Father Tongue, Motherland

Title: Father Tongue, Motherland – The Birth of Language in South Asia
Author: Peggy Mohan
Publisher: Allen Lane, 2025 (First)
ISBN: 9780670099740
Pages: 361

There is a famous truism called the ‘Law of the Instrument’ which says: “When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”. Though unfortunate for the author, this book is a shining validation of the unedifying principle in that ‘law’. The author is a person of Indian origin residing in Trinidad and is an expert on the mixed or creole languages spoken in those islands. She very clearly understands how these languages originated and developed through the murky episodes of plantation slavery. However, she falls into the trap of believing that the same mechanism was repeated everywhere else in the world and churns out high-sounding theories on how the modern Indian languages came into being from a local substratum that mixed with Sanskrit of the elite newcomers. Essentially, she uses Trinidadian creole English as a compass to hold on to for the journey into language evolution in the Indian subcontinent. Needless to say, she tries miserably to clothe her outlandish concepts in the straitjacket of social dynamics among Trinidadian slave colonies. In the meanwhile, several prejudices of the author also tumble out of the closet. Peggy Mohan was born in Trinidad and studied linguistics at the University of the West Indies. She has taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Ashoka University and Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.

Mohan assumes without any rational justification that what happened in the Caribbean, associated with slave labour from Africa, occurred in India too. This posits an all-male migration of settlers arriving one fine morning from the land to the north without their womenfolk and going on to have children from local women creating a bilingual generation that knew both its mother tongue and Sanskrit. This produced a number of intermediate languages called prakrit which remained in vogue till the twelfth century when Muslim invaders occupied India. The author claims that the Muslim occupation did well for the underlying languages when it suppressed Sanskrit and its associated prakrit varieties. This led to the development of modern languages. Mohan tries to establish two points here – that the modern Indian languages are totally delinked with Sanskrit in the initial stages and that the Muslim sultans deserve the credit for the growth of modern languages in India. The basic presumption is that the north Indian languages have words drawn from local prakrits, but their grammar had a number of features that are derived from older languages of the area.

Theories of Dravidian origin of the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) flourished in India till DNA analysis came in vogue which convincingly ruled out any sudden variations in genetic material in the entire subcontinent, including Pakistan. A Dravidian language called Brahui is still spoken in Baluchistan while a language called Burushaski is spoken in an isolated outcrop of Swat region. The author accepts that the speakers of these languages are not genetically different from their neighbours (p.113). But she again claims that it always made sense that the route used by the early Dravidians into the subcontinent should run from the Northwest to South India via the Indus valley (p.90). Again, this attests to her fallacious intuition that the Dravidians are a human race and IVC was their creation. Both these wrong concepts are long discarded by the academic community. Ignoring the glaring inconsistencies in her argument, she proceeds to test her creole model on India. All-male migrants arrive in a new land and marry local women. Their children and some elite local men pick up a close approximation of the migrants’ language with essentially no change in the grammar. Later on, other local people join the community and soon a version of the language develops with a number of grammatical features from the local languages. Grammar comes from local, but vocabulary is from the migrants. This is the significance of the book’s title, Father tongue, motherland. At this point, she presents another inconsistency in her theory that the IVC was Dravidian. A grammatical feature called ergativity is strongly seen in the Northwest where IVC once flourished. This is conspicuously absent in all Dravidian languages in the South and Magadhan languages to the East, including Sanskrit and all Aryan languages.

A major weakness in the book’s research is the highly subjective nature of the references and the casual way of obtaining information that does not stand up to the minimum rigour expected from a serious academic treatise. Some of the author’s observations are self-delusional and outright misleading. She discusses Brahui and Burushaski languages in the guise of an expert, but her only source of info regarding the latter is a Japanese ‘expert’ who himself did not have much grounding in that language. One of his replies was that he doesn’t ‘think’ that there were compound verbs in Burushaski. Such is the level of understanding among the sources! She further claims that a lady software developer from Bengaluru has deciphered the Indus Valley script which she claims to be notes concerned with currency and the sort of license documents that allowed them to practice their trade. It is not literature at all (p.100). She in fact likens it to a QR code. Another mistaken comment is that the old IVC did not have a sense of social hierarchy (p.143). The findings of archaeologists suggest a contrary picture in the presence of citadels in many Indus sites such as Harappa, Mohenjo-daro and Dholavira. Apart from wishful thinking, isn’t it naïve on the part of a scholar to assume a civilization which existed several millennia ago that did not have social hierarchies? Another erroneous inference – either accidental or deliberate because of the author’s association with the Jamia Milia Islamia – is that the Islamic occupation of India was some sort of a blessing in developing the modern languages by destroying Sanskrit influence and Islam offered a path to equality to the country’s downtrodden masses. Both are maliciously crafted perfidies. Forced conversions were the norm during Islamic expansion in South India, but the author asserts that lower castes were attracted to Islam because of the equality it offered through the teachings of Sufis (p.47). She seems to have no sense of what was going on in India. This observation was made regarding the appearance of a mixed elite in Hyderabad in which the lower castes in fact did not find entry.

The author then attempts to make a guess on the basic features of a primitive language X which was spoken at IVC sites when the supposed Aryan invasion took place and which was the prototype that mixed with Sanskrit. She compiles thirteen features of the hypothetical language, compares these to Tamil and appears surprised to find that Tamil matches them. Again, this is just another vent to her overheated fantasy that IVC was Dravidian. Then she emits the offensive and unsubstantiated observation that ‘Punjabi, Tamil, Burushaski, Bhojpuri and Brahui, together with Language X look like one big extended family and Sanskrit the foreign guest who came to stay’ (p.150). Read that sentence again and note with consternation the lethal venom this Trinidadian scholar conceals in it. She goes on further to claim that Language X would sound like a hypothetical Punjabi song with Tamil words. Between the tenth and twelfth centuries CE, Prakrit languages were replaced and our modern languages are claimed to begin appearing in the documents. Never for a moment she considers the rather plausible alternative of the prakrits metamorphosing to the modern languages. Sultanates are said to be the reason for giving space to local languages in place of Sanskrit and related prakrits. However, this is just another hallucination as there were no sultanates that spread across the whole of India in the tenth to twelfth centuries. The author’s conclusions are often shocking because of their glaring disconnect from objective truth. One of her references clearly state that the Turks destroyed the Buddhist Pala kingdom in Bengal and the religion declined. But she demurs and asserts instead that Brahmanism assimilated the people and Brahmins imposed taxes in the kingdom at Malda (p.203). She then turns the screw a bit tighter and claims that the ‘Sufis arrived in Bengal well in advance of the new rulers (Muslim sultans) and encountered a restive population of Buddhists, unhappy with Brahmins and orthodox Hinduism and ready to turn to Muslims for protection’.

Peggy Mohan’s idea of India’s pre-history is childishly simple which can be summarized as follows - 65,000 years ago, people speaking Munda languages left Africa and settled in India. About 9,000 years ago, there was a migration of farmers from Zagros mountains in Iran and they interbred with Mundas, creating a hybrid race called Dravidians. Around 4,000 years ago, a large number of Austro-Asiatic men reached Gangetic plains and introduced a hybrid variety of rice that enhanced productivity of cultