In IndiaFacts: Review – Zealot by Reza Aslan

(The original version was published at IndiaFacts)

In 66 C.E., fed up with the Roman occupation of their land, the Jews declared war on the Roman Empire. Soldiers patrolled even in the temple of this supposedly inconsequential part of the empire. Imagine the anger Malayalis would have felt if Communists administered their temples and the state looted its wealth. Wait. Wrong example. Though Rome was a powerful empire, the Jews were confident that their God would take them to victory. Motivated by what looked like a possible victory, the rebels attacked Jews who colluded with the Romans. Many messiahs also appeared on the scene, prophesying the end of Jerusalem. Finally, the miracle happened; they liberated Jerusalem.
If any Carthaginians were around, they would have told the Jews that this was a bad idea. In 70 C.E., the empire struck back. They razed the city to the ground, slaughtered the Jews and exiled the survivors. They also renamed the city and erased all mention of it from the record. Unlike Hindus, the Jews did not have temples all over the country. There was one temple — The Temple at Jerusalem — the center of their worship and that was gone. It was not just the Jews who were affected; the followers of a man named Yeshua were affected dramatically. It was after these events that the first Gospels were written.
Due to these sequence of events, Aslan argues that the Jesus of the Gospels is not the same as the historical man named Yeshua. For Aslan, the Gospels were written by believers for a specific purpose and are not historical documents. He ignores them and presents a picture of Yeshua by looking at the social, political and theological context of that period. Aslan himself is a former evangelical, who gave up that life as he became a religious scholar. Besides painting a portrait of Yeshua, he also reveals how the modern Jesus was invented.
If Jesus was not the person whom the Gospels claim to be — the good shepherd, the peacenik, the one who turned the other cheek — then who was he? According to Aslan, two things we can be sure are

He was a Jew who led a popular movement like many others
He was crucified by the Romans like many others.

To those who believe Yeshua was a child prodigy, who at a young age, stunned the priests of the Temple and to those Indians who are fascinated by the tale of Jesus learning in India, Aslan, who has been a Biblical scholar for two decades, sets the record straight. Yeshua was a woodworker or craftsman who never ventured far away. All Jewish peasants of the time were illiterate; Yeshua could not have been any different. (On a side note, the theory that he died in Tibet has been debunked as well)
Once baptized by his guru, John the Baptist, Yeshua took on a career of preaching. He wandered around as a professional exorcist, curing the ill of their sickness. Another common profession during that period, it paid more than being a woodworker. He was not the only miracle worker of that period, “it was quite common to see diviners, dream interpreters, magicians and medicine men wandering around the region”. But Aslan says Jesus did something different from the rest: he never charged for his work. We know that because the pagan and Jewish critics of Christianity agree on this as well.
Yeshua was not stoned to death for blasphemy, but crucified, which was the Roman punishment for treason. Anyone who proclaimed he was a messiah was crucified for striving to overthrow the Roman empire. Disrupting the activities of the temple, Yeshua proclaimed that the Kingdom of God was coming soon and this occurred during the time of when rebels were working to overthrow the Romans and bring the land under Jewish control. The main thesis of Aslan’s book is that Jesus was not someone who was talking about abstract ideas during this time, but was a zealot, actively involved in this movement like others of that period. Yeshua proclaimed that the present order would be replaced by a new political, religious and economic system and for advocating such a revolutionary idea, he was executed by crucifixion.
Another point Aslan makes is that the crucifixion of Jesus was not one of those stop the world events that happened in Jerusalem. Pilate, the Roman governor, who sent Jesus to the cross had utter disregard for Jewish customs and had crucified many others. He would not even have met Jesus. Terrorized by Pilate’s hobby, the people of Jerusalem complained to the Roman emperor. Even then he did not lose his job. Nothing happened to the temple priest as well. It was much later, after Pilate sent soldiers to butcher the followers of another messiah, that both he and the temple priest lost their jobs.
Following the crucifixion of Yeshua, three major strands of events occurred. The followers of Yeshua — the ones who walked with him — were shocked. The messiah who promised to rebuild David’s Kingdom had not only failed but was crucified like a state criminal. What did that mean? What could they do now? For the Jews, it was curtains down. He was yet another failed messiah. But for members of the Jesus movement, they had to invent a new explanation. They also had to prove to others that he indeed was the messiah. One of the earliest beliefs they came up was the radically new resurrection narrative — that he arose on the third day. They stayed in Jerusalem, continuing his teaching.
The second chain of events was set off by Paul who was inspired by Jesus though he had never met him. Other writers claimed Paul had a vision; Paul himself never said so. For Paul, Jesus was divine. Paul’s target market was the urbanized elite who did not care for messianic concepts or Jewish rituals. For the original illiterate followers of Jesus, Paul’s teachings were all Greek (literally). It would be like Hindus reading the writings of Prof. Wendy Doniger. In fact, Paul’s teaching looked so radical that the head of the Hebrew followers, James, (the brother of Jesus), sent congregations to convert the followers of Paul back to the fold; James was quite successful.
As the Hebrews — the farmers and fishermen followers of Jesus — and the Hellenists — the urbanized Greek speaking Romans — were duking it out , 9/11 hit Jerusalem and the Romans wiped out the place from the map. This triggered the third sequence of events. The Gospels were written down in various cities in the empire — Rome, Damascus, Antioch, and Ephesus — by people who had never met Yeshua. By then four decades had passed since Yeshua’s crucifixion and the eyewitnesses to his life had perished. The teachings that were passed along were conveniently modified.
Also, after 70 C.E, it was clear to everyone, who had the power to chop off your head. The authors of the Gospels could either stick their neck out and write that Jesus was a man who wanted to overthrow the Roman empire or they could spin another tale. They chose the latter. A Jesus, who operated at a divine plane and had nothing to do with earthly matters became a convenient replacement.
The author of the first gospel, attributed to Mark, wanted to absolve the Romans of all the crime. Hence, the whole story of Pilate washing his hands of Jesus was invented. The Romans, who crucified Yeshua were sanitized and Jews who did not accept him as the messiah became the villains. That was the birth of anti-Semitism, the consequences of which can be seen even today. Another important point to note is that the gospels were not written in Hebrew or Aramaic, but in Greek. The evangelists’ goal was to convert the gentiles and so distancing themselves from Jewish “mumbo-jumbo” seemed right.
Aslan is not the first person to do this kind of analysis. He is one among many of a two centuries old line of scholarship trying to excavate the historical Jesus. Many years back, Prof. Thomas Sheehan of Stanford, taught a course called The Historical Jesus where he did similar analysis looking into the Gospels to find out what fits and what does not. Usually, historians go to primary sources to find the truth, but in this case, Sheehan says, the primary source are problematic. The Gospels which are now considered Canonical were ruled so by political forces. Whatever did not fit the template was considered heretic, a concept alien to dharmic traditions. Each blind scholar in this lineage found a different part of the elephant: using historical studies, literary analysis and sociology, they found Yeshua to be either a philosopher or an apocalyptic preacher or teacher or simply a magician.
With the destruction of Jerusalem, the original message was diluted and the urbanized, educated Greek-speaking diaspora Jews, immersed in Greek philosophy and Hellenistic culture Deepak Chopra-ed a new religion. This is like how American Buddhists are defining a new “scientific” religion by eradicating traces of Hinduism and mystical elements of Buddhism and retaining just mindfulness. The failed messiah, who did not set out to create Christianity, became the creator of heavens and earth and had nothing to do with the Roman occupation or the fight against it. This Neo-Jesus is the one to whom believers pray every weekend.

In Niti Central: Empowering history, no flagellation

(This was co-authored with Parag Tope, the author of Tatya Tope’s Operation Red Lotus and originally published at Niti Central)

Whether one evaluates petrified history or percipient history, the practical benefit of studying history is only as relevant to how that knowledge helps the present and the future. Therefore, thestudy of history must achieve two goals:

Learn from positives by identifying success – things done right.
Learn from failures by identifying mistakes – things gone wrong.

Modern, rather European or Western narrative of history, attempts to achieve the same goals, however, these methods are constrained by their own narrow paradigms:
Institutions, not society, are primarily responsible for “official” history
Narratives are based on a linear time-frame, absolute time lines and display an obsession to date everything
Materialistic markers and dating are used to competitively rank petrified civilisations
A western sense of civility (or an absence thereof) determines identification of “things gone wrong.” This “civility” is on fully display in highly flagellating what-if analyses, name calling, character assassinations and finger pointing.
Western methodologies for history are consistent with their polity – where institutions and state dominate over the lives of people. This is not only true today, but was true during Roman and Greek periods as well. Therefore it is not uncommon to find semi-hagiographic records of anyone associated with those institutions forming the basis of “historical records”. For example, we have a good idea about Plato’s lineage, how he got his name and who his siblings were while we have scarce information on where Aryabhata was born, who his parents were or who his teachers were.
If the goal is to learn from the positives and avoid repeating mistakes, how do dates and lineages matter? Analytical processes have their place in any intellectual framework, however, when it comes to history, why are absolutes important? The answer becomes clear if one attempts to understand the roots of western ethos, polity and a progressive, linear view of time.
Progress versus the कालचक्र (Kaalachakra – wheel of time)
This linearity lends itself to a near obsession with the concept of “progress”. However, this obsession with progress is matched by the equally strong fear of the impending apocalypse. From a western intellectual framework, the past petrification does indeed offer lessons about their own imminent future. Western ethos, rooted in fear of the apocalypse, recognizes that their future could be leading down the path of destruction. Every few decades, Europeans and Westerners, both from the ‘religious right’ and the ‘progressive left’, claim that the world is going to end soon, because humans are sinners or polluters.
In that framework, these lessons are indeed relevant and therefore desire introspection. Thus, the Western obsession to date every event is also understandable. If doomsday is coming, would it not make sense to predict as to when it is coming? Consequently, Western methodologies are appropriate to prevent a destruction that their religious texts, or scientific fears, claim is impending.
Western timelines are stratified into various ‘ages’ indicating a certain linear progression. Thus when the English invented Indian history, it was conveniently split into a Hindu age, Buddhist age, Muslim age and a British age. Indian ethos operates differently. Indians never looked upon time as linear, but cyclical and in that context the need to date everything is considered a fool’s errand.
Similarly, India’s percipient history is primarily about learning from the positives and therefore, Indic memories present a large number of positive role models. The best practices are preserved by recognizing the “things done right” and by identifying those who did the right things and placing them on a pedestal.
Constraints of Civility and Historical Amnesia
What about mistakes and “things gone wrong”? Indic memories clearly place the heroes of a story on a pedestal – be it Vishnu or Durga in their various Avatars. The antagonists, those who are the cause of the imbalance, driven by ego or ambition to lord over others, like Ravana and other Asuras, are explicitly assailed. However, Indic memories display a selective amnesia of the names of all those who either blundered, betrayed, or made bad choices, which enabled the antagonists becoming powerful in the first place. For example, the stories of the growth of Ravana’s empire offer little information of the kings he defeated. Is it possible that during the period of Ravana’s expansion, there might have been kings who either made strategic blunders or were bribed, bought or beaten?
Indic civility or सभ्यता clearly discourages finger pointing or flagellation. This easily explains why Indic memories are amnesic when it comes to offering lessons learned that involve any sort of finger pointing at any historical person, persons or even citizens who might have made mistakes that led to further failures.
If stories of defeat were editorially eliminated, because civility could not accommodate finger pointing, how did Indians learn from their mistakes? Is Indic civility or सभ्यता a curse that prevented Indians from truly learning from failures? Were ancient Indians in their desire to be civil, fail to preserve the lessons learned for posterity?
There are two possibilities:

Yes – the absence of finger pointing does indeed indicate that Indic memories fail in providing the lessons learned for later generations.
No – Ancient Indians were able to solve the problem and overcome the “constraint of civility” by preserving the lessons learned without pointing fingers.

Those who are stuck in a linear apocalypse-fearing western mindset would choose the first option.
Consider the other possibility. Is it possible to separate the lessons learned from the primary story and the characters who blundered? Does naming the individual who blundered have any importance in learning from their mistakes?
Dispersive History
The answer is Dispersive History – where events of relevance, like light passing through glass, are filtered through a prism of Indic ethos and “dispersed” into relevant buckets for consumption by generations to come.
Dispersive history splits important events four ways:
The protagonists are named and are placed on a pedestal.
The antagonists are named and denounced.
Mala fide actions, that remain a part of human failings that includes corruption and betrayal, offer no new lessons. Those who might have been bought or betrayed are ignored and their names forgotten with time.
Bona fide mistakes are encapsulated as lessons learned in abstracted form. The names and sometimes even the species are changed to avoid direct finger pointing. This is history with pseudonymous characters which can be described as abstracted pseudonymous history.
The stories in हितोपदेश (Hitopadesha – good advice), the पंचतन्त्र (Panchatantra – five principles) or the philosophical observations made in poetic form in the सुभाषित (subhashitas – “well said” ideas) – are abstracted observations with pseudonymous characters, that were likely to have been inspired from real events. The names or the specifics in the stories are far less relevant than the lessons themselves.
For example, a king who was seduced by rhetoric and ignored obvious red flags in an alliance with another king, could have easily inspired the story told in the हितोपदेश (good advice) of the “old tiger and the greedy traveler”. Or citizens of a country that were seduced by free handouts of a seemingly benign, but oppressive ruler, could have inspired the story of the “doves, the hunter, the grains of rice, and a mouse.” The story of how a weak, but clever king who used the power of an ally to defeat an enemy could have formed the basis for the panchatantra story काकस्य उपायः ( kaakasya Upaayah – A Crow’s Solution).
Furthermore, children were exposed to these stories early in life – so that they could grow up with these lessons. As adults, they could recognise the traps that their ancestors might have fallen into – and learn to avoid them. This helped achieve the second goal of historical analysis, with without any flagellation or sacrificing the civility that defines Indic ethos.
This way of preserving stories for posterity is another distinctive feature of India. These stories were important in the lessons they taught, but simple enough that it was both entertaining and could be communicated easily irrespective of the age and educational background of their listeners. Some of these stories were even simplified into common sayings which are used in everyday conversations even today.
How do you use this understanding of Indian historiography to alter the way history is taught was written in India? In the final part of this series, we offer some suggestions. We would also like to invite the readers to make suggestions in this regard. The final part of the series which consists of few general and specific recommendations will be published a month later based on the comments and feedback we receive.

In Niti Central: Petrified History to Percipient History

(This was co-authored with Parag Tope, the author of Tatya Tope’s Operation Red Lotus and originally published at Niti Central)

In the first part of this series we described India as having an “accumulative” history versus other civilisations having maintained “discrete” histories. This key differentiator between India and other civilisations is an important factor to consider as India attempts to reassess its own history. For example, various western anthropological models of civilisations describe several phases of a civilization. They typically start with some description of a beginning and some description of a decay and then an ending.

India does not share that experience, because all ancient civilisations, with the exception of India, are akin to fallen trees petrified over the centuries. Petrification is a process that replaces the live cells of a tree with minerals that fossilize the cells and preserve the structure. Archaeological findings of ancient civilizations are in many ways similar to finding a petrified tree. Unlike a live tree, a petrified tree can be sliced and its rings counted to know how old the tree was when it died. A petrified tree also preserves the signature of the minerals that it absorbs when they replace the live cells providing critical information about the period of petrification; a dead civilisation provides answers that offer as much clarity as a petrified tree does.

Living History

However, India is a living civilisation, which has preserved the memory of ancient times across generations through the memory of people, stories and philosophical treatises. India’s unbroken continuity means that it is an ancient, but a live tree, like a banyan tree that has roots spread far and wide. Can a live Banyan tree answer a simple question as to how old it is? Can it even answer the question as to where the original trunk was? Perhaps, only if parts of the tree were petrified, like the sites near Saraswati and Kampil.

Absence of fossilized anthropological evidence does not indicate the absence of antiquity. The methodologies that are applied to study what died and preserved, have to differ from methodologies that are required to study a live civilisation. To find out what someone ate before they died, one can perform an autopsy and examine the contents of the stomach. What about a live person? Well – just ask what they ate. Therefore, studying Indian history needs a fundamentally new approach which has to be different from the study of dead fossilized civilisations. It needs to be analogous to asking a live civilisation “what do you remember?”

For example, if you ask the Rajasthanis on why their region is a desert, they would tell us that it is due to the disappearance of a mighty river which had once flowed through the region. Even though the river vanished several thousand years ago, the memory is preserved in folk songs and local traditions. If you had asked the people of Kampil, even before excavating, they would have told you that the mound in their village actually hid a fort. Much before satellite imagery found the paleo channels, Indians who had read the nadistuti sukta of the Rigveda would have told you that the location of Saraswati was between Yamuna and Sutlej.

India’s secret of this contiguous memory lies in the ability of the society to retell the stories across generations. The carriers of these memories were not political rulers, but society itself and these memories were carried across generations through folk songs, dances, stories and enactments of epics. This is very different from the concept of annals, or what is known as recorded or “official” history of events recorded by courts of kings. Thus, preservation of history in India was highly decentralised, yet, the themes of preservation were common.

Transfused History

Though India has a unique combination of diversity of language and culture, Indians are bound by a common thread of stories and traditions. Society achieved this by maintaining a section of the population who took the responsibility of rituals, as well as educating themselves in a broad category of subjects, that included stories and philosophical treatises. Additionally, pilgrimages to various “तीर्थस्थल were encouraged by ensuring that the lodging and boarding was free of cost. In return the guests would perform ceremonies, rituals, hold philosophical discussions, perform vedic recitations, and discuss stories and philosophies with their hosts. This not only allowed for a cross-pollination of ideas, concepts, and philosophies, but also of stories, best practices and the opportunity for selecting and sharing wisdom. This “transfusion” of ideas across regions, languages and peoples provided a unique paradigm in integrating Indian ethos while maintaining its diversity.

Just as a historian makes editorial selections in what goes in a history book, society, in combination with a culture that encouraged cross-pollination of ideas, made similar choices. What makes one story more important than other? Why preserve the memory of one event and not another?

Just as प्रकृति (prakriti) represents things that are impermanent, changing or evolving, संस्कृति (Sanskriti) defines सनातन (Sanatana – everlasting or immutable) ideas. Editorial selections were made based on what concepts were considered प्राकृतिक (Prakritic or impermanent) and what concepts were considered सांस्कृतिक (Sanskritic or immutable). If an event significantly affected the lives of people and the lessons learned were considered immutable, it got added to the stories worthy of preservation.

This automatically meant that western notion of civilisation, based on materialistic markers, were generally ignored in Indian ethos. Indians placed सभ्यता or civility above materialistic markers of civilisation. This relative prioritisation allowed Indians to identify stories that were worth preserving, without getting seduced by materialistic markers. This is exemplified in the story of Ram’s life, where the seeming prosperity of Ravana’s Lanka, with its multi-storied palaces and bejewelled and golden decor, are described in great detail. Yet, Ayodhya which had far less impressive materialistic markers in comparison to Lanka, was considered superior, because of the civility that existed in society that was free from Ravana’s oppressive regime.

These stories not only provided the audience with the tools to recognise what was worthy of cherishing, it also put a spotlight on the important concept that if power was centralised in the hands of oppressive regimes, civility would be adversely impacted. This knowledge that civility had indeed broken down in the past, in cyclical patterns, equipped Indians to look to their history for lessons that would enable them to overcome obstacles in the present.

Percipient History

With society’s ability to perceive, discern, discriminate and select what is remembered for posterity, Indic memories can therefore be best described as Percipient History. Percipient history depends on the preservation of what the society perceives is worthy of preservation. Petrified history is more about preservation of snapshots of discrete periods of history, which includes “historical records.” The process of keeping records was often undertaken by rulers, administrators and therefore represented the view of the state or institutions and not socie
ty. The concept of centralised study of Petrified history was forced upon India by the English. This was then propagated by historians who continued to be seduced by the beauty of material markers preserved as petrified civilisations, rather than the wisdom and perceptiveness of a living civilisation.

As India reassesses history, it needs to make a distinction between non-Indic petrified history and India’s percipient history. Indians also need to look at the unique style of Indian historiography, the goal of which was to extract empowering lessons which would benefit future generations without indulging in flagellation. We will look at this in the next part.

In Niti Central: Politics of ‘official’ History

(This was co-authored with Parag Tope, the author of Tatya Tope’s Operation Red Lotus and originally published at Niti Central)

Click on the image for the story on how this civilization met its end

With a nationalistic government leading India, there is an unprecedented opportunity to undo the damage that has been caused to Indian memories, by forces hostile to Indic ethos. A natural reaction would be to take an opposite position to reverse the damage. This series takes a step back and analyses the mechanisms used by our ancestors. Had they developed a framework for recording history that is staring at us but we don’t realize? If so, can we decode that framework and can that offer us guidance in creating an analytical and an Indic approach to reassessing history?
The first part argued that India’s experience and memories are distinct from other places – and there India needs its own framework. In this part we review the politics of “official” history and argue that India needs a different approach. In the subsequent parts we decode the unique Indic methodology of editorializing, preserving and transmitting, not only narratives but even lessons learned. The final part will look at how that decoded knowledge can help formulate a new framework for reassessing Indic history, and perhaps even the history of humanity.
Politics of Historiography
European polity has dominated modern discourse in recent times, and it is represented in their hierarchical top-down systems that come in various flavours. Whether they are an “-acy”, an “-ism”, or an “-ity,” they have one thing in common: they all view society either as errant or as similar to sheep, which needs to be controlled and shepherded. What differentiates various systems from each other is the extent of shepherding and whether the shepherds emerge from the flock they seek to control. This has translated into academic institutions and government machinery that attempt to wield control over society.
Western Historiography is based on theoretical frameworks, such as Marxism, nationalism, post-colonialism, post-modernism, feminism and more, and draws from social sciences, religion and anthropology among others. These frameworks provide a specific perspective and the conclusion reached by historians depends on which of these coloured lenses they are wearing. Historiography has been used as tools to control the “masses” and follows a consistent pattern. First, “eminent” people with certificates of qualifications and specialized degrees are given charge of influential institutions in the nation. They control the intellectual framework for history and anthropology and define the narratives based on that framework. Next, large universities and institutions which are well funded, author huge volumes of writings, which are then condensed and simplified for various educational levels. Finally, the government controlled educational system works as a distribution channel for students who are nothing more than consumers of ideas created by these “highly qualified” people.
This is in complete contrast to India’s ethos where society determined qualifications of individuals based on their observed day to day actions. Personal sacrifice of material gain and power, combined with demonstrable knowledge, was given the highest respect; not degrees and certificates from highly funded institutions. Further, the responsibility of propagating memories remained with society and was never outsourced to any authority or central institution, regardless of their qualifications, stature or intelligence. India’s long held memories, helped Indians recognize the patterns of oppression inflicted by the British and they fought against Britain relentlessly. The part success achieved in the Anglo-Indian war of 1857 was a result of Indian memories that equipped Indian society to support Indian leaders form alliances and challenge the oppressive economic, political and social systems imposed by the British. The Azamgarh proclamation of August 1857, which demanded political, economic and personal freedom, was an acknowledgement of this unbroken Indian ethos.
To neutralize India’s decentralized memories, the British launched a two pronged attack. First, they created centralized institutional structures, and second, used those institutions to launch an ideological assault and propaganda against Indic ethos. They hired consultants to write Indian history with an anti-Indic bias through various narratives. The mission of these pen wielding mercenaries was to eventually replace India’s unique memories with “official history.”
The techniques for erasing memories were already perfected within the Western world. As Christianity spread, “Pagan” cultures were erased, Orwellian memory holes were created to incinerate inconvenient remnants of past history to prevent any resurgence of those who were vanquished. Sometimes the incineration was physical, with the near successful genocide in the “New World”, where “Guns, Germs and Steel”, were used to wipe out native people and their memories. In other cases, less dramatic but effective memory holes were created by renaming places, persons or objects to unlink them from the past.
Fortunately, the two pronged assault on India was not entirely successful. Indian society viewed the English rule and any institution that attempted to influence society with scepticism. With the exception of a small section of the English influenced minority, Indians largely ignored centralized propaganda that passed off as history.
However, this changed after the English were evicted. India had the opportunity to neutralize both the assaults by dismantling the centralized institutions as well as end the propaganda perpetuated against Indic ethos. Independent India’s leaders did neither.
Missed Opportunities
The centralized institutions not only remained intact, they were strengthened. In the early decades following the eviction of the English, a battle ensued to control these centralized institutions. All sides claimed that their attempt to rewrite history was from an Indian perspective. While some groups viewed India from anti-Islamic narrative, others viewed India from an anti-imperialist narrative. Neither presented any insights into Indic ethos nor offered a narrative that was correlated to Indian memories. In fact, the Marxists, defined by their own lenses, created an imagined narrative consistent with their ideological preferences and a strong anti-Indic bias. None of the warring factions really understood India and its eternal memories, or worse deliberately chose to misrepresent India.
The Marxists won this battle and exercised complete control over education, academia and humanities. The only change Independence bought was that English propaganda was replaced by Marxist propaganda, which was propagated using the old and newly formed institutions created with the same intent.
They successfully labelled themselves as “historians” (without the Marxist tag), or “liberals with a scientific outlook” while anyone questioning them were slandered as “communal.” They continued the attack on the section of society which was critical in preserving memories through stories and philosophical treatises, and blamed them for all the ills in society. The Marxist historians considered it their burden to fix the flaws of an errant Indian society through power and manipulation. They highlighted the negativity that had befallen India’s social fabric during India’s economic destruction under English misrule, and extrapolated that negativity into the past. They furthered this propaganda by collaborating with Western Historians and self-proclaimed “Indologists” and continued the English tradition of assailing Indian society. They leveraged this misrepresentation to promote the idea that holding on to the past was “orthodoxy” and forgetting it, “progress.”
Indian society was more receptive to the propaganda produced by these post-independence institutions because they believed that they were run by “well-meaning and progressive” Indians. These “historians” either lacked an understanding of Indic ethos or deliberately chose to misunderstand it. They used centralized institutions to propagate ideas learned from their peers in other parts of the world. For them everything was a class struggle and this thesis had to be accepted for one to be considered as “secular.”
Despite this propaganda, Indian society and families continued to practice traditional pursuits and maintaining a culture that implicitly represented the unbroken narrative of India. Over time Indian society continued to reject what was taught in classrooms because it had little correlation with the culture that they lived in. This scepticism prevented the centralized monolithic machinery from gaining wide acceptance in Indian society – thus continuing to shield India’s ethos of decentralized history.
Today, India is at a crossroads again.
From अध्यात्मिक Participants to Bystanders and Consumers
A nationalistic Indian government is leading India, which wears an unabashedly pro-Indian lens rather than the jaundiced lenses worn by the Marxists. This nationalistic government now controls these centralized institutions created by the English and then expanded by the Marxists.
Is this situation good for Indic ethos?
Contrary to what most nationalists believe, the situation has the potential to be disastrous. In fact, far more so than the Marxist takeover of these institutions.
The reason is that a majority of Indians in society, who thus far have viewed both the English and Marxists with suspicion, might let their guard down and accept centralized and nationalistic versions of Indian history that might be written from an Indian point of view. For them, a rewriting of Indian history with a nationalist viewpoint would be the perfect way to undo the damage cause thus far.
What they don’t see is that the fundamental flaw in India’s post-Independent approach to history was not about who would control these institutions. The flaw was that these centralized monolithic institutions continued to exist for someone to control, as a proposed replacement for India’s decentralized memories. It is not the narrative, with or without the biases, that is the primary threat to India’s memories, but the mere existence of any official narrative, that is accepted by society, that will pose as the biggest threat to India’s decentralized history.
Indian society today, despite the educational system, has remained active in transmitting past memories. However, if the Indian government offers a curriculum in history that the society finds acceptable, then the society will transform itself from proponents and champions of history to consumers of history. Society will become a mere bystander as “better qualified people with degrees and certificates,” combined with a “nationalistic outlook” take control over what always belonged to the people.
India’s ethos is driven by the engine of diversity and powered by the principles of अध्यात्म (adhyatma). Adhyatma, roughly translates as “the supreme self,” where the self is considered to be the prime mover as each person takes responsibility for themselves and thus builds a self-reliant society. Whether India embraces a “unifying” consumer culture in materialistic pursuits is a separate discussion. The immediate question is will India embrace a consumer culture in history and philosophy? As a society that respects the notion of अध्यात्म, India’s core strength is her ability to thrive intellectually, at the level of each individual, without external authority and despite the government – be it oppressive or friendly. No oppressive ruler has been able to take that away from her. Will a friendly government succeed in dismantling India’s decentralized ethos, where all enemies have failed?
Of all the threats that Indian memories have faced – the threat of a successful implementation and acceptance of centralized history is the gravest. What the Mughals could not even dent, where Macaulay and Bentinck mostly failed, and where Marxist controlled institutions could only find limited success in hurting India’s ethos – will a Indian society finally accept a centralized history. Will a nationalistic government become an agent of destruction of the Indian nation’s core values preserved in India’s decentralized, dispersive and percipient history?
The answer depends on the choices that are made today.
What next?
If rewriting centralized Indian history from a nationalistic perspective poses a risk – what is the alternative?
To make recommendations, it is important to take a step back, analyse and to understand how Indians preserved their memories successfully despite the invasions and subjugation. The following two parts attempts to decode the Indic Historical Framework and presents that as an alternative model that is consistent with India’s ethos. The fifth and final part in this series makes some general and some specific recommendations for the government of India to mitigate the risks that India’s eternal memories face.
In the next part we will introduce the concept of percipient history and contrast it with the petrified history of other ancient civilizations.

