes denotes enemies of a demoniac character in the Rig Veda". (7)  In Rig Veda, the god of fire, "Agni", is often portrayed as a bringer of the Light, one who killed the Dasyus, the dark (spirits). (8) Rig Veda, Book V, Chapter 14, Verse 4, says: "Agni (the god of fire) shone brightly when born, with light killing the Dasyus and the dark. (9)

Vedic Rivers

Max Muller in 1881 suggested that the term "Arya" may have evolved from the term "iraa", earth; in historical times it was being used in the sense of "sir" in English. (10) For instance, a character in the Rig Veda, Trasadasyu, was dark-skinned or syaava ("zyAva"), even though he was an Arya. (11) Monier-Williams also defines the word in the Rig Veda, syaava ("zyAva"), to be "brown, dark-coloured, dark". (12) 

In Rig Veda 1.96.3, the term "aria" is used, not "Arya", it is "viza ArIrAhutam", even though it is translated in English as "Aryan": "Praise him, ye Aryan folk"; the correct word should be "aindra", which means "belonging to or sacred to (the Vedic god) Indra, coming or proceeding from Indra. (13) Monier Williams defines "ari" as "attached to faithful; a faithful or devoted or pious man" and "ArI" as "to pour, let drop, to trickle or flow upon; to flow over." This is very different from "light-skinned" or "white-skinned" invaders called Aryans.  

In 1919-1920, two extremely old archaeological sites were found by R D Banerji of the Archaeological Survey of India and excavated by a team led by K N Dikshit during 1924-1925, and John Marshal during 1925-1926, in northwest India, the ancient cities of Mohenjodaro and Harappa near the Indus River. The civilization was called the Indus or Harappa Civilization or (14) Indus/Harappa Civilization and was dated to about 2500 BCE or about 4500 years ago. This was a setback for the Aryan invasion theorists. They no longer could claim that the native population of India was uncivilised in 2500 BCE. There was conclusive proof of carefully planned out cities with streets that ran according to directions, North-South and East-West, with bathrooms in every house and advanced waterways and drainage systems. Such drainage systems did not come again for another 2000 years until the time of Roman urban planners.

After the cities of Mohenjodaro and Harappa were '"discovered", the Aryan invasion theory was changed: these cities were constructed by some other prior invaders who built the cities, and then either left or were defeated by outsiders!  

Now, after careful study for a century, there is no evidence of the Aryan invasion or any other such invasion. The Indus/Harappa Civilization died out from over-use of the land, earthquakes which dried up the large river next to the Indus River, the River Sarasvati, and a drop in foreign trade. (15 )

The duties of Aryas are described in Manusmriti. They are not worldly but spiritually-oriented individuals. They are not foreign fighters:  

Manusmriti, Chapter 2, verse 108: "Let an Arya who has been initiated, (daily) offer fuel in the sacred fire, beg food, sleep on the ground and do what is beneficial to this teacher, until (he performs the ceremony of) Samavartana (on returning home).   Chapter 2, verse 165: An Arya must study the whole Veda together with the Rahasyas, performing at the same time various kinds of austerities and the vows prescribed by the rules (of the Veda). (16)  

River Sarasvati

Both the Rigveda and Manusmriti hint at a cradle of civilization, on the banks of the River Saraswati.

The term "Cradle of civilization" means the first location and time in human history where nomadic hunter-gatherers switched to farming and produced sufficient crops to allow some members of the society to work on developing a civilization. The hunter-gatherers noticed wild grains growing without human help, usually on the fertile land of a large river that regularly overflowed, depositing soil rich in nutrients for wild grains, near the river. The seeds of wild grains were deposited on this rich and fertile soil by birds picking up the seeds in their beaks, flying to the fertile ground and dropping the seeds to be planted without human intervention to grow "naturally". The wind also performed this task, thus enabling the wild grains to sprout in the fertile land and grow.  

At several places throughout the world, at different times, the switch to farming came next, when the people gradually stopped hunting-gathering to picking wild grains and planting them in the fertile soil. After some period of time, there were sufficient excess food crops to allow some of the members of the farming community to tum their attention to other pursuits, such as trading excess food crops. This was followed by the development of towns and cities, the division of labour and the beginning of "civilization".

The phrase "fertile crescent" means the crescent-moon-shaped area in the Middle East that incorporated ancient Mesopotamia (mostly modern-day Iraq), the Levant, and in some cases, ancient Egypt. But, there existed other large rivers in the world that regularly overflowed and had a type of crescent shape, a "fertile crescent" or a "past fertile crescent". These were the sites of ancient farming communities, some of which later became towns, cities and later civilizations, in China and India, two areas other than what Westerners called the "cradle of civilization" in the Middle East. The one pre-1900 BCE surrounding the Sarasvati River in northwest India, the Indus/Harappa civilization is a fertile crescent.  

