A new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (subscription required) offers a counter theory to the long held Aryan Invasion Theory (thanks for the tip “Gujjubhai” and “Mauritious”). But before I get into that, I want to address a pet peeve of mine. The word “theory” is one of the most mis-used words in the English language. When most people use the word theory, they actually mean to use “hypothesis” or “hunch.” A theory by definition means:
A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.
By definition a theory has already stood up to repeated challenges, and on the basis of scientific evidence has held true despite many assaults on its validity. Therefore the Theory of Evolution isn’t just some willy-nilly hunch. It has taken on and turned aside all would-be challengers. Everybody “knows” that gravity is real, but did you know that Newton’s gravity is in fact a theory? When dealing with physics that approach the speed of light, the Newtonian Theory of Gravity fails, and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity takes over. Now that we are past that let’s go back to the PNAS paper. First, what is the “Aryan Invasion Theory”:
… a term that refers to the theory developed by 19th Century European linguists to explain the similarity between Sanskrit and European languages, by hypothesising that peoples originating outside India invaded or migrated to India. Another view is that this theory was developed as a means to show the superiority of European Aryan race. Max Muller and other western scholars who studied Sanskrit were very impressed with it and wanted to develop a link of this brilliant language with there own race i.e Europeans. They found some roots common in german and sanskrit and invented AIT. There is no archaeological evidence for the invasion. In ancient times there were abundant contact between civilization in India and Europe and European languages borrowed lot of words/roots from Sanskrit. Interesting fact is that modern non-Indians still cling to this theory even though it has no locus standi or a scientific basis. [Link]
You see? Even the great Wikipedia perpetuates the inaccuracy. The so-called “Aryan Invasion Theory” has no archaeological evidence supporting it. Therefore, it should have been called the “Aryan Invasion Hunch.” The PNAS paper however forwards a real theory based on actual scientific evidence which throws cold water on the Aryan Invasion Hunch:
Understanding the genetic origins and demographic history of Indian populations is important both for questions concerning the early settlement of Eurasia and more recent events, including the appearance of Indo-Aryan languages and settled agriculture in the subcontinent. Although there is general agreement that Indian caste and tribal populations share a common late Pleistocene maternal ancestry in India, some studies of the Y-chromosome markers have suggested a recent, substantial incursion from Central or West Eurasia. To investigate the origin of paternal lineages of Indian populations, 936 Y chromosomes, representing 32 tribal and 45 caste groups from all four major linguistic groups of India, were analyzed for 38 single-nucleotide polymorphic markers. Phylogeography of the major Y-chromosomal haplogroups in India, genetic distance, and admixture analyses all indicate that the recent external contribution to Dravidian- and Hindi-speaking caste groups has been low. The sharing of some Y-chromosomal haplogroups between Indian and Central Asian populations is most parsimoniously explained by a deep, common ancestry between the two regions, with diffusion of some Indian-specific lineages northward. The Y-chromosomal data consistently suggest a largely South Asian origin for Indian caste communities and therefore argue against any major influx, from regions north and west of India, of people associated either with the development of agriculture or the spread of the Indo-Aryan language family. The dyadic Y-chromosome composition of Tibeto-Burman speakers of India, however, can be attributed to a recent demographic process, which appears to have absorbed and overlain populations who previously spoke Austro-Asiatic languages. [Link]
Is there a Razib in the house? For you non-science types here is an article from National Geographic for the layman.
Most modern Indians descended from South Asians, not invading Central Asian steppe dwellers, a new genetic study reports.
The Indian subcontinent may have acquired agricultural techniques and languages–but it absorbed few genes–from the west, said Vijendra Kashyap, director of India’s National Institute of Biologicals in Noida… The finding disputes a long-held theory that a large invasion of central Asians, traveling through a northwest Indian corridor, shaped the language, culture, and gene pool of many modern Indians within the past 10,000 years…Testing a sample of men from 32 tribal and 45 caste groups throughout India, Kashyap’s team examined 936 Y chromosomes. (The chromosome determines gender; males carry it, but women do not.)
The data reveal that the large majority of modern Indians descended from South Asian ancestors who lived on the Indian subcontinent before an influx of agricultural techniques from the north and west arrived some 10,000 years ago…Kashyap and his colleagues say their findings may explain the prevalence of Indo-European languages, such as Hindi and Bengali, in northern India and their relative absence in the south.
“The fact the Indo-European speakers are predominantly found in northern parts of the subcontinent may be because they were in direct contact with the Indo-European migrants, where they could have a stronger influence on the native populations to adopt their language and other cultural entities,” Kashyap said. [Link]
Very interesting stuff. Despite the close contacts with Aryan populations, this evidence suggestes that South Asians and Aryans didn’t “get it on” nearly as much as some people thought they did.
If steppe-dwelling Central Asians did lend language and technology, but not many genes, to northern India, the region may have changed far less over the centuries than previously believed.<
p>”I think if you could get into a time machine and visit northern India 10,000 years ago, you’d see people … similar to the people there today,” Underhill said. “They wouldn’t be similar to people from Bangalore [in the south].”
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p>The larger relevance of this issue is that it was the most contentious point in the debate over corrections to California textbooks that I blogged about earlier. It seems the Hindu groups who slammed Harvard Sanskrit scholar Michael Witzel now have some formidable ammunition on their side:
One of the most contentious issues the Hindu groups and Witzel and his supporters locked horns over was whether there was any truth to the Aryan invasion theory, which maintains that a group of people from Central Asia who called themselves Aryans invaded India around 1,500 B.C., and that Hinduism grew out of the beliefs and practices of the Aryans. Witzel and his group support the theory; the Hindu groups do not. The Hindu groups say that more recent archeological and DNA findings debunk the theory and suggest that the Aryans were an indigenous people who did not invade. Moreover, say the Hindu groups, plenty of linguistic and other evidence indicates that Hinduism existed in India long before 1,500 B.C.
At a special meeting held by the Board of Education on Jan. 6, to which Witzel and Prof. Shiva Bajpai, whose views the Hindu groups support, were invited, a compromise was hammered out and accepted by both sides. The textbooks would reflect both views, and the word “invasion” would be replaced by migration. [Link]
This is what I am getting at: how does it make sense for me to give the benefit of doubt to the racist eurocentric but not listen to the brown whose theory, backed with what seems to be good reseqarch, reaches diametrically opposite conclusions?
well, that’s manichaean, and either/or proposition. people here are talking about max muller, a 19th century scholar, as if that’s the cutting edge of traditional scholarship (and by traditional, i mean scholarship which makes a pretense at being culturally distanced, even if there isn’t such a thing in the totality). that is not the cutting edge of indo-european studies, there are many linguists, archeologists and geneticists who don’t give a rat’s ass about south asian politics who have produced scholarship in this area. it is a contentious field, and definitive results, particular when using one disciplinary lens, are hard to come by, but there are broad general ideas or positions which seem to be agreed upon. for example, in the negative/falsified camp i know of no indo-europeanists or those who have examined this question as more than a dabbler or ideologue who would posit that greece or india could be the ur-heimat (homeland) of the proto-indo-european root language for a variety of reasons. this isn’t because these scholars want to show that indian or greek culture is exogenous, they don’t care about these questions, that’s just what the scholarship suggests. the feel i get on SM is that in terms of scholarship, as opposed to politics (where i will grant there are real issues with simplified ‘aryan invasion’ narratives), many want to engage 19th century scholarship because that is such a weak target.
back to your initial proposition, i think i would lean toward the brown scholar vs. the racist eurocentric, but i think today you will find few racist eurocentric indologists. they might see the world through cultural filters, but their intentions are not as clearly mercenary as the orientalists of old.