In Niti Central: Enduring history of a forever nation

(This was co-authored with Parag Tope, the author of Tatya Tope’s Operation Red Lotus and originally published at Niti Central)

Stone Age rock paintings found among the Bhimbetka rock shelters

In the late 1860s, a German businessman, enthusiastic about Greek history, started digging in the small town of Hisarlik in Turkey, in search of a Homeric site. He claimed to have discovered Troy, made famous in Homer’s Iliad with the story of the Trojan horse. There was much debate and excitement among anthropologists and enthusiasts and when the dust settled, the conclusion was that the site was indeed Troy. This discovery was significant because neither the locals nor any annals had maintained the linkage between Troy and Hisarlik through the centuries. The link was broken as Turkey went through many cultural and political transformations: Greek ethos gave way to the Roman civilisation, which was then replaced by the Byzantines. The Persians, the Arabs and the Ottomans who followed them, erased ancient memories, replacing it with new ones chosen by the new rulers and the new religions.

Contrast this with a similar archaeological discovery made during our times. In the 1990s, a team of Indian and Italian archaeologists conducted excavations near a village in Farrukhabad district of Uttar Pradesh. A mound just outside the village was excavated, which led to the discovery of the ancient town of Kampilya, the capital of King Drupada from the Mahabharata. However, this discovery generated neither any debates nor any significant discussions, and the excitement was limited to the archaeological circles.

What can explain the absence of excitement for a seemingly similar discovery? Are Indians not interested in their own past? Is it because it wasn’t a businessman who had sponsored the excavation of Kampilya? Or is there another explanation?

The answer is simple: Kampilya, unlike Troy, was never lost and its excavation was never a discovery. For the locals, the mound was always known as Drupad kila (Drupad’s fort), Although the fort had been buried for thousands of years, knowledge about the fort was transmitted over generations without a break. Also, not surprisingly, the name of the village was Kampil (a variant of Kampilya).

Unlike Turkey, where no local stories had survived the two and half millennia since the legend of Troy, the villagers in Kampil in their own history of at least five thousand years, not only knew about Kampilya, but also about Drupad, his daughter Draupadi and the battles fought near their village. Drupad’s story was neither legend, nor Kampilya legendary; they existed as real places with stories that have lasted hundreds of generations.

The absence of excitement in India about ancient discoveries is not surprising, because India is a unique civilisation with ancient memories that remain alive. In fact, India is the only place where there is an unbroken continuity between the land, the people and their stories that have been narrated across the generations. Consider other ancient civilisations west of India. Egypt, Rome, Greece, Iran and Mesopotamia still exist, but they are not the same places with whom India traded during ancient times.

In Egypt, it was the archaeological discoveries during and following the Napoleonic invasion that actually connected Egyptians to their forgotten past. For Greeks, the Minoan, Mycenaean and Hellenistic Greece are all relics of the past and modern day Greeks don’t live by the same religion or follow the same culture. Although the land and the people continued, the stories were replaced with biblical ones.

Similarly, towards the east, in the case of China, Buddhism became a cultural force that dramatically altered the fabric of the society from the traditions of the Xia, Shang and the Zhou dynasties. Various pre-Buddhist ideologies that dominated the society were replaced by new concepts of dharma and karma. From 200 BCE and over the next millennium, Buddhism became a powerful force; stories of Buddha in various forms pervaded society. Shaolin’s foundation by Indian monks and the subsequent role that institution played in Chinese political balance further entrenched Buddhist thought into China’s political discourse.

The Jewish people have a long memory as well. However, their cultural continuity was detached from their land as the Jews were forced to disperse into various parts of the world. The geography that encompasses modern day Israel and its neighbours went through several social and political changes similar to those witnessed by Mesopotamia, Turkey and other ancient civilisations in that area.

The pre-European inhabitants of North-America and Australia also maintained a long memory of their civilisation. However, the near genocidal attack on their existence by Europeans all but vanquished many of the tribes. Those who survived are attempting to resurrect and piece back their memories. The memories peoples of South-America and Africa were also erased as foreign political forces brought the full force of their religious dogmas and replaced the original memories with those considered holy in their respective books.

When it comes to India, Kampil is not a unique instance where memory was preserved over a long period of time. The memory of the Vedic Saraswati was preserved in local folks songs, Rig Veda and the Mahabharata. Another example is the case of the star Vega or Abhijit, which was at one time given the status as one of the 27 nakshatras (a special star along the ecliptic used for tracking planetary and solar motion). The memory of Abhijit becoming the pole star, 13,000 years ago, is known to Indians even today in the form of it losing its status among the pantheon of 27 nakshatras.

One can witness this continuity in several walks of life as well. For example, the ratio 5:4 was commonly used by the people of the Indus-Saraswati civilisation for constructing cities, the Vedic people for building fire altars, Varahamihira for building palaces, and the artisans who built the Delhi Iron pillar. Even now the proportion is used by the Jaipur Royal family in their flag. This continuous usage exceeds a span of at least five millennia.