The route of Sarasvati

The River "Sarasvati" in India is also a historical marker. Both the Rig Veda and Manusmriti refer to the Sarasvati River as a "great and mighty river" in the present tense. Rig Veda says, it "flowed from the mountains to the sea". It is evident that both the Rig Veda and Manusmriti were composed before the Sarasvati River dried up in 1900 BC; So, Manusmriti was composed prior to 1900 BC and therefore is the oldest law code in the world.  

The Nadistuti hymn in the Rig Veda (10.75) mentions the Sarasvati between the Yamuna in the east and the Sutlej in the west, while hymn 7.95.1-2, describes the Sarasvati as flowing to the Samudra, a word now usually translated as 'ocean', but which could also mean "lake." (17) Later Vedic texts such as the Tandya Brahmana and the Jaiminiya Brahmana, as well as the Mahabharata, mention that the Sarasvati dried up in a desert.

In the seventh "mandala" (chapter), of Rig Veda, Hymn 95, verses 1 and 2, the River Sarasvati is spoken of as "surpassing...all other waters...pure in her course from mountains to the ocean...(18) 

The Sarasvati river was revered and considered important for Hindus because it is said that it was on this river's banks, along with its tributary Drishadwati, in the Vedic state of Brahmavarta, that Vedic Sanskrit had its genesis, (19) and important Vedic scriptures like initial part of Rig Veda and several Upanishads were supposed to have been composed by Vedic seers. In the Manusmriti, Brahmavarta is portrayed as the "pure" centre of Vedic culture.

In the 1970s, space satellite pictures of the earth showed the dried-up path of the River Sarasvati, which flowed in ancient India from the "mountains to the sea". Sarasvati, due to earthquakes, got completely dried up by about 1900 BCE.  The river was structurally controlled by en echelon faults; hence, even minor tectonic movements caused big changes in the configuration of the palaeo-channels. (20) The term 'en echelon' in Geology refers to closely-spaced, parallel or subparallel, overlapping or step-like minor structural features in rock (faults, tension fractures), which lie oblique to the overall structural trend. Extensional stresses create fractures that can infill with calcite. When rocks deform in a brittle manner, the fracture pore can subsequently infill with some form of cement, such as calcite. Typically, crystals will nucleate on the fracture wall and grow into the opening.

Mehrgarh, the cradle of civilization

The change in perception that was brought out by the excavations of Mohenjodaro and Harappa, was made more pronounced by the discovery and excavation of the even-more-ancient city of Mehrgarh. Mehrgarh was located in ancient India not too far from the Indus/Harappa Civilization city of Mohenjodaro (present-day Pakistan), and archaeologists dated Mehrgarh to about 8500 BCE. Merhgarh changed the idea of the grand and exquisite civilization that existed in the Indian subcontinent. Mehrgarh is now called the "Cradle of Civilization". According to Asko Parpola, the culture migrated into the Indus Valley and became the Indus Valley Civilization of the Bronze Age. (21)

Mehrgarh is a Neolithic archaeological site situated on the Kacchi Plain of Balochistan in Pakistan. It is located near the Bolan Pass, to the west of the Indus River and between the modern-day Pakistani cities of Quetta, Kalat and Sibi. The site was discovered in 1974 by a team led by the French archaeologist Jean-François Jarrige and his wife, Catherine Jarrige. Mehrgarh was excavated continuously between 1974 and 1986, and again from 1997 to 2000. Archaeological material has been found in six mounds, and about 32,000 artefacts have been collected from the site. The earliest settlement at Mehrgarh—located in the northeast corner of the 495-acre site—was a small farming village dated between 7000 BCE and 5500 BCE.

Evidence of the world's first dental drilling of tooth decay, approximately 7,000 to 9,000 years ago, has been found in Mehrgarh (22), as well as the first use of cotton fibre (6th millennium BC). (23) 

It was in 2001, archaeologists studying the remains of nine men from Mehrgarh discovered that the people of this civilization knew proto-dentistry. In April 2006, it was announced in the scientific journal Nature that the oldest (and first early Neolithic) evidence for the drilling of human teeth in a living person was found in Mehrgarh. According to the authors, their discoveries point to a tradition of proto-dentistry in the early farming cultures of that region. "Here we describe eleven drilled molar crowns from nine adults discovered in a Neolithic graveyard in Pakistan that dates from 7,500 to 9,000 years ago. These findings provide evidence for a long tradition of a type of proto-dentistry in early farming culture." (24)