oh, and one last thing. no serious scholar contends that indian culture, in the broadest swaths, is derived predominantly from indo-european motifs and models, that i know of. questions like these are hard to aportion in any case (i.e., how do you quantify it?), but the greeks and northern indians do speak languages which likely spread from elsewhere, but enormous strands of their culture are non-indo-european. in the greek pantheon only zeus is clearly indo-european. some greek cities even had legends of their autochthounous pre-indo-european (pelasgian) origins, like a little city by the name of athens. i understand there are serious issues in regards to 10th grade educational standards in california, but can we move beyond 10th grade arguments if we’re no longer 16?
one last thing: the aryans of afghanistan (iranian speakers) are not the aryans of india (indo-aryans). the indo-aryans might have come from afghanistan (or thereabouts), but in living memory afghanistan has been iranian speaking territory. i used the term indo-aryan to describe the warrior caste of the mitanni in syria, but the balance of the evidence suggests that the mitanni indo-aryans never encountered india. the term “indo” is an anachronism because prior to the discovery of the mitanni warrior caste all non-indian aryans were iranians, and so indo-aryans were the other linguistic branch. when the mitanni aryans were discovered, the names of their gods and lexical fragments strongly pointed to an affinity with the aryans of india, not iran, and so they too were termed ‘indo-aryans,’ even though geographically that didn’t make sense. i only bring this up to highlight the confusions and pitfalls that abound in fields like this. good faith and sincerity are necessary.
“Ramayan implies that dravidians are monkeys with human intelligence. After reading Ramayana I felt that dravidians are either Rākshasas (demons) or Apes or both.”
The Sanskrit term Vanara or Vanaram means monkey or forest dweller. I wonder who turned forest dwelling South Indians into Monkeys. There is more evidence for the existence of forest dwellers than talking monkeys in South India 🙂
Well, Subhash Kak is a Keynote speaker at the RSA meet in San Jose. The other keynote speakers at that convention include Bill Gates and the Mars Rover guy… See, I am not qualified to judge how important scientific works are authored by him and of what quality. I am not his peer. Atleast he does not have motives such as Max Muller had. C’mon !! Someone mentioned David Frawley before.. Frawley has co-wrote a book with Kak.
I just wanted to say that I logged in to Sepia Mutiny from a crowded internet cafe in Kolkata JUST TO READ RAZIB’s comment on what I KNEW would already have been posted, having read the citation of the article in yesterday’s Telegraph. I would have been very disappointed had I logged on and not found a comment from Razib, but it looks my timing was correct. 😀
thank abhi linking to my weblog, i saw it in technorati at the end of the day. i’m on vacation in brooklin, so i’m not reading blogs much.
Brooklyn is the place to be!
Razib you stated “but the greeks and northern Indians do speak languages which likely spread from elsewhere…” this is controversial, and cannot be presumed one way or the other. I have come across alot of material that questions the origins of Sanskrit itself, but never that it may have exogenous origins. I have heard that the language from which sanskrit is derived from maybe from another area/region, but even that is just speculation. For all intents and purposes, Sanskrit may have been the language of the Saraswati Civilization (Indus Valley). There is no evidence saying that it is not for sure. Written records of Sanskrit had not come into the picture until 1st millenia B.C, so it is quite possible that prior to that the language was around and in full form even during the indus valley period in that area. It may have been one of many languages spoken in the greater indus valley region which extends to a very large area geographically. So perhaps it was a language that some people spoke which survived on to when people moved east to the gangetic plain in the more recent vedic times.
There are so many secrets yet to be learned from the Indus Valley excavations and in all of South Asia. The point that must be made here is that Indian or South Asian scholars have as much to bring to the table as any other scholar. This was not seen as so, five-ten-twenty years ago.
I myself understand that India and the South Asian region saw high traffic in the past because of its desired environmental conditions, goods, and arable land (and maybe even the beautiful women). Many, Many different groups have entered india and left, or settled and thereofre makeup the diversity in the region. That is something to consider in all of this debate.
Well, that’s mainly because SM does not seem to be the right forum to go any farther. But there’s been enough critique of the contemporary Western Indological “scholarhip” by browns – both scholars and self-taught hobbyists. See the writings of Rajiv Malhotra, Sankrant Sanu etc on Sulekha. In fact, theirs is the first systematic attempt at deconstructing the works of the current high preists of Indology in Western academia such as Witzel (Harvard), Doniger (Chicago), Courtright (Emory) etc. This exposed the racism and orientalism that a lot of contemporary Indology is plagued with.
Your open-mindedness is exemplary and I wish more people would consider the non-Marxist Indic scholarship from India at least worthy of being heard of without labelling it as Hindutva-fascism. However, the reality is that the scholars such as BB Lal and Sitaram Goel have been tarred with the Hindu-fundie brush to the extent that their work has been effectively shunted out of academia by Marxists in India and their masters in the West. Of course, the likes of Lal and Goel do not have access to resourses or sources of appropriated repuration such as institutional prestige to market their work either. Therefore, the dominant narrative continues to be of the racist-commie slant even if we assume that scholars are not mercenary (which I don’t – clearly there are tenures, book deals and research grants at stake here).
Well, the evidence is to the contrary. Just look at who all signed up for Witzel’s letter against the California textbook changes. It’s pretty well a list of who’s who in India studies across a variety of disciplines. Arguably, that’s quite a powerful cabal of tenured professors in most prestigious institutions in the US who currently control the myth-making about India and Hinduism today.
I think most Indians would love to do just that and merrily go on with their lives if orientalist claptrap like AIT were removed from contemporary scholarship – except that the racist-orientalist-commie cabal in the US and India is fighting tooth and nail every step of the way. This is only to be expected, of course, because the sand niggers becoming uppity enough to raise their voice against the “masters” and not buying into the party line anymore is clearly a threat to the cozy establishment. I mean, why is a school textbook important enough for the likes of Witzel to launch a global campaign and gang up along with “eminent historians” from around the world to stop changes proposed by Hindu groups? Clearly, there are bigger issues such as careers, credibiolity, tenures and ultimately disruption of status quo at stake here.
These are my questions from reading different docs etc….I am a contract sw developer and a student in signal processing. This means i deal with estimation and detection theory and rest is all entertainment i dont claim to be insightful here either. these are a few questions where i’m not satisfied about what i read. There is ambiguity with origins of these aryans. Iran and india are the locations where people have called themselves as aryan for a long time. Kushans though settled in india proper later dates in ujjain. Yet they kept records that they came from beyond outside india. The issue with aryans is that they named india aryavrata but did not record where they came from. this is something different than what kushans did. All migrants tend to keep a legend or record of sort Even old cambodian docs refered to hinduism as aryadharma, and that it came from india. Ie a group of migrants who moved out of india took this record with them. Old avestan and sanskrit being similar is a well known fact. Even duivachan is there? (singular, dual, plural) This when other PIE constructs dont show it is something strange. How much of that was due to back and forth type interaction. rather than one way. Mani in much later day he tried creating a philosophy which blended buddhism,zoroastarianism and christianity. His followers were mostly in iran. The ideas came from east and west b/c there was trade in that region that had gone on for ever. The point being ideas have been going back and forth for a long time. How many traders went back and forth between central asia,mongolia, middle east and india. How much genes got transfered back and forth as well as ideas. SL has a population of folks who trace their ancestory to malaysia….These folks did record something of legends. Just like bhots in uttaranchal. They adopted hindiusm but recall that their ancestors moved from tibet to india. This is something confusing why only 2 regions in the ancient world had a population that called themselves aryan especialy if these folks were some nordic tribe that ran accross the world spreading language. Also i think racialy aryan may have had some meaning but it seems to have gone out long time ago. ie the cambodian hindus refering their religion as aryadharma(not sanatan dharma ?) My guess is an identity developed going back and forth regions of iran and india and it was not unidirectional which when looking at human history seems more plausible, ie nothing is really linear but a lot of back and forth interactions. I dont know though how would a linguist or a racist(the guy who studies race ;-0) hypothesize about origins with a circular mutation. chaap(to print) is a hindi verb that made it into modern persian….if some ancient persian language is the root of hindi then modern persian has this crosspolinization. This was an easier mystery to solve ie look for 1st use The complexity is that the ‘orginal text’ for both ancient zoroastarian text and vedas were transcribed by memory at later days. how much back and forth cross polinization happened in that period Nothing thats old can be said with certainty. My school math teacher began teaching probability this way. You mother certainly knows that you are her child. For your father its probability. I think that applies to a lot of PIE stuff then you can throw in politics of the authors involved.
this is controversial, and cannot be presumed one way or the other
it isn’t, seriously. where do you get the idea that it is controversial that the “greek” language is exogenous to greece?* read In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology, and Myth. or The Coming of the Greeks: Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East. also, greek and indo-aryans languages are syntactically similar vis-a-vi, for example, dravidian or finno-ugric languages. one could posit that both languages came into their present geographic regions from another region, or, they came from india or greece, but it seems logically impossible that they are indigenous to both greece and india since they are separate languages who share a common ancestor (unless you assume that an ancient ur-language was extent between greece and india).
the fact that the indus valley civilization might have had a predominant or non-trivial indo-european component is irrelevant. as for There is no evidence saying that it is not for sure, well, there is no evidence that an evil demon who rules the world and is invisible to senses does not live in my asshole, but we don’t really posit this because we make a presumption that hypotheses are derived from some evidence out in the world. analysis of core cognates across indo-european languages does suggest that proto-indo-european was likely a language which was habituated to a temperate climate, lack of cities and a transhumant or mixed-farming culture.
if you want written evidence of proto-indo-european, you won’t get that, and there will never be ‘evidence’ for you, as proto-indo-european probably existed 5000-9000 years ago (the current scholarship seems to be leaning toward an older date, but there are still disputes). but some sciences are about probabilistic inferences from the data on hald in the context of a larger set of facts on hand. india being the homeland of proto-indo-europeans does not seem to fit the data as well as other hypotheses. that does not mean that the other hypotheses are correct, but inductively the history of science tells us that the most parsimonious, i.e., simplest, hypotheses tends to be the most correct one.
in any case, stuff like “this is controversial” smells a lot like creationism to me. sure, creationists can say “there is a controversy within science about evolution.” it costs them nothing, even though it is flat wrong when you actually survey working scientists. they get to say it all they want. linguistics, archeology, history and historical population genetics are not on the same ground as evolutionary biology, but neither are they phrenologists. linguistic reconstruction has made predictions based on theories which have born fruit. let me give you an example: linguistics made some assumptions about what ancient indo-european languages were going to be like. greek and sanskrit are the oldest indo-european languages they had on hand, until hittite cuneiform from the 17th century BCE was discovered in anatolian. aspects of hittite were predicted from the linguistic models. in other words, this is real scholarship. yes, it has been contentious, and sometimes politicized, but the from what i have read some of the assertions that i see around here like “this has not been proven” or “this is controversial” smells a lot like creationist smoke screens which muddle the public perception of evolutionary biology.
Gujjubhai,
i don’t think your characterization of non-indian scholarship on india is correct (that is, there are many racist eurocentric types). that’s about it.
Atleast he does not have motives such as Max Muller had. C’mon !!
I completely agree on that count.
whats with the maybe? i know thats for sure.
The legitimacy of History as a science is questionable. Science is about approximate explanations based on empirical assumptions. The explanations provided by science are not exact, but,they hint at probabilities. As the empirical world view changes the theories change or are modified(classical physics, quantum theory, relativity, string theory etc). While approximate explanations might work in the physical sciences, I think that in politically charged fields such as history it is dangerous to give approximations/probabilities. The theories that get accepted has a lot do with something called “peer reviewed journals”. This is a old boys network of “scholars” that decides on who and what gets published. Moreover, a lot of history has to do with who is funding the research? Give me enough money and I will have really creative stories that will pass for legitimate history in a few years. This cartel of academics and funding sources are the gatekeepers of the door through which History passes.
In this context, the Aryan Invasion myth plays well into the hands of Class-war-perpetuating communists, the white man’s burden Eurocentrists, we know best Evangelical christian missionaries and their servile leftist Indian sepoys. Aryan Invasion Myth has made careers for these groups and they will not allow any competing theory to threaten their survival. They dominate the academic scene as of now and hence will fashion the memes that are transmitted.
The Aryan Invasion myth is an effective tool to divide and weaken India. A tool that has been used to great advantage for the last 200 years. But, as India grows in economic might she will have more resources to create histories that are less inimical to her interests.
History has less to do with “objective truth” than with propaganda wars.
some of you people make me to want to become a communist. sorry, i just had to add that 🙂
18:
“….., but the fact is that rational historical analysis isnt going to do any favours to their revisionist originalism, that is, the notion that there exists an original canon or religious tradition that we can call Hinduism and that is continuous with Hindu practice today. The fact that this study does not erase is that a cultural-linguistic influence from somewhere to the West of “Bharath” seems to have substantially altered the nature of Hinduism itself, even if it didnt alter the nature of Hindu genes.”
Rational Historical analysis?? I suggest you look up what role reason/logic plays in theories. look well enough and you will find that reason is a neutered animal. The conclusions in any theory has a lot do with what assumptions one starts with. reason/logic is merely a tool that makes no value judgements. it is a common misconception that to be “rational” adds a certain superiority or legitimacy to one’s statements. Even the insane are rational, just that their assumptions are different than those that are “normal”. Revisionism is the stuff of history, the leftist lines that you spout ad nauseam are a revison/tailoring of history to fit their world view too… So, poppycock….
Now about Hinduism: Hinduism in it’s bare essentials is a study in Human conciousness. To borrow from Philip K dick, “What is reality?” is the question that Hinduism tries to answer. In doing so Hinduism has evolved and continues to evolve various solutions. The roots of all these solutions begin in the vedas. To say that Hinduism lacks a canon/ continuous traditon is a canard. An Hindu idea has no legitimacy unless it acknowledges the vedas as the primary canon of all Hindu thought. The Hindus may have various differing traditions/solutions, but their end goal is the same and their final authority are the vedas. Besides, a static and unidimensional religion is as good as dead. One coat cannot fit all… It helps to get a bit of education……
Now about Hinduism: Hinduism in it’s bare essentials is a study in Human conciousness. To borrow from Philip K dick, “What is reality?” is the question that Hinduism tries to answer. In doing so Hinduism has evolved and continues to evolve various solutions. The roots of all these solutions begin in the vedas. To say that Hinduism lacks a canon/ continuous traditon is a canard. An Hindu idea has no legitimacy unless it acknowledges the vedas as the primary canon of all Hindu thought. The Hindus may have various differing traditions/solutions, but their end goal is the same and their final authority are the vedas. Besides, a static and unidimensional religion is as good as dead. One coat cannot fit all… It helps to get a bit of education……
excuse me, where is my copy of das kapital???
Okay guys. Maybe I just need a shot of caffeine, but could someone explain to me exactly what is the major bone of contention here ?
Some/all of the above ?
There appear to be multiple debates occuring in this thread, some historical, some genetic, and some religiously-orientated, and it would be good for some clarification on what the basic, core issue is. And I agree that there is an element of Hindutva amongst a minority of participants which may be clouding the argument.
To paraphrase Kush Tandon and a couple of other guys, I’m no expert on this topic either, but let’s look at a couple of basic facts:
Many North Indian-types (when I say “north”, I mean north of Maharashtra) look much closer to Iranians and Meditteranean people than to anyone else, in terms of skin tone (yes I know there is a range here too) and facial features. I’m referring to Hindus and Sikhs (not Muslims, where there may well have been a degree of intermarriage with various migrants from the Middle East over the past 1000 years.)
Some would argue that this is either coincidence or “parallel evolution under similar geographical/climatical circumstances”; however, the twist here is the issue of language, as has been mentioned already by a couple of people. There are clear links in grammer and syntax between Sanskrit (and its modern derivatives), Persian, and Latin. It is debatable whether this commonality would be purely due to historical trade between the regions if the similarities existed on this scale prior to the trading relationships.
Again, I’m not sure exactly what the key problem is, but if it’s the notion of some common ancestry between lighter Indians and Europeans, I strongly believe that it’s unwise to fall into the trap of that kind of reverse-racism. It sounds like racist white people becoming indignant at the idea of having any “black blood” in their own family ancestry.
What a trivial argument. In the modern day-and-age your skin color and ethnic origin are replaced by “democratic” politics which includes employing dividing tactics such as communalism and nationalism. Even if the fact remains that there are plenty of dark Arabs that look Indian and vice versa or light skin Indians that look Uzbeki or any other non-Indian race, at the end of the day it does not matter.
The fact that Indians look towards the foreign as their lineage is like denying India for being their mother country. If you were born in India then that makes you Indian, whether lightie or a darkie or with stank breath or with one leg or what ever other physical feature. What unites people in India is in the following order (1)language, (2)religion, (3)caste or social class(substitute either freely here). THAT IS THE FACT AND THE TRUTH(notice no theory is needed here).
Furthermore, in the theory of races there are only four: Mongloid, Negroid, Caucasian, and Aborigine. A large majority are considered Caucasian along with the rest of Middle-Eastern & European population, so Mr./Ms. MY ORIGINS ARE OUTSIDE INDIA I have just increased your option by a 100 folds for staking your claim at your home country. There are also Aborigine folks as well Mongloid(present in a large minority) and even small Negroid populations.
Moreover, in the theory of evolution people along the equator are shorter(for a larger surface area to volume ratio to dissipate heat – kinda like your car radiator) and darker(exposure to sunlight produces Vit D and releases melanin). People in the northern and southern extreme are taller(for a lower surface area to volume ratio to maintain heat) and lighter(lack of exposure to extreme sunlight).
There you have it folks.
– The idea that lighter-skinned, Iranian-looking people in present-day India, especially in the northern half of the country, might be descended from groups in the distant past who had some common ancestry with Europeans ?
very few brown people (i.e., those who live within the indian subcontinent) are more genetically similar, from what we can tell, to europeans as opposed to another random brown person. by this, i mean that if you sequenced the genes of interest (in this case Y chromosomal) of a man from lahore, madras and berlin, the overwhelming odds is that the the men from lahore & madras will be found to be genetically more similar to each other than either will be to to the man from berlin. this even works if you switch berlin with tehran. this is not true of all men randomly sampled from these three locations, but, if you had to bet money, bet that the brown (south asian) men would from a cluster if your money means something to you.
Razib, Try enjoying your vacation! SM is not going anywhere 🙂
Razib:
Been there done that. Believe me you don’t want to go there. Besides, as the wise ole saying goes: “If you’re in your 20’s and not a communist means you don’t have a heart. If you’re in your 40’s and still a communist means you don’t have a mind.” Don’t know where exactly you’re at but just some friendly advice – save yourself the bother.
You’re right most western scholars don’t care a rat’s ass about SA politics. But they’re neck deep in Christian politics, Commie politcs, Supremacist politics, Control politics, Being Right politics, and Not Letting Go of Pet Theories They Have Staked Their Careers On politics. It amazes me that this matter is simply characterized as Hindutva politics.
Also, your point about the irrelavance of 19th century scholarship doesn’t pack that much of a punch when you consider that most of the rotten scholarship has just built up on previous rotten scholarship. Hindus have always been regarded as idolatrous, devil-worshipping pagans and moral cretins and that attitude prevails to this day whether you’re doing archeology or linguistics.
Just skimmed through all the posts this morning, so forgive me if these points have already been made.
Razib,
Interesting points as always, buddy 😉
What about Lahore, Srinagar, Madras, Tehran, Athens, Seville, and Rome ?
Assuming what I was saying in my previous post was on the right lines (big “If”, of course), shouldn’t there be some kind of genetic similarity between Lahore, Srinagar, and Tehran primarily (again I’m referring to Hindus and Sikhs, not Muslims, for the reasons explained earlier), followed by Lahore-Srinagar-Tehran-Athens-Seville-Rome on a secondary level ?
Just for clarification, my references to supposed overlaps with Europeans were referring specifically to Southern Europeans (ie. the Mediterranean countries) rather than people from the northern regions. Having said that, though, isn’t there supposed to also be some overlap with Eastern Europeans, along with the more dark-haired Irish types ?
Also, your point about the irrelavance of 19th century scholarship doesn’t pack that much of a punch when you consider that most of the rotten scholarship has just built up on previous rotten scholarship. Hindus have always been regarded as idolatrous, devil-worshipping pagans and moral cretins and that attitude prevails to this day whether you’re doing archeology or linguistics.
1) if you consider physics and english two extremes of scholarship in terms of linear ‘progression,’ i would place history & linguistics in the middle, with linguistics closer to physics than history. many of you here simply reject that contention and wish to (from my perspective) impose a dichotomy between white-eurocentric-bigots vs. hindutva nationalist tinted historiography. some of us, i think perhaps correctly, seem to be contending that this binary choice is a false one. it has been a long time since brown was a baptist college, harvard was a congregationalist one, princeton a presbyterian one, columbia an anglican one, etc. etc. some of you are living in the past with this talk about white christian, etc., etc., especially when so many white academics are jewish for godsake! from what i can tell, we live in an age where careers are made destroying dead-white-males. reading SM it is like i stepped back into the 1950s of academia when there were jew quotas.
2) i’m a libertarian. joking about becoming a communist was to reflect that i think i might be understanding why some scholars make a deal with the devil and align themselves with radical leftists even if they aren’t themselves. i think some of the things that some people here from a ‘hindutva’ perspective are correct, but dam they sound dumb trying to exposit it, and the reasoning & evidentiary standards are as weak as a 10 year old with cystic fibrosis.
3) and wow, sometimes reading SM reinforces the ‘psychic unity of mankind’ that evolutionary psychologists talk about. i used to engage in evolution vs. creationist debates, no offense, but i smell the same shit in air.
4) finally:
Assuming what I was saying in my previous post was on the right lines (big “If”, of course), shouldn’t there be some kind of genetic similarity between Lahore, Srinagar, and Tehran primarily (again I’m referring to Hindus and Sikhs, not Muslims, for the reasons explained earlier), followed by Lahore-Srinagar-Tehran-Athens-Seville-Rome on a secondary level ?
Just for clarification, my references to supposed overlaps with Europeans were referring specifically to Southern Europeans (ie. the Mediterranean countries) rather than people from the northern regions. Having said that, though, isn’t there supposed to also be some overlap with Eastern Europeans, along with the more dark-haired Irish types ?
first, take a random person from lahore, a person from madras, and a person from anywhere else in the world. every time i would be willing to bet that if you took a random point in the genome and compared it between the three individuals the majority would show the greatest similarity between the person from lahore and the person from madras. this includes kandahar, tehran, etc. for example:
“Since the initial peopling of South and West Asia by anatomically modern humans, when this region may well have provided the initial settlers who colonized much of the rest of Eurasia, the gene flow in and out of India of the maternally transmitted mtDNA has been surprisingly limited. Specifically, our analysis of the mtDNA haplogroups, which are shared between Indian and Iranian populations and exhibit coalescence ages corresponding to around the early Upper Paleolithic, indicates that they are present in India largely as Indian-specific sub-lineages. In contrast, other ancient Indian-specific variants of M and R are very rare outside the sub-continent.”
this does not mean that all genes within all people in lahore will be more similar to someone from madras. and people from lahore will exhibit a shorter genetic distance toward people from tehran than people from madras would (i.e., i use lahore specifically because punjabis & sindhis are the indo-aryan speaking group who are probably most admixed with iranian peoples).
to use another analogy, if you consider the frequency of an allele X on the Y axis of the graph with the X axis being meters along a line that runs from southeast india to kabul, the rate of change of the frequency would be highest between the punjab and peshwhar. in the past, people might be safe in thinking that punjabis are more like pathans than they are like tamils. this is not necessarily true, in most cases not true, now, i grant that it is a far closer thing than if you used bengalis-tamils-pathans, as bengalis would be far more similar to tamils than they would be to pathans, but you get the gist.
as for things like physical appearence, as i said, they can be moulded by selection. most north indians are lactose tolerant, most south indians are not, most middle easterners are lactose tolerant. if you used just this one character, you would say that north indians are like middle easterners. but the genetic data implies that this gene for tolerance increased in frequency over the last 10,000 years, spreading from northern europe to other parts of eurasia where cattle could be raised in easily. the smaller the sample of characters you take, whether it be physical characteristics (skin color, etc.) or genes (mtDNA, Y, etc.), the more likely you are to come up with a fallacious taxonomy when viewed in an overall context. and there have been studies that cluster north indians with eastern europes vis-a-vi south indians, but they are a minority. that doesn’t mean they are not correct, they might be looking at particular genes (in this case, a portion of the Y chromosome with a allele termed M17 that exhibited rapid demographic expansion 5,000 years ago on the north indian plain, and spans eastern iran and up through the central swath of eurasia).
This is a fascinating thread and I have enjoyed reading the comments by Razib the Great.
I don’t see how you can possibly disprove an invasion theory based purely on genetics. For example, could you prove or disprove that the British ever conquered India based on the genetic markers they left behind? The British ruled for 300 years but they never represented more than 0.1 percent of the population so their genetic contribution to India is nil. But their linguistic contribution is pretty obvious.
Why should it surprise anyone that a similar thing happened before? India was almost certainly conquered many times in its history and one of those conquests brought the ancestor of Sanskrit. The conquerers (like all conquerer after them) were too few to make any genetic impact on the population but they did bring the language and maybe most of the religion as well.
I read somewhere that there is really no doubt that the ancestor of Sanskrit originated far from the ocean because the words for things an ocean people would be familiar with all sound like names you would give to things you never saw before (sort of like “pineapple”). For example, I read that there is no word in Sanskrit for ocean. I recall the word for ocean in Hindi is “mahasagar” which means big sea. Well no one living near the ocean would have called the ocean “big sea” right?
Btw, the word “ocean” derives from a Greek word meaning “a river circling the earth” so similarly the ancestor of greek must have been inland.
Does that, by itself, prove that institutional bias does not exsit? If we still see evidence of systemic bias against India and Hinduism by deconstructing contemporary research output from these institutions, wouldn’t a follower of the scientific method posit an alternate explanation for the cause of the bias, rather than deny the evidence, i.e., the presence of the bias, itself? In fact, such alternate explanation does exist : it is the radical lefty, racial or chritstian fundie bias of many researchers. It is also that right wing christian groups are some of the largest sources of funding such research and they use their money as a means to advance their agenda. This works very well for them : they can indirectly influence the narrative about comparative religious and cultural studies while hiding behind the instituional legitimacy of “scholarly” research. Just look at how effective the Discovery Institute has been in advancing their whole agenda of thrusting ID into the mainstream and claiming a stake on the ground as “legitimate” alternative to the evolution theory. They even have “scientists” with PhD on their pay-roll. If this can happen in a rigrously scientific field such as biology against a proven and established theory like Evolution in modern America, isn’t there a significant probability that similar things may be happening in a much more politicized and less empirical field such as Indic studies?
The body of evidence, as far as the work of the present crop of independent Indic scholarship is concerned, points to the contrary. If anything, it is aimed at exposing the shoddy quality, racism and orientalism in modern Indology produced by living academics who are considered to be the “leading authorities” in this field today. See, for example, On Colonial Experience and the Indian Renaissance: A Prolegomenon to a Project, or Kali’s Child: Psychological And Hermeneutical Problems.
I have two issues with that. First, labelling this very serious debate under “Hindutva perspective” would seem to be indicative of intellectual laziness or casual dimissiveness. As a former po-co, po-mo, deconstructionist-commie-linguist turned into rationalist-atheist-libertarian who’d like to consider himself as following the Enligtenment principles and the scientific method, I think any dispassionate observer will find a lot of merit in what the new Indic scholarship has to say. Sure, not all of it may stand up to rigorous scrutiny – but is that the reason why the academia is resisting it so ferociously? The real reson why this work will never be allowed into peer-reviewed journals is because it’s inimical to the interests of the current gatekeepers . Second, just because commenters on SM are unable to meet with the reasoning and evidentiary standards doesn’t mean that high-quality scholarship that would meet those standards does not exist. I don’t think SM will be particularly receptive to such comments. But if you are really interested, read the articles on Sulekha – many of them by current professors in Indian or Western academia – and you will see the rigour in their work.
Gujjubhai,
prove that institutional bias does not exsit? I
no, i didn’t say it proved anything! i am simply pointing to the fact that people here seem to be assuming that academia is a hotbed of christian racism. i’m pretty skeptical of that claim for a variety of reasons. many people here through around terms like ‘proven’ or ‘disproven,’ like they are magic amulets that ward off accusations of intellectuals sloppiness. i come into this argument with good faith and few vested interests, i could care less about south asian politics, hinduism, islam, postcolonialism, leftism, etc.
this is what i see. i see some people here arguing against max muller and the AIT vs. a rather amorphous (to my eye) ‘indigenous’ perspective. in fact, like creationists the indigenous perspective seems to be a rather spare negative case. so, what i would like is a run down of contrasting assertions and predictions made by the various models. there are some here who seem to want to constrain the selection possibilities to two. i do not grant that there are only two possibilities.
In fact, such alternate explanation does exist : it is the radical lefty, racial or chritstian fundie bias of many researchers. It is also that right wing christian groups are some of the largest sources of funding such research and they use their money as a means to advance their agenda.
i would like a run down of the christianity and evangelical funding of such researchers. there can’t be that many indologists out there, give me the big names. we know that only 40% of scientists in america with ph.d.s are theists, there are surveys. we know that only 10% of national academy of science members are theists. i am skeptical that history ph.d.s are much more religious.
Ummm…there’d be tons of archaeological and socio-cultural evidence to infer that, not to mention the gene pool of Anglo-Indians.
Again, zero archaeological evidence of a large-scale migration or war(s). No socio-cultural evidence either – the only Big War recounted in pre-history is the Mahabharata legend which is based within India. Linguistic commonality does not conclusively prove war/invasion/conquering : the presence of Spanish in the US does not prove invasion or conquering by Hispanics.
Again, zero archaeological evidence of a large-scale migration or war(s). No socio-cultural evidence either – the only Big War recounted in pre-history is the Mahabharata legend which is based within India. Linguistic commonality does not conclusively prove war/invasion/conquering : the presence of Spanish in the US does not prove invasion or conquering by Hispanics.
1) just because you have zero evidence of X does not mean that that is a sufficient condition to falsify a hypothesis (contradictory evidence is sufficient).
2) these sort of things are not conclusively proven usually.
3) you used the word “infer,” you know what game i’m playing. we aren’t relying on one vector here.
4) quantify “large scale.” i.e., give me a target of the proportion of the population which would consist of migrants in a given generation to qualify as large scale (i.e., 1% migrant in a generation in reference to the previous local generation). population genetics has plenty of off the shelf plug & chug equations to handle these questions, but you need to set the bounds of your hypothesis.
Razib:
But the so-called atheists continue to operate within a religious framework. The cognitive structure hasn’t changed since the days people believed that this world was an expression of God’s will and purpose. Christianity has simply taken on secular trappings. Instead of asking “what is God’s purpose for man” we ask “what is the meaning of life?” Both of these questions are equally nonsensical. Yet they are considered perfectly normal and your intelligent, atheist scientist types go about mulling them over. The idea of purpose is very much a Christian idea. As a contrast this idea is completely absent in all Asian traditions. The Indian traditions speak of Leela (play) which suggests arbitrariness.
The secularization of Christian concepts is reflected all over the social sciences. Western Psychology for example is based on the assumption that human beings are rational creatures. This too comes from religion where God has a Will and acts in accordance with this will. The Asian (or at least the Indian) traditions recognize rationality to be only a miniscule portion of the human mind.
So the problem is way more insidious than it seems and it isn’t accurate to say religion does not play a role in scholarship. I agree it’s of no use to accuse the entire western hemisphere of being racist. But nevertheless they operate from a framework that cannot help mischaracterizing whatever they observe because of the theological framework they continue to operate in.
Fair enough. But the only contraditcory evidence is philological, which can fit in with many alternate explanations. In that case, going back to what you said earlier, shouldn’t we be using a more parsimonious hypothesis? Isn’t positing non-invasion in the face of zero evidence of invasion a more parsimonious hypothesis?
To illustrate this further, let me draw a more familiar analogy. Say I restate your assertion in the context of a monotheist religion: “just because you have zero evidence of the existence of God does not mean that is a sufficient condition to falsify the existence of God (contradictory evidence is sufficeint)”. If you buy into that argument, with the additional assertion that all contradictory evidence is planted by an omnipotent God to test your faith, then until you can falsify the existence of God, a more “rational” position would be for you to be a believer :-). Not sure how that would sit with your (non)religious proclivity :-). In fact, the reason why I am an atheist is exactly this argument: non-existence of God is the more parsimonious hypothesis.
Dude, I am just as much of a Popperian as the next rationalist. But we have to watch out for the trap of being led into tautologies by taking Popper too far. Especially a self-serving tautology manufactured to serve the interest of rulers.
Razib, you’re really ugly, right? I need to know that I’m better looking than you, or I’ll go and cry as I’m
in awejealous of your knowledge. I’m not trying to brown-brown-nose, but I’ve enjoyed reading your points here as they echo a lot of my views. I wholly agree, some of the theories (Abhi’s made me worried about using this word casually now) I hear from both sides are somewhat reminiscent of the Creationism ‘scientific proof’. Irrespective, I think your call for an end to a binary us vs. them mentality would be helpful.Raz, have you read anything about Dawkins’ new mini-series on British TV? Very interesting stuff.
Gujjubhai,
i won’t worship at the cult of popper myself, i’m a pragmatist. i believe in the culture of science, as flawed and noisy as it is, because it is the best we have.
now, Isn’t positing non-invasion in the face of zero evidence of invasion a more parsimonious hypothesis? well, that depends on what you define as “invasion.” again, i’m going back to the proportion is mattering. let me restate it this way: what is the necessary precondition for the transfer of language from A to Z in a locale? i don’t think wholesale demographic replacement is a necessary precondition. in fact, that is why i’m trying to get out of you exactly what the proportion of migrants would have to be to classify as an ‘invasion.’ if you want to be more PC, elite cultural transmission seems to be a plausible way to make the case. the fact is we do have genetic evidence of migration from the west in the J haplogroup. it is not dominant, but it is non-trivial, and it correlates with northern indians and ‘higher caste,’ which fits the preconceived notions we might have in regards to elite transmission of indo-european languages in northern india.
do i believe that chariot riding aryans came into the indus valley and slew the native population around 1500 BCE and brought with them from outside india hinduism? no! if that is the AIT you are talking about, i don’t accept that, but that’s not what i see in the scholarship. rather, i read romila thapar’s work, and she does not posit that from what i can tell, rather, she seems to assume migration over a period of time which resulted in cultural change. as i said above, it isn’t important to me whether the indus valley civilization was sanskritic or not. it isn’t important to me whether hinduism is predominantly native or not (it could be predominantly the outgrowth of the religio-philosophical worldview of native indians who have lived in the subcontinent for tens of thousands of years). what i’m positing is a narrow hypothesis about the likelihood of elite transmission of language into the indian subcontinent. the reality is that we can’t just look at this question in the context of india, we have to look at it in the context of eurasia. an indigenous origin for indo-european in the indian subcontinent implies that indo-european languages the world over are south asian origin. that implies predictions about cognates and language diversity and the generation form of the indo-european linguistic tree, predictions which are for the most part not born out. if you want me to be explicit i will contend that aryans brought to india one thing of any importance, and that is their language. the religion, genes and culture of india is predominantly indigenous, with a mild indo-european gloss (i.e., some of the gods in hinduism have obvious indo-european cognates, but in traditional hinduism they are marginalized, while cows, cloth, etc. were all likely long time features of the indian landscape).
Razib,
Thank you for your extensive reply. I’m still not entirely convinced about (for examples) the “average” Punjabi having more in common genetically with the “average” Madrasi compared to Iranians, but I do agree completely with your statement here:
It’s all going to depend to some extent on the regional origin of the person concerned (Punjab, Madras etc) and very much on their particular family. For one reason or another (direct ancestry, dominant genes etc), some people will be closer to Iranians than others, even though they may be from the same part of the Indian subcontinent and often even from the same caste (assuming one buys the concept of people from the same caste having historically only married amongst themselves). Either way, I’d thought that for such people, Iranians are basically their “first-cousins” and other groups like Southern Europeans/Mediterraneans are “second-cousins”. Difficult to confirm this without the necessary exhaustive genetic analysis, of course, but I had been under the assumption that this was the received wisdom at present.
You’ve made some interesting points about how physical markers shouldn’t necessarily be taken as primary evidence of common ancestry (or lack of it). Going by some of my own relatives (myself included, actually) and various other Iranian/Spanish-looking north Indian desis I’ve met (primarily Punjabi, Gujarati, and a handful of Hindu Kashmiris), I would have thought that the common roots were pretty damn obvious. There have been Punjabi, Gujarati and (most pertinently) Persian/Iranian women I’ve met here in the UK who have similar enough appearances to actually look literally like sisters, or at least first-cousins. Someone (I’m not referring to you here, obviously) who insists on disputing this sounds, to me, like someone denying the common ancestry between Chinese and Japanese people, despite the glaringly obvious similarities in facial characteristics.