This civilisational continuity is ingrained in the attitude and actions of the people. In the 19th century, much before the arrival of modern archaeology, the people of Ujjain knew that their city was built on top of another ancient city and for building a house, they could get well-baked bricks just by digging into the ground. The Archaeological Survey of India conducted twelve expeditions of marine excavations near Dwaraka in Gujarat, based on the description in Skanda Purana. Dwaraka, which was known as Kusasthali, was described as being situated at the confluence of Gomati and the Western Sea. These excavations yielded pottery, seals and epigraphs, which were possibly from the 17th – 18th century BCE.

Indians have always known about India’s uniqueness vis-a-vis other ancient civilisations. Allama Iqbal expressed these exact thoughts when he wrote:

युनानो-मिस्रो-रोमा सब् मिट गये जहांसे

अब तक मगर है बाकि नामो निशां हमारा

कुछ बात है कि हस्ति मिटती नहीं हमारी…

Greek, Roman and Egyptian civilisations have all vanished without a trace

Yet, our identity remains unbroken

There is something unique about us, that preserves our existence…

Indian history, with its unbroken continuity has accumulated the memories of the past into stories that remain live even today. Other civilisations within their finite periods of existence are visible to us through annals and records that appear as discrete narratives. Therefore, Indic history can be described as being “accumulative” history, versus other civilisations having “discrete” histories. This key differentiator between India and other civilisations is important to consider as India attempts to reassess its own history.

Although that is an important differentiator, there are other aspects as well which makes India unique. Because other ancient civilisations are no longer living. The techniques used for understanding them are similar to a post-mortem, and therefore unsuitable for understanding a living civilisation such as India. Later articles in the series will demonstrate that Indian society had the ability to perceive, discern, and select what to preserve for posterity.

Today, a nationalistic Government is leading India, and that presents an unprecedented opportunity to undo the damage that has been caused by forces hostile to Indic ethos. A natural reaction would be to take an opposite position to reverse the damage. For example, it would be tempting to replace the current “official” history that is out of touch with India, with one with a nationalistic outlook. Towards that goal, it would be expedient to replace the heads of the central institutions with ones who can write volumes about nationalistic history.

While removing the individuals in power who are hostile to Indic ethos is a necessary first step, the question to ask is, what are our expectations from the new appointees? Should they be also writing volumes on history?

This series takes a step back and analyses the mechanisms used by our ancestors. Had they developed a framework for recording history that is staring at us but we don’t realise? If so, can we decode that framework and can that decoded framework offer us guidance in creating an analytical approach to reassessing history?

The rest of the articles in the series will attempt to answer these questions. In the next part, we review the politics of “official” history, and in the subsequent parts we decode the unique Indic methodology of editorializing, preserving and transmitting, not only narratives but even lessons learned. The final part will look at how that decoded knowledge can help formulate a new framework for reassessing Indic history, and perhaps even the history of humanity.

In Pragati: Book Review of A Passage to Infinity by George Gheverghese Joseph

An important problem in historiography is the politics of recognition. Which theory gets recognized and which doesn’t sometimes depends on who is saying it rather than what is right. Take for example, the Aryan Invasion Theory. Historians like A L Basham wrote convincingly about it and it was the widely accepted fact. Over a period of time, the invasion theory fell apart; the skeletons, which were touted as evidence for the invasion, were found to belong to different cultural phases thus nullifying the theory of a major battle. Due to all this, historians like Upinder Singh categorically state that the Harappan civilization was not destroyed by an Indo-Aryan invasion. But the Aryan Invasion Theory is still being taught in Western Universities and those who question it are ridiculed. In this atmosphere if any academic dares to support the Out of India Theory, that could be a career-limiting move.
Eurocentric historiography has affected not just Indian political history, but the history of sciences as well. Indigenous achievements have not got the recognition it deserved; when great achievements were discovered, there have been attempts to explain it using a Western influence. In 1873 Sedillot wrote that Indian science was indebted to Europe and Indian numbers were an abbreviated form of Roman numbers. Half a century before that Bentley rewrote the dates for various Indian mathematicians, pushing them to much later and blamed the Brahmins for fabricating false dates. Some of these historians were willing to acknowledge that there were some great mathematicians till the time of Bhaskara, but none after that and without the introduction of Western Civilisation, India would have stagnated mathematically.
George Gheverghese Joseph disputes that with facts and goes into the indigenous origins of the Kerala School of Mathematics which flourished from the 14th century starting with Madhava of Sangamagrama and ending with Sankar Varman around 1840s. Though there were few mathematicians in Kerala in the 9th, 12th and 13th centuries, what is today called the Kerala School started with Madhava who came from near modern day Irinjalakuda. His achievements were phenomenal; they included calculating the exact position of the moon and what is now known as the Gregory series for the arctangent, Leibniz series for the pi and Newton power series for sine and cosine with great accuracy.
Following Madhava, the guru-sishya parampara bore fruit with a large number of students in that lineage achieving greatness. These include Vattasseri Paramesvara, Nilakanta, Chitrabhanu, Narayana, Jyeshtadeva and Achyuta. They wrote commentaries on Aryabhata (who was an influential figure for Kerala mathematicians), Bhaskara and Bhaskaracharya, recorded eclipses and dealt with spherical and planetary astronomy and produced many theorems and their proofs. Tantrasangraha by Nilakanta was a major output of this school. In this book, he carried out a major revision of the models for the interior planets created by Aryabhata and in the process arrived at a more precise equation than what existed in the world at that time. It was even superior to the one developed by Tycho Brahe later. These are the people we know about; Joseph writes that many more could be found from the uncatalogued manuscripts in Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
The book also goes into the social situation in Kerala which made these developments possible. By the 14th century the Namboothiri Brahmins, the major landholders were organized around the temple. They had a custom by which only the eldest son entered a normal marriage alliance and got his position in society by taking care of property and community affairs. The younger sons did not marry Namboothiri women, but entered into relations with Nair women — a practice called sambandham. They had to gain prestige by other means such as scholarship and the book makes the case that these younger sons formed one section of these mathematicians.
In an agrarian society which depended on monsoons, the precision of the calendar and astronomical computation of the position of celestial bodies was important. Astrology too was important for finding auspicious times for religious and personal rituals. All this knowledge was nourished, sustained and disseminated from the temple which served as the hub of this intellectual activity. The temple also employed a large number of people — priests, scholars, teachers, administrators — and there were a number of institutions attached to the temple where people were given free boarding and lodging.

After explaining the social situation in Kerala which facilitated the such progress, the final section of the book tackles an important problem. Two important mathematical developments of the 17th century are the discovery of calculus and the application of the infinite series techniques. While Europeans like Leibniz and Newton are credited with this work, the book argues that the origin of the analysis and derivations of certain infinite series originated in Kerala from the 14th to the 16th century and it preceded the work of Europeans by two centuries. The mystery then is this: how did this information reach Europe?
The book presents multiple theories here. It considers the option that Jesuits were the channel through which this knowledge reached Rome and from there spread elsewhere. There have been many such examples of transmission from the 6th century onwards with knowledge reaching Iraq and Spain and eastward to China, Thailand and Indonesia. But extensive survey of Jesuit literature did not provide any data for this transmission. Understanding the cryptic verses in which the information was written required investment of time and excellent knowledge of Malayalam and Sanskrit. Though Shankar Varman spoke to Charles Whish in 1832, that level of sharing of information may not have happened in the 14th century. The book then presents an alternate theory that the information may have slipped out unintentionally; the computations of the Kerala school would have been interesting for navigators and map makers and it would have been transmitted through them and then reconstructed back in Europe. This topic is not closed yet and much more research has to be done.
The book is not written purely for the layman in the style of Michel Danino’s The Lost River or Sanjeev Sanyal’s The Land of Seven Rivers. There are large portions of the book which contain mathematical proofs by these great mathematicians and can skipped for those who are not mathematically inclined. There was something a bit odd about an appendix appearing in the middle of the book. While dealing with the history of mathematics in India, the book starts with the ‘classical’ period and with Aryabhata (499 CE). Recently, there was a course Mathematics in India – from Vedic Period to Model Times taught by Prof M D Srinivas, M S Sriram and K Ramasubramanian, whose videos are available on YouTube. The course, very rightly starts with the ancient period, starting with the Sulvasutras (which is prior to 500 BCE) and such ancient knowledge should be acknowledged.
During these times when every development is attributed to Greece or Europe, the book dispels that notion completely and argues for an indigenous development of the Kerala School. Thanks to the work of various post-Independence historians, we have more information about the the Kerala School of Mathematics and that information is getting more popular. The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics by the same author and Mathematics in India by Kim Plofker, all talk about the history of Indian math and Kerala School in particular. But in more popular books, these developments are rarely mentioned because Indian mathematicians followed the computational model of Aryabhata which is different from the Greek model. In this context, books like A Passage to Infinity are important for us to understand these marginalized mathematicians.

