Human Migrations into India

[Ramana]

Originally Posted by Sahasranama

History cannot prove the historicity of our itihasas, but there have been findings that support the stories, for example the discovery of Dvaraka city and the bridge of Srirama, but of course this is not conclusive evidence, but I will put my faith in the itihasas nonetheless.

There are many things in our itihasas that scientists and historians will never be able to accept. How can a monkey man lift a mountain and eat the sun? This is too much to ask a scientist to believe, but for someone who has faith in the gods, this should not be such a big stretch to believe. If you believe in Gods in the first place, there's no reason not to believe that they are powerful beyond human understanding.

I fully agree with your views.
In Ramayana there is mention of 4 tusk elephant , seen by Hanuman during his Lanka exploits,The question is how could there be a mention of the elephants with four tusks unless Valmiki and the people of his era were familiar with such creatures? A quick search on the Encarta Encyclopedia will let us know that these four-tusked elephants were known as Mastodontoidea, which are said to have evolved around 38 million years ago and became extinct about 15 million years ago ( quote )

Basically the ancient Indian history is distorted due to various reasons during the British rule and it still continues. Unless we Indians come out of the British Influence we can never know the true history of India.

[Gotam]

Originally Posted by Ramana

Basically the ancient Indian history is distorted due to various reasons during the British rule and it still continues. Unless we Indians come out of the British Influence we can never know the true history of India.

Namaste Ramana,

Although I am only an outsider with a very modest knowledge of the subject, it might be sufficient to realise that this is true.

But when I read what Indians write about the Aryan Invasion/Migration Theory, I wonder if there is not an element that is often neglected. This AIT was used by colonial propaganda and it was influenced by colonial mentality from the outset, but that could also have happened to the Out of India Theory, and I think it would have, if at that time, the OIT had seemed to be the most plausible one. The AIT had the advantage of simplicity, and hence, of compatibility with the very low standard of linguistic and genetic knowledge of the European 19th century.

In fact, the most logical conclusion from the AIT would not have been the one the colonisers made, but rather an "anti-colonial" one: if Indian civilisation had resulted from the interaction of uncivilised warriors from the North with civilised inhabitants of the subcontinent, and if these warriors had also invaded Europe, then, the coloniser necessarily had more primitive ancestors than the colonised...

If the British had taken their own theory seriously, they should have followed the example of the "Aryan invaders", and adopted Hindu culture.

From my readings on the subject, I conclude that there is some truth in both theories. I would summarise this as follows:

- Most European languages developed from languages that migrated out of India (exceptions being Basque, Finnish and Hungarian).

-The old European religion looks like a primitive version of Hinduism, and probably migrated with the languages out of India, before Sanatana Dharma was well developed, or perhaps losing much of its riches in the course of migration.

-Even the new European religion, Christianity, adopted many Indo-European elements, but they were often distorted.

- Several dozens of milennia before this cultural Out-of-India movement, that may not have involved large population migrations, common ancestors of both Europeans and Indians migrated to both India and Europe from the Middle East or the area that is now Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and probably, they arrived in India before arriving in Europe. Probably, there was already a population present in India, and part of this population may have come from East Asia, or have invaded East Asia from India.

Is there anything that contradicts this hypothesis, to your knowledge?

[Jainarayan]

Self-deleted. Not worth it.