I also think that the viewpoints of some Indians may be distorted by an anti-European/anti-Caucasian bias as a result of hang-ups about the whole colonial era. In the same way that some feel that present and historical Western academics were determined to prove an allegedly non-existent link with non-Indian “Aryans”, I wonder if the desis concerned are similarly determined to prove that some Indians do not have this common ancestry, and that their own thinking and judgement is similarly distorted due to their underlying agendas and motivations.
Perhaps, in reality, the “truth” is actually somewhere in-between the 2 opposing viewpoints, or a combination of the two.
Either way, I’d thought that for such people, Iranians are basically their “first-cousins” and other groups like Southern Europeans/Mediterraneans are “second-cousins”. Difficult to confirm this without the necessary exhaustive genetic analysis, of course, but I had been under the assumption that this was the received wisdom at present.
ok, well here is a chart you might find of interest. don’t take it as gospel! (sorry for the christian eurocentric reference 🙂 yes, iranians are probably the closest of the other eurasian peoples to browns, especially northwest browns. if you want to take northwest browns as a type, you can imagine them as an admixture between other browns and iranians. what i’m saying is that they would probably be about 1/3 iranian and 2/3 ‘other brown.’ now, first, let me reiterate that northwest browns are not some simple admixture, all populations have variation and mix with each other, so there were never any idealized platonic races, only dynamic fluxes of genes across populations. but, if a population is 1/3 iranian, then some of those people will look VERY iranian, though the average person will look only 1/3 iranian. the smaller the numbero features you are looking at the, the greater the sampling variance will be since you don’t have many random variables at work. so, if you are look at hair, skin and nose, that’s tree traits. you can have many combinations within those three traits, so sometimes even if someone is ancestrally mostly brown, they might look like someone what tehran, because they randomly assorted out the 1/3 iranian features. please see this post for details of what i’m talking about. the point is that variation within populations is real, and not just an artifact of admixture, populations vary and exhibit range of types. bjork is pure icelandic, and yet looks half-asian. a small minority of scandinavians just happen to look like this. our ‘pattern detection’ mechanisms in our brains are fuzzy mappings onto the reality of genetic diversity. yes, there is a correlation, but it isn’t perfect, so you can’t always predict very well.
Someone (I’m not referring to you here, obviously) who insists on disputing this sounds, to me, like someone denying the common ancestry between Chinese and Japanese people, despite the glaringly obvious similarities in facial characteristics.
look, i’m a brown skinned bengali. but people think i look ‘middle eastern.’ you can ask manish (or saurav) what i look like, i don’t look middle eastern in real life. the fact is that japanese and chinese are pretty good at telling each other apart. yes, they do look similar, but perception of physical distance is somewhat subjective.
“There appear to be multiple debates occuring in this thread, some historical, some genetic, and some religiously-orientated, and it would be good for some clarification on what the basic, core issue is.”
The Aryan invasion theory has historical, religious and racial/ethnic overtones. It is impossible to separate these various strands. The gist: The left contends that the a race of Aryans violently invaded India and enslaved the “dasyu”. it is their brief that the dasyu refers to a race of people that originate in India. Since, according to them, Hinduism owes it’s origins to the coming of the aryans, it is alien to India and hence no different from religions that came later on.( read…Islam) The marxists use class as a denominator through which they peruse history. It becomes easy to blame the Hindus for inequity and poverty in Indian society. They become the oppressors of minorites, women, tribals, why!! they even caused the Tsunami last year!! Such an Invasion theory provides rich political/social fodder for the left. The theory was orignally propounded by british missionaries and their administrative counterparts as an effective tool to cause division in the southern parts of the country. The british found it hard to stomach the fact that the hindus had sophisticated systems of knowledge and philosophy. hence, they had to attribute these systems to the coming of a whiter/superior race. The dasyu were apparently dark skinned, so, were christened as “dravidians”.
The Hindus don’t take kindly to such talk. Not hard to see why…..
The following urls discredit the theory. source: wikipedia. http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/hinduism/history/history5.shtml http://www.stephen-knapp.com/solid_evidence_debunking_aryan_invasion.htm
Razib, you’re really ugly, right?
i’m in brooklyn right now, and a gay friend i had dinner with last night told me i’m ‘handsome.’ i think i’m above average, though not ravishingly so unfortunately 🙁
Razib,
I have a feeling that in most of the major areas, you and I are thinking along the same lines. The 1/3 – 2/3 examples you gave are especially good, it’s exactly what was going on in my own mind. Since I look 2/3 Iranian and 1/3 “brown”, this is a particularly interesting discussion for me personally 😉
There are of course a smaller number of north Indians who significantly slant even more towards the Iranian appearance, but you and I both covered that in our respective posts.
The bone of contention I have is when people (again, not you) attempt to deny any historical/ancestral link whatsoever between the Iranian types and groups further towards the north-west. Unless they’re saying that the migration was the other way round, and various groups migrated westwards from northern India. Either way, stubbornly denying any link is unwise considering not just overlapping genes (to some extent or another) but the linguistic overlap and, dammit, the fact that the 2 regions are geographically right next to each other !
Same line of logic with my Chinese/Japanese example. If China and Japan were tens of thousands of miles apart then one would be more justified in questioning any common ancestry (prehistoric long-distance migration notwithstanding), but it wouldn’t be the right chain of thought considering that the two regions are side-by-side.
Divya,
With all due respect, you’re generalising too much about what you term “Indian traditions”. Sikhism doesn’t necessarily follow the principles/tenets you’ve described; but that would take this discussion too far off-topic. so I won’t go into further detail here.
Jai – With equally due respect, I did not intend any harm and you should not have taken offence just for the sake of taking offence. Neither did I talk of any tenets or principles. I do intend to continue using the term Indian traditions since I try as often as possible not to use the term religion or hinduism. Please do not make an issue of it. But this is off-topic so let’s drop it (in any case, I’m out).
Jai,
You might disagree with Divya. Nothing wrong with that. Maybe, your defenses are up.
However, in Comment #.78, she has made some very intelligent observations. Agnostism and atheism in West is still very much couched within the “Protestant/ Calvinist” framework.
Discussion like this are only fun if people bring new, insightful stuff – repeating the same song can be really boring, don’t you think.
I think some things need to be cleared up here:
-No doubt there has been some influence in the region from other parts of Asia be it from migration/conquest/or even trade, I mean we all no that Genghis Kahn invaded the region. Many other groups have too and therefore there is naturally going to be some transference of genes and or other cultural traits.
-Originally the AIT conjecture stated that the invaders came from the Nordic lands, then they changed to the steppes of Asia
-RAZIB – you stated “where do you get the idea that it is controversial that the “greek” language is exogenous to greece?* read In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology, and Myth. or The Coming of the Greeks: Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East. also, greek and indo-aryans languages are syntactically similar vis-a-vi, for example, dravidian or finno-ugric languages. one could posit that both languages came into their present geographic regions from another region, or, they came from india or greece, but it seems logically impossible that they are indigenous to both greece and india since they are separate languages who share a common ancestor (unless you assume that an ancient ur-language was extent between greece and india).” -I have to clear something up on this, I did not mean to comment on the Greek language issue, obviously it is connected n the whole debate since there are similarities to it and Sanskrit. That is fine. But yeah in the same vein it is a bit controversial… go tell a greek that his language came from somewhere else and he’ll tell you all languages started in Greece. Either way in terms of using the word “controversial”, yes in that case evidence may lean one way or another, but the reason it is controversial is that there is no end all be all proof stating that the other side is WRONG. Now in terms of Sanskrit and a possible older IE language, there is something that people tend to deny or include in their arguments. Is it not possible that the older IE language could have come form the SOUth Asian region and spread out to other Asian lands? Sanskrit may have been one branch of it and other IE languages/branches as they spread out (in theory of course)
Divya in #78 .. very interesting comments !!!