In Pragati: The Lost Age of Reason: Philosophy in Early Modern India by Jonardon Ganeri

Recently the Society of Biblical Literature published the book Neo-Babylonian Trial Records (Writings from the Ancient World) by Shalom E Holtz. According to the description of the book, “this collection of sixth-century B.C.E. Mesopotamian texts provides a close-up, often dramatic, view of ancient courtroom encounters shedding light on Neo-Babylonian legal culture and daily life” and 50 cases are documented. Going even back in time, in 2062 BCE, an Indus colony existed in Mesopotamia and we have detailed documentation from that period mentioning the names of the colonists along with grain delivery records and debt notes. When it comes to India during that period, such detailed records are lacking.
Due to this, daily life in the Indus-Saraswati period is documented not from written records, but from archaeological evidence. As scholars get into the history of Indian philosophy, they run into new issues; there is not much biographical detail of the philosophers. In fact a common trend among Indian philosophers was to avoid writing personal details, and not have any mention of the social and political context, as they would be just distractions. While we know about Machiavelli’s childhood from his father’s documents and his personality based on the chronicles from his contemporaries, all we know about the Varanasi philosopher Raghudeva Bhattacharya that he was a student of Harirama, lived in Varanasi and had his work translated by Mahadeva.
These become important as we discuss the concept of modernity in Indian philosophy. Did Indian philosophers turn against the ancient traditions like Francis Bacon and Descartes who had warned that one should not stay with the past too much. Overwhelmed by the Mughal and subsequent British influence, did the Indian philosophers invent a neo tradition dissing the past and incorporating concepts from the non-Indian world? Was modernity in Indian philosophy instigated by Western influence?

Ganeri tries to answer all these by going through the evolution of Navya Nyaya school of thought which originated in Mithila, but later flourished in Navadipa and Varanasi. The person responsible for this school was Raghunatha Shiromani (1460 – 1540), the author of Pad-rtha-tattva-nir-pa-a, and who preceded both Bacon and Descartes by a century. He was a contemporary of Caitanya Mahaprabhu and advocated a “reason and evidence-based critical inquiry”, than scriptural exegesis. He asked philosophers to think for themselves and reflect on matters, which seem contrary to accepted opinion. The Navya Nyaya school was quite popular and attracted students not just from India, but from Tibet and Nepal as well; some Sanskrit pundits even went to Tibet in the 17th century to assist the Dalai Lama.
Ganeri discovers that unlike in Europe, where there was a tendency to break away from the past to display modernity, Indian philosophers did not think that was necessary. Instead they bridged the ancient past and the emerging modernity. Raghunatha and his students, who pioneered evidence based critical enquiry, reinterpreted the ancient texts and found no incompatibility between the ancient and modern. Ganeri argues that if you have to understand modernity in the Indian philosophical context, you have to discard the notion that modernity is a rejection of the ancient.
Instead what is seen in the period mentioned in the book — 1450 to 1700 — is a new type of commentary, which looks at the hidden meaning in the ancient texts. These philosophers wrote commentaries without deference for the ancient with the purpose of educating their contemporaries, explaining a difficult point, filling in gaps or presenting a deeper non-obvious meaning. Some of these commentaries, like those of Raghunatha apply a new framework on an older text. Another goal was to make the reader think well; they had a layered model of the world in which concepts worked at the smallest scale as well as at the highest levels with composite bodies. When expressing complex ideas warranted the creation of a new language, they did that as well to explain the logical forms of their philosophical claims.
According to Ganeri, these developments were possible because the philosophers lived on the fringe — they lived near intellectual centers like Navadipa and Varanasi— but were not too deeply involved in the affairs of the city. Another reason was the sponsorship they got from the Mughal Court to the Bengal Sultanate to various rich patrons. Though these philosophers lived during the time of Dara Shikoh and the Mughal empire with its strong Persian influence, that influence was not seen in the Sanskritic works.
Ganeri also acknowledges the difficulty in reconstructing the biographies of most of these philosophers and instead analyses the history of these ideas against the context of sastra andsampradaya. Fortunately we have sufficient information about the social, political and intellectual context in which Navya Nyaya flourished. This approach has helped him analyze not just the thinker, but also the so-called modernity that he brings in. This sampradaya based system was eventually scuttled by the British, who decided that such a system was irrelevant. According to Ganeri, another reason for putting an end to this system was because it provided a strong intellectual basis against colonialism.
As you read through the book, it even makes you wonder if the term — modernity — is the right one to describe these developments. This constant questioning and challenging the established was always part of Indian darshanas and not something unique to the 15th century. The Upanishads criticised the ritualism and ceremonialism in the Brahmanas while appreciating the philosophical concepts in the Mantras. Buddhism repudiated the concept of the individual self while Nyaya-Vaisheshika recognised the individual self to be the ultimate. According to Prof Hiriyanna, “we have all the different shades of philosophic theory repeated twice over in India, once in the six systems and again in Buddhism”. Which among these should one consider modern?

In the conclusion of the book Ganeri expresses shock that modern philosophy is taught in Europe without mentioning Indian philosophers. There is nothing to be shocked about this; most European or American courses don’t mention developments in Indian math or science either. For example, the Kerala mathematician Nilakanta, who was a contemporary of Raghunatha Shiromani, revised the Indian planetary model for the interior planets, Mercury and Venus and for this he formulated equations to find the center of the planets better than both Islamic and European traditions.
In their propensity to solve astronomical problems, mathematicians of the Kerala school developed concepts like Gregory’s series and the Leibniz’s series. Yuktibhasha, the text written by Jyesthadeva, contain proofs of the theorems and the derivations of the rules, making it a complete text of mathematical analysis and possibly the first calculus text. Thanks to the efforts of late Prof KV Sarma, Dr CK Raju, Dr MD Srinivas, Dr MS Sriram, Dr K Ramasubramanian and Dr George G Joseph, Indians and Western scholars are becoming more aware of the Indian contributions to Mathematics and understanding how those ideas spread to the West. Similarly, Ganeri’s book besides giving a great introduction to the Navya Nyaya school and the social and political atmosphere in which it flourished, documents the vibrant philosophical culture that encouraged ‘modernity’ even before the Western influence came in.
(This was originally published in Pragati)

In Pragati: Evidence for the continuity between Harappan Signs and Brahmi letters

(Original published link)
Instead of a complete termination of one civilisation and the beginning of a radically new one, there was a period of both continuity and change.

One of the most puzzling unsolved mysteries of the ancient world is the writing system of the Indus-Saraswati civilisation.Though there are over 4200 inscriptions, on seals, tablets and pottery, the writing has not been decoded. One of the problems is that the writing is too short mostly being four or five symbols long. The decipherment is also hard because the Indus writing falls into the most difficult category in the relation between script and language. While the easiest one is where the script and language are known, like English written using Roman alphabets, the most difficult one is where the script and language are unknown; the Indus writing falls into this category.
Now a 30 cm tall varaha found under the foundation of a home in Haryana is now providing an interesting clue into the later usage of the Indus-Saraswati script. This 2 kg, copper figure went on display for the first time in Brussels last year and will be exhibited at the National Museum in Delhi from March 6th for two months. According to the description which appeared in The Art Newspaper, “The figure has a cast relief on its chest of a unicorn-like animal, similar to motifs found on seals of the Harappa culture, which thrived until around 1900 BC.” But the most interesting part is the inscription above this creature; according to the curator Naman Ahuja the inscription represents “a combination of Harappan signs and Brahmi letters”, suggesting that it comes from “a period of overlap between the two cultures.” The inscription reads “King/Ki Ma Jhi [name of king]/ Sha Da Ya[form of god]” and according to the curator, “looks unmistakably like the Hindu god Varaha”. The Uttar Pradesh archaeological department has accepted this as an antique piece and dates it to the second to the first millennium BCE.

Before going into the relation between Harappan signs and Brahmi letters, we need to pay attention to the unicon like figure on the varaha. In his book, The Wishing Tree: Presence and Promise of India, Subhash Kak writes about the importance of the unicorn in Sanskritic texts. The Puranas referred to Vishnu and Shiva as ekashringa or the one-horned-one. The Mahabharata describes the varaha as triple humped, as shown in the Harappan iconography. In some seals, the unicorn is shown with the horn coming from the side as mentioned in Sanskrit texts.
Michel Danino too writes about the unicorn, which has been found in three quarters of the seals found in the Indus region, in The Lost River: On the trail of the Sarasvati. For Danino, the clues come from the Rig Veda. The Harappans added horns for not just the unicorn, but for tigers, serpents and various composite animals; the Vedic deities too have horns, sometimes even as high as four. The horn is prevalent all over the text: in describing how Indra destroyed the enemy’s den, to describe Soma, or while mentioning how the sun god spreads truth. Danino concludes that it cannot be proved that the carefully executed unicorn stood for Indra, but the affinity with Vedic concepts calls for attention.
Now to the writing. India’s first script which we can read is written in Brahmi; Asokan inscriptions were written in Brahmi and so was early Tamil. Many of the Asian scripts such as Burmese, Tibetan, Cham, Malayan, Javanese, Sumatran and the Tagalog were all derived from Brahmi. Even the so called Arab numerals, which are actually Indic numerals are derived from Brahmi. That said, there are different theories regarding the origins of Brahmi. One theory suggests that it was derived from an earlier Indian script while the other suggests it was derived from Phoenician or South Semitic scripts.

(A fragment of an inscription in the Asokan Brahmi script. The inscription records Asoka’s Sixth Edict dating to 238 BCE.)

Indologist and scientist Subhash Kak wondered if there was a relation between Brahmi which has 48 letters and Indus script which has more than 300 signs and what he discovered was absolutely stunning. In his paper, On the decipherment of the Indus script – a preliminary study of its connection with Brahmi, he noted that letters of Brahmi could be combined to produce modified symbols and tabulating all the common modifications, he found they totalled between 200 and 300. He also identified the primary characters of the Indus script — ones which account for more than 80 percent of the signs — and they totalled 39 which is close to the letters in Brahmi. Also just looking at the Brahmi characters, he was able to identify many characters in Indus symbols which visually look similar. With this insight and by assigning sounds to those characters, Kak was able to read the names of Vedic deities into some texts. His work did not conclusively prove that Brahmi and Indus are related, but showed that the probability was high.
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In Pragati: Where is the Indo-European homeland these days?

(This article was originally published in Pragati)

The discovery of the relation between Sanskrit and European languages by Sir William Jones resulted not only in the birth of comparative philology, but it also initiated the search for the Indo-European homeland. There was no consensus on homeland location. In The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate, Edwin Bryant writes, “The Indo-European homeland has been located and relocated everywhere from the North Pole to South Pole, to China. It has been placed in South India, Central India, North India, Tibet, Bactria, Iran, the Aral Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea, Lithuania, the Caucasus, the Urals, the Volga Mountains, South Rusia, the steppes of Central Asia, Asia Minor, Anatolia, Scandinavia, Finland, Sweden, the Baltic, western Europe, northern Europe, central Europe and eastern Europe.”

During the time of William Jones, scholarship was focussed on reconciling Indian history with theBible. In 1790, Jones reaffirmed the “sanctity of the venerable books (of Genesis)” and put the origins of Indian empire within the safe confines of Bishop Usher’s creation date of 4004 BCE. Under Max Muller, who claimed that Genesis was historical, the biblical heritage survived with the narrative that superior civilisations of Europe, Persia and India had one language family. Though India was initially considered as the homeland, by the 19th century that was no longer the case. Bryant writes, “The Indomania of the early British Orientalists did not die of natural causes; it was killed off and replaced by an Indophobia initiated by Evangelism and Utilitarianism epitomised by Charles Grant and James Mill respectively.”

The 19th century was also a period of racial science and it was encouraged by Orientalists in Madras who discovered that South Indian languages were not derived from Sanskrit. Following this discovery, Vedic texts were interpreted to read that white-skinned Aryans subdued dark-skinned and snub-nosed dasas. The similarity of Indo-European languages along with such heroic conquests led the search for the mysterious homeland from where these aristocrats set forth. With this the British could explain their presence in India as yet another wave of Aryan invasion, similar to the many waves that happened before. Once scholars started searching for the homeland, it turned out that you could throw a dart at a world map and there was a theory of origin from that place.

As of 2013, there are three homeland theories that are prominent. The first one — the Anatolian-Neolithic — proposes that Indo-European originated in Anatolia and spread through Europe along with the spread of farming. The spread of the language towards India was explained using two models. The first one proposed that the language spread eastward from Anatolia to India and the second one suggested that it was a later southward migration from Central Asia that bought the language to India. After going back and forth between these two models, the present version argues that Indo-European spread symmetrically westward to Europe and eastward to India. The second theory suggests that the homeland was not in Anatolia, but to the south of the Caucasus. The spread of the language did not happen with the spread of farming, but at a much later date. This theory also posits a secondary homeland located north of the Black and Caspian seas. The third one suggests that the homeland was located between the Volga and Dnieper (The Pontic-Caspian) during 4500–3000 BCE.

In a 2013 paper titled Twenty-first century clouds over Indo-European homelands, J P Mallory used the common notion that Anatolian was one of the first languages to split away in the proto-Indo-European framework to evaluate the three homeland theories. In the Pontic-Caspian model, the ancestors of Anatolians leave the region north of the Black Sea and move to Anatolia. Indo-European develops later in the Pontic-Caspian region and the speakers disperse both east and west in the Bronze age. The Near Eastern model presents crazy travel plans. First the Anatolians move out of Anatolia into the Balkans and Indo-European develops in that space. Before the Anatolians move back to their homeland, the Indo-Europeans move out requiring carefully choreographed movements of peoples. In the Anatolian Neolithic model, the Anatolians do not travel back and forth to the Balkans, but stay put. Instead the Indo-Europeans disperse around the world.

For each of the homeland theories and their paths of dispersal there are sufficient counter arguments that make it untenable or look ridiculous. To give an example, a theory presented in 2012, required two linguistic groups, and separated geographically for 2500 years to have similar linguistic changes. Mallroy writes, “the statisticians who devised this model seem to require some form of mutual contact at a distance, one of the stranger aspects of quantum theory that Einstein once dismissed as Spukhaftige Fernwirkung (“spooky action at a distance”) ”

A second problem with all these migration theories is this: If agriculture was the source of language expansion, did the region from Anatolia to the Indus speak the same language at some point? Very often historians tell us that the invading/migrating Aryans changed the linguistic landscape of North-West India. If the agricultural spread theory is true, then it was not just the Indus languages that were changed. In the 2500 km distance from Anatolia to the farming community of Mehrgarh in Balochistan, there were four other non-Indo-European speaking regions (Hurrian, Semitic, Sumerian and Elamite) and the migration model requires major language shift in all these areas. Mallroy writes, “In any event, all three models require some form of major language shift despite there being no credible archaeological evidence to demonstrate, through elite dominance or any other mechanism, the type of language shift required to explain, for example, the arrival and dominance of the Indo-Aryans in India.”

One possibility is that the language did not spread through invasion or the current favourite — migration — or due to elite dominance, but due to demic diffusion. Peter Bellwood looked at the farming hypothesis and coupled it with new archaeological discoveries in the Gangetic plains, and proposed last year that Indo-European speakers arrived in North-West two millenia earlier than expected. This gave possibility to the development of Vedic language in the region and not in Central Asia. It also provided the ability for the language to spread slowly rather than suddenly. Later in his life Max Müller questioned the concept of a single Proto-Indo-European language. Martin Lewis, a historical geographer at Stanford University, writes, “He [ Müller] further contended that speakers of these dialects might have spread their tongues not by way of massive invasions but rather through the gradual infiltration of relatively small numbers of people out of their Asian homeland.”

To paraphrase an Indo-European scholar, the right question to ask these days is not where the Indo-European homeland is, but rather, where do they put it now? Since Indian history has been deeply tied to the movement of Indo-European people, it is important to understand the debate that is going on. If one has to be cynical of the whole enterprise, it has to come from an understanding of the complexity and not through a simplistic denial of the theory. In her book History of Ancient and Early Medeival India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century Upinder Singh wrote that most historians have
abandoned the idea of an Aryan invasion for a ‘several waves of migration’ theory. Though no one knows where they came from or which path they followed, Indian history is still firmly rooted in these external origins.

The problems with two centuries of linguistics do not end with diverse homelands or inconclusive paths of migration. There are fundamental issues on what languages belong to the Indo-European tree. Where does Graeco-Armenian or Italo-Celtic belong? Is Tokharian an orphan or should it be associated with the German branch? A debate which is going on this year is if Basque, the ancestral language spoken by people living in the region spanning northeastern Spain and southwestern France, is an Indo-European language or not. These doubts, (See An earlier date for Indo-Europeans in Northwest India) which exist in Indo-European linguistics, is absent in Indian history narratives. There is not an iota of scepticism and a simplistic model still seems to be the norm.