The oldest known example of the lost-wax technique comes from a 6,000-year-old wheel-shaped copper amulet found at Mehrgarh. The amulet was made from unalloyed copper, an unusual innovation that was later abandoned. (25) The oldest ceramic figurines in South Asia were found at Mehrgarh. Many of the female figurines are holding babies, and were interpreted as depictions of the "mother goddess". However, due to some difficulties in conclusively identifying these figurines with the "mother goddess", some scholars prefer using the term "female figurines with likely cultic significance". (26)

Merhgarh was found to have sophisticated artefacts that were sophisticated, and there is enough evidence of long-distance trading. 

Mehgarh painted pottery, 3000-2500 BCE

International trade and investment began in India thousands of years ago because of foreign objects found in India and Pakistan and Indus/ Harappa Civilization remains found in Egypt and Iraq. Mehrgarh shows evidence of being a large city of about 30,000 people. Foreign objects found in Mehrgarh are dated even prior to that of the Indus/Harappa Civilization of 4300 - 3200 BCE in the Indus/Harappa chalcolithic period (Copper Age). There exist ceramic similarities (clay pots and other vessels) in Mehrgarh and the Indus/Harappa Civilization with southern Turkmenistan and northern Iran, which suggest considerable mobility and trade. River Sarasvati was an often-used transportation route for shipping Indus/Harappa Civilization goods internationally to Egypt and Mesopotamia.  

Archaeologists have found the remains of stone anchors from shipwrecks that relate to ancient India (Indus/Harappa Civilization) in the Gulf States, such as in Bahrain. One type is the "ring-stone" anchor, which is a large stone shaped like a doughnut. These anchors have also been found off the coast of India and in the sister city of Harappa, Mohenjo-daro.

Ancient India (Indus/Harappa Civilization) was famous for its boats and international trade. One boat was called the Dhow, a popular boat in ancient India. The Dhow was originally built in India, with the wood used for the making of the boat cultivated and grown in India. (27) Later on, some of the wood grown in India was exported to Mesopotamia and Egypt and the boats were made there. The Dhow is actually a "sewn boat", that is, the planks of wood are actually sewn or lashed together, not nailed, even though nails were available at that time. After the River Sarasvatii dried up in 1900 BCE, international trade originating in India also fell off for more than 1500 years. The Dhow then became associated with Arab traders. (28)

Procopius, a Greek historian writing in the sixth century CE, recorded that ships used in the Indian Seas are not covered with pitch or any substance, and the planks are fastened together, not with nails but with cords.  

Other indications of international trade by Ancient India (Indus/Harappa Civilization) involve "weights and measures". Weights and measures of ancient India were either derived from other parts of the then-known world or given to other parts, and were a direct product of the international trade of India. Two different sets of weights have been found at some Indus/Harappa Civilization sites, one set for trade within the Indus/Harappa Civilization and one set for international trade, outside the Civilization. It appears that the weights from the Manusmriti were similar.

It is in the southern part of the Indus/Harappa Civilization, in the current Indian state of Gujarat, that the now dried-up Sarasvatii River ran into the sea. One of the ancient places where an important port city of the Indus/Harappa Civilization was found in Gujarat, is now called Lothal. In the Indus/Harappa museum in Lothal, there are ancient stone cubes of standard weights. Lothal was one of the Indus/Harappa Civilization sites that had another series of weights conforming to the heavy Assyrian standard for international trade.

Mother goddess, Mehrgarh, 3000-2500 BCE

This is evidence that the Indus/Harappa Civilization conducted international trade. William Jones was of the view that the Hindus must have been navigators in the age of composing Manusmriti because it mentions bottomry, the lending of money for marine insurance.

When Alexander invaded India in 326 BCE, he took along historians who documented in writing his campaigns. Since the Westerners relied on those writings, it is no surprise that they believed that India had no civilization prior to the campaign of Alexander. (29)  But now, scholars realize that the "Indus/Harappa Civilization" made substantial contributions to the progress of man in the material and perhaps, spiritual fields.  

The sparsely written script of that civilization is not yet completely deciphered. When William Jones translated Manusmriti,   followed by the translation of the older work, the Rig Veda, the Western scholars coined a term, Vedic Culture, to describe the Rig Vedic civilization. At first, the Vedic Culture was praised by many Europeans who postulated that India was the original cradle of civilization; then, colonial interests advanced the Aryan invasion theory, which now has become discredited. (30)

Max Muller, who translated Rig Veda first, made a guess that the age of Rig Veda was 1200 BCE. This was partly based on the discovery by Western scholars that the Buddha was born in approximately 600 BCE. Soon after, many people in India took up Buddhism and therefore, Rig Veda must have been written before. Muller died in 1900. Near the end of his life, he admitted that no one knew if the Rig Veda or other Vedic hymns were composed in 1000, 2000 or 3000 BCE! (31)

Less than 25 years later, the Indus/Harappa Civilization would be "discovered" and it would shatter the colonial mindset. Soon after the Indus/ Harappa civilization cities of Mohenjodaro and Harappa were "discovered", a slightly different  Aryan invasion theory was crafted and made popular by Westerners in Germany prior to World War II. But the theory of "Aryan superiority" lost credibility, after Germany lost the War. Now, most scholars agree that probably the Indus/ Harappa Civilization died out from over-use of the land, the earthquakes which dried up the River Sarasvati and a corresponding drop in foreign trade. (32)  

Thus, there is no direct evidence of an Aryan invasion of India. The "Aryan invasion theory" is not recorded in any written document and is archaeologically invalid. (33)  

______________________

1. Handa, Devendra, Vedic vis-a-vis Harappan Culture: Some Thoughts, n. 14, p. 75.8, in In Search of Vedic-Harappan Relationship, ed. Ashvini Agrawal, Aryan Books, 2005

2. Griffith, Ralph TH, Hymns of the Rigveda, (1889) Munishiram Manoharlal (1999)

3. Naegele, Charles J, History and Influence of Law Code of Manu, Golden Gate University of Law, California, 2008, p 6

4. Sethna, KD, The Problem of Aryan Origins, S&S Publishers (1980) p. 104, Aditya Prakashan Delhi

5. Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, n. 7

6. Naegele, Charles J,  p 11

7. Sethna, KD, The Problem of Aryan Origins, p.104

8. ibid, p 109

9. Buehler, G., Laws of Manu, p 3

10. Singh, Bhagwan, The Vedic Harappans, Aditya Prakashan (1996) p. 27-29

11. Dhavalikar, MK, The Aryans Myth and Archaeology, Munshiram Manoharlal (2007) p. 46

12. Monier-Williams, n. 8

13. Shendge, Malati, The Aryas: Facts Without Fancy and Fiction, Abhinav Publications (1996) p. 26

14. Griffith, Ralph TH, Hymns of the Rigveda, (1889) Munishiram Manoharlal (1999)

15. Lal, BB, in Agrawal (editor), In Search of Vedic-Harappan Relationship, Aryan Books International (2005) p. 3

16. Buehler, G., n. 3

17. Bhargava, M.L. (1964). The Geography of Rigvedic India. Lucknow. p. 5.

18. (1) This stream Sarasvati with fostering current comes forth, our sure defence, our fort of iron. As on a car, the flood flows on, surpassing in majesty and might all other waters. 

(2) Pure in her course from mountains to the ocean, alone of streams Sarasvati hath listened.

19. Olivelle, Patrick, ed. The Law Code of Manu.2004. Oxford University Press. p. 24

20. Lal, BB, The Sarasvati Flows On,  Aryan, (2002), p. 14

21. Parpola, Asko, The Roots of Hinduism, Oxford University Press, 2015, p. 17

22. Possehl GL (1999) Indus Age: The Beginnings. Philadelphia: Univ. Pennsylvania Press

23. Jarrige JF (2008) Mehrgarh Neolithic. Pragdhara 18: 136–154
24. Coppa, A. et al. 2006. "Early Neolithic tradition of dentistry: Flint tips were surprisingly effective for drilling tooth enamel in a prehistoric population." Nature. Volume 440. 6 April 2006.

25. Thoury, M.; et al. (2016). "High spatial dynamics-photoluminescence imaging reveals the metallurgy of the earliest lost-wax cast object". Nature Communications. 7: 13356.

26. Upinder Singh (2008). A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century. Dorling Kindersley, 2008, pp. 130

27. Naegele, Charles J, p 19-20

28. Himanshu Prabha, The Archaeology of Seafaring in Ancient South Asia, p. 80-81, Cambridge University Press (2003)

29. Lal, BB, The Sarasvati Flows On, n. 16, p. 25

30. Singh, Shivaji, Vedic Culture and its Continuity Paradigm and Dimensions, in Dube, Sita Ram, Editor, Vedic Culture and Its Continuity, Pratibha Prakashan (2006) p. 22-23

31. Lal, BB, Search for Vedic-Harappan Relationship, n. 14, p. 1

32. Sethna, KD, Karpasa in Prehistoric India, n. 26, p. 7

33. ibid.

© Ramachandran