I’m a little confused with the praise Divya has received (I think you referred to her as a ‘reformist figure’ or something Kush!) NYC filmmakers to one side, I have a few objections to her comment #78, which has been mentioned twice already.
Is it? You go on to say it’s a concept absent from ALL Asian traditions. Big sweeping statement there.
Buddhism: “Buddhism explains a purpose to life, it explains apparent injustice and inequality around the world, and it provides a code of practice or way of life that leads to true happiness.” [Link]
Confucianism is largely concerned with finding a meaning to life.
Shinto, likewise, believes that life has a meaning.
I can go on. I take on board some of your points about some of the archaic Christo-centric beliefs leaving a legacy in science and much of popular culture. But I don’t agree that all atheists with an interest in science (e.g. me, or Razib, or more high-profile people like Richard Dawkins who I mentioned above) “continue to operate within a religious framework”
BongBreaker – The asian traditions frame the question differently. They do not go about asking why is the sky blue, why did we have an earthquake (because it is god’s will etc.) Rather they tell you how best to live your life, or else they describe life – it’s full of suffereing and the way out of suffering is such and such, it’s an illusion, etc. Big difference.
Bong Breaker,
I praised Divya for one intelligent observation:
“Most of the western thought (religous and secular) have strong roots and imprint of their Judeo-Christian (Protestant most of the times) framework”. Similarly within Indian context, there is imprint of ………….(how can I even dare to say the word, I will be sent to French Guyana) or “unifying concepts”.
This said, most (please note, most, not all) of the scientists in west (I agree with Razib) have little interest in the details of religion. Most often, they have a quite a detached view. For them, religion is for ceremonies during wedding, christmas gifts, and funerals. Razib’s (NSA) figure are correct on that.
There is no blank-check. I do not do that………Bong, I wasn’t referring to her “meaning of life” concept.
Bong Breaker,
On NYC, Divya and I were on the opposite side. I was more on Abhi’s side there.
Sometimes, I have praised MoorNam and often, I oppose him.
Most of the time I support Jai on “human first” approach but then I oppose on his counter-terrorism ideas.
It is very complicated.
It’s cool Kush, we’re all simple complicated people (like Christy Turlington).
Divya, granted the sky being blue is a question that’s enjoyed most asking in the West – in fact another scientist who talks about religion, Eric Cornell, used it as an example in his TIME essay about ID (actually I think Abhi linked to it a few weeks back). But cultures all over the world have used religion to explain the world around them for millennia, Asia is no different. I don’t think you can categorise ‘Asian’ religions as a single entity. They may not have said “the sky is blue because God says so” but they DID say “the Sun rises because God made it”.
The point you make about “why was there an earthquake” is more interesting. I agree, many Asian religions havne’t been asking “why did it happen?” But rather than saying this trait is absent in a vague umbrella of Asian religions, it would be more accurate to say that the concept of punishment and a vindictive God is particular to Abrahamic religions. Whether you call Islam Asian is open to debate.
I praised Divya’s comment because it fit my biases. Hey, we all got our biases, right? Some people find Kate Moss attractive too!!!
Most of the time I support Jai on “human first” approach but then I oppose on his counter-terrorism ideas.
What are your counter-terrorism ideas?
ALM, The Terror Bee Equation – I have linked here a number of times. DesiPundit, Renwanul, http://www.thesquare.com have quoted/ posted them in past too.
PS: I wrote them nearly 1 1/2 year ago.
go tell a greek that his language came from somewhere else and he’ll tell you all languages started in Greece
yeah, greeks are stupid about this. so are nationalist idiots of all sorts. there’s a difference between folklore and scholarship. but greeks have their own ideas of migrations (dorians, achaeans as well as autochthonous pleasgians) so i’m not sure if it’s cognate with brown stupidity. the native americans get mad when scientists tell them they came over across via beringia because their elders told them that they are from the ‘earth’ and related to ‘brother bear’ and ‘sister hawk’ or some stupid shit.* the aryans are from india types are not nearly as dumb, and as i suggested above the broad thrust of their argument that south asians are indigenes if evaluated as those whose ancestors were predominantly derived from the paleolithic south asian substrate is something that i’d agree with. what i don’t agree with is these bizarro tirades about max muller, rejection of the clear consensus in philology and opportunistic use of pomo deconstructionist bullshit. of course, some of you no doubt believe in pomo deconstructionist bullshit, and i pray for you.
and one last thing, if people here reject philology, that is fine, i think that’s wrong, but whatever. but, when people say there is controversy in philology as regards the non-south asian origin of indo-european languages then they are lying or uninformed. perhaps i’m too ignorant on this area and i don’t know any better about the consensus controversy, but unlike others i did point to a few scholarly books i have read on this topic. only western europe (i.e., west of the rhine) has a lower probability of being the PIE ur-heimat from what i can tell across the expanse of indo-european languages. so yeah, the ‘there is a controversy’ is a classic creationist move. and of course, creationists like phil johnson like post modernism. the tendrils do go far….
re: atheism, calvinism, protestantism, etc. this is a complicated topic. if you read Alternative Tradition: A Study of Unbelief in the Ancient World, you will see that ‘atheism,’ rejection of normative religious tradition, is a common feature of countercultural intellectual movements. in greece you had the epicureans and pyrrhonian skeptics, in china you have the pragmatic naturalism of hsun tzu (the last of the three great confucian sages (confucius inclusive)) and in india you have the naturalistic carvaka philosophy.
i have regularly come across the assertion that ‘atheism is a product of western christian thought.’ i think the problem with this is simple: people take verbal descriptions and semantical obscurity and impart upon them great significance. religious specialists and cultural theorists who man the bureaucracies of stratified societies need to justify their existence and emphasize the differences between various groups. but cognitive psychologists have found that people across cultures tend to conceptualize the same ideas in their minds even when the theory propounded by cultural elites implies that the concepts conceived of must be radically different. for example, christians believe in the trinity and jews believe in a simple monotheism, and the religious practitioners of both groups have emphasized the difference between these two rational systems. people have died because of their professed beliefs. but the cognitive reality is that christians can’t really rationally conceive of the trinitarian theology where “3 == 1.” cognitively the god conceived of by christian theists isn’t that different from jewish theists, or, to be honest, hindu theists, and therevada buddhist nontheists (therevada buddhists don’t believe in a creator god and are technically nontheists, but operationally their relationship to the buddha is cognitively identical to that of christians, jews, muslims and hindus!).
the idea that culture conditions how you view the world around is rather normative in everyday discourse, and i think that that this conception needs to be modulated. peoples do think differently but we need to be careful in how we conceive of these differences and qualified in the salience of the differences. christian theologians and hindu rishis might verbally exposit different systems of transcendent supernatural belief, but i believe cognitively christians and hindus on the ground basically worship the same mental objects (though by different bames, and punctilious to profess the creeds). references to things like ‘calvinist’ are too redolent of weberian generalizations which have not stood the test of time. modern historical economic scholarship has, to my knowledge, falsified weber’s idea of calvinist industry in germany (catholics and lutherans could be quite economically productive). weber also wrote an essay about how the religious system of east asia would always handicap it economically. how did that prediction bear itself out? my point is that the broadly obvious cultural differences are surface features which serve as distinctive shibboleths, but don’t express deep rooted substantive ways of thinking.
the short of it is that objectivity is objectivity is objectivity. we might look at the world like catfish at the bottom of the muddy pond, faint glimmers and glimpses, but the world exists. bite the apple and be as the gods, it isn’t a western privilege and we don’t need to be familiar with the institutes of religion and systematic reformed theology to bath superstition in the universal acid.