In Pragati: Book Review of Riddle of the Labyrinth by Margalit Fox

Margalit Fox reveals the life and struggles of the people behind the decipherment of Linear B, an unknown language in an unknown script, similar to Indus-Saraswati writing.
One of the most puzzling unsolved mysteries of the ancient world is the writing system of the Indus-Saraswati civilisation. There are over 4200 inscriptions, on seals, on tablets and on pottery; of the 400 signs, only 200 have been used more than five times. Decoding this writing would not only reveal details of life during that period, but also put an end to various debates over the identity of the residents of the Indus region. There has been no dearth of decipherments: many have read proto-Dravidian into the script and others Sanskrit. In The Lost River, Michel Danino writes that the only safe statement that can be made is that the seals played an important part in trade and permitted the identification of either traders or their goods.

A sample of Linear B script
Decipherment of Indus writing is hard because it falls into the most difficult category in the relation between script and language. The easiest one is where a known language is written in a known script, like English written using Roman alphabets. A difficult case is where a known language is written in an unknown script like when Rongorongo is used to write Rapa Nui. Equally difficult is the case where a known script is used to write an unknown language like when Greek alphabets are used to write Etruscan. The most difficult one is when the language and script are unknown and there is no help for the decipherer. The Indus writing falls into this category.
Linear B, the writing found on the island of Crete, belonged to this category as well but was decoded half a century after it was discovered. The writing was used by Minoans who flourished during the Bronze age following the decline of the Indus-Saraswati civilisation. Found by an English digger named Arthur Evans, it was named Linear Script Class B. The decipherment story of Linear B might have turned into a dry academic discussion on the difference between proto-writing and writing or on if it was a memory aid for rituals or just meaningless visual art, but Margalit Fox makes it a fascinating tale as the decipherment is tied to the life of three unusual people: a glorified English tomb robber, a largely forgotten American classicist and a gifted English architect; it is the human element that adds depth to the mystery.
The three decipherers
The challenges that faced the decipherers looked insurmountable. When Evans found the tablets in 1900, there were no computers that could detect patterns or do statistical analysis. It looked as if we would never find out if the tablets would reveal a Western epic like the Iliad or just bland accounting records. Though there were no external clues from a Rosetta Stone, some information could be gleaned from the tablets. Evans, for example, figured out the direction of writing and the word breaks because they were separated by tick marks. He also figured out the numerical system used by the Cretan scribes. Some tablets, which had arrow signs on them, were found near a chest filled with arrows; the context gave an idea of what those tablets represented. Some of the tablets were found in the palace complex in boxes with pictograms representing the contents
Nothing beyond this was known when Alice Kober started work on the script in the United States of America. She was an assistant professor of classics at Brooklyn College, who taught introductory Latin and Classics during the day and worked on deciphering the secrets of the Cretans by night. In preparation for the work, Kober learned many fields such as archaeology, linguistics, statistics. Since she was not sure about the language of the Linear B writing, she spent fifteen years studying languages from Chinese to Akkadian to Sanskrit. Without seeing the tablets and by looking the two hundred inscriptions that were available, she worked on them methodically and came close to solving the mystery. Not much credit was given to her in other books about Linear B decipherment and the book tries to correct that by detailing her contributions.
She solved many mysteries, which Arthur Evans or other scholars could not solve; this included figuring out which signs depicted male and female animals as well the sign for boy and girl. A major breakthrough for Kober was the discovery that Linear B was inflected, which meant that they depended on word endings like adding -ed to denote past tense and -s to indicate plural. With this discovery, she was able to eliminate many languages, which don’t use inflection and focus on languages, which did. She was also able to figure out what was known as a bridging character, which enabled her to figure out the relative relationship between the characters in the script.
The last person mentioned in the book is the one who finally deciphered it. Michael Ventris, is a person who would have been dismissed by modern scholars as a quack for he was not a linguist or a classicist or a scholar in any other field of humanities; he worked as an architect. Like Kober, he too was obsessed with Linear B, even publishing a paper when he was 19. Unlike Kober, Ventris had access to larger number of Linear B symbols. As he sorted the characters based on their frequency and position, he found certain characters appeared at the beginning of the words.
He made one major intuitive leap, which Alice Kober failed to do, and with that he was able to solve the mystery. There were codes, which differed only in the last character and they were found only in Knossos which meant that those characters represented the name of the place. Now it was time to figure out what the words actually meant. Since Kober had figured out that it was an inflected language, he discarded Etruscan and considered other options like Greek. According to the wisdom at that time, Greek speakers arrived much later and so this would have been unacceptable. Ventris, then performed a second leap. During the Iron Age, a writing system called the Cypriot script existed. While the language remained a mystery, the sounds of the symbols were known as the script was used to write Greek following the Hellenization of Cyprus. As those sound values were substituted, the words began to make sense. By the time he was 30, he had solved Linear B.
Lessons for the Indus Decipherers

Ten Indus glyphs discovered near the northern gate of Dholavira
The people who worked on the decipherment faced great challenges, but they had some qualities that helped them makes progress. They were intelligent, had great memory and were single mindedly focussed on the issue. Margalit Fox explains in detail the tremendous skills that are required to find success in an impossible task like decoding an unknown script of an unknown language. You need rigour of the mind, ferocity of determination, a deliberate way of working, along with a flair for languages. When you are stuck with such a problem, where no external help is available and the problem looks unsolvable, you have to look closely for sometimes the clues lie in the puzzle itself revealing itself to the careful observer.
There is a certain orthodoxy in the Indus politics, which prevents scholars from considering that an Indo-European language was spoken in the region. Solely based on linguistics, it has been argued that Indo-European speakers arrived in North-West India following the decline of the Indus civilisation and hence the language should not even be considered as a possibility. Thus most decipherments argue that the language spoken in Indus Valley was non Indo-Aryan. Similarly, for decoding Linear B, there was intense speculation on the language of the tablets, but Greek was ruled out because Greek speakers were known to have arrived later. Evans thought that the Minoan culture was different from the later Greek culture and there was no relation between the two. Alice Kober refused to play that game, refused to give sound values to the characters, and firmly said that the script had to be analysed based on the internal evidence devoid of the decipherer’s prejudice. She was highly against starting with a preconceived idea and then trying to prove it.
Now even in Indus studies the data is pointing to interesting possibilities. A 2012 paper by Peter Bellwood, Professor of Archaeology at the School of Archaeology and Anthropology of the Australian National University suggests that Indo-European speakers may have been present in Northwest India much earlier, maybe even two millennia earlier than previously assumed. According to Bellwood, the urban Harappan civilisation had a large number of Indo-European speakers alongside the speakers of other languages which may have included Dravidian.
In a 2010 paper, Professor Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, who has been excavating at Harappa for three decades wrote that even though the Indus script has not been deciphered, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic, Sino-Tibetan and Indo-Aryan co-existed in the region. Paul Heggarty, a linguist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in a 2013 paper writes that Indo-European speakers may have reached Mehrgarh much earlier than 4000 BCE. With such information, there is a need to break away from the orthodoxy. (See “An earlier date for Indo-Europeans in Northwest India”)
Maybe there is a scholar or an amateur who is as meticulous as Kober or as gifted as Ventris to whom the secrets of the Indus would be revealed, but the decipherment of Indus script is hard because of the brevity of the seals; the average is five symbols. To figure out anything from seals averaging just five signs is an impossible task. Another possibility that could help is the existence of a bilingual inscription in one of the regions with which the Indus people traded. For example, there existed an Indus colony in ancient Mesopotamia. This village was located in an area called Lagash in southwestern Mesopotamia which had cities like Girsu, Nina, and a port city and area called Guabba. Scholars also found a reference to a personal seal of a Meluhhan (assumed to be a person from the Indus region) translator — Shu-ilishu — who lived in Mesopotamia.
Thus 4000 years back, there was a man in Mesopotamia who could speak Meluhhan as well as Sumerian or Akkadian. He could read those Indus tablets. This is not surprising since the Meluhhan merchants would have handled the imports from Meluhha and exported Mesopotamian goods to their homeland. Since the translator worked with Meluhhans and Mesopotamians, he would need to speak multiple languages. This also suggests that there could exist a bi-lingual tablet somewhere in the region where Shu-ilishu lived. If such a tablet is found, it could be the Rosetta stone which would solve a 134 year old mystery forever.
Finally when it was decoded, the Linear B tablets did not reveal an epic like the Iliad or the Odyssey; they found a record of crops, goods, animals and gifts offered to gods. They revealed the working of the society, about the status of various holdings, and about the personnel who worked there. They revealed their food habits, religious habits and how they spent their time. It revealed the pyramidal structure of the Minoan society with elites at the top, craftsmen and herdsmen below them and slaves at the bottom. The tablets were predominantly economic and was concerned with keeping track of the goods produced and exchanged.