BOOKMARK-5

By Jayant Patel

The Aryans: In the Race of Mankind and Civilisation, Durgadas Bandyopadhyay, Firma KLM Private Limited, Pp 555, Rs 625.00

The Aryan invasion myth was propagated by Sir William Jones who said that there was a great affinity between languages like Greek and Latin and even Gothic and Celtic with Sanskrit and that all languages had sprung up from a common source. On the basis of this cue, the Anglo-German exponents formulated the myth of Aryan invasion, “totally corrupting the true history ad culture of the sub-continent of India,” says the author-historian Bandyopadhyaya. He says that Christian fundamentalists and colonialist stated criticising Vedic literature and ancient Indian culture in general. As Frederick Bodmer said that fearing the fact that Sanskrit would bring down the Tower of Babel, “to anticipate the danger, they pilloried Sanskrit as a priestly fraud, a kind of pidgin-classic concocted by Brahmins from the Greek and Latin ‘element’.”

The book begins with the birth of the universe and the origin of man and animals and how step by step the civilisation of human race came about. The author delineates the latest archaeological and historical and linguistic findings to prove that the civilisation of the Aryans is much older than what is accepted today. He also expounds on the existence of Saraswati river which was even described in the Rig Veda as “the life-blood of the Indus civilisation for which is should be called Indus-Saraswati civilisation.” He also proves through different theories that the Harappan civilisation is a continuous culture from before 6000 BC without a hiatus and the Vedic culture is part and parcel of it. No separate ‘Aryan culture’ did ever exist elsewhere, nor did any exotic race enter into the Indian sub-continent, including Iran and Afghanistan to instil Aryan language and culture from any exotic land either by cataclysmic or through a group of invaders. He says that the Aryan invasion myth is a concocted tale of the colonials and racists, fabricated “under the initiative and collaboration of a joint venture” by Macaulay-Max Mueller. He adds that the Christian priest, Max Mueller, in the name of his mission with the “modus operandi to decide the fate of India based on the secular discovery of Sir William Jones that Sanskrit has affinity to Greek, Latin, Persian” was a big trash to the false vanity of Christian colonials, catering to the theory of ‘Aryan invasion’. 

He concludes by saying that the Aryans referred to in the Vedas and Vedic literature are the “autochthons of the Indian sub-continent including Iran and Afghanistan and who have been continuing with the indigenous ethnic tongue, broadly designated as Sanskrit in its evolutionary processes from the pre-Vedic to Vedic periods. The Harappan culture is not separate from the Vedic culture but at a certain stage of Harappan culture, the Vedic rishis composed hymns at a time when the Harappan civilisation was at its peak and the language of the rishis came to be complemented as Vedic language.”

(Firma KLM Private Limited, 2578, BB Ganguly Street, Kolkata-700 012, www.firmaklm.net)

BOOKS RECEIVED

Learn to say No, if you don’t want to say Yes, Renu Saran, Pp 176 (PB), Rs 125, Diamond Pocket Books(P) Ltd, X-30, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-II, New Delhi-110 020

Participatory Irrigation Management, Evolution, Perception & Impact, A Narayanamoorthy, SS Kalamkar; Pp 256 (HB), Rs 690; Gyan Publishing House, 23, Main Ansari Road, Darya Ganj, New Delhi-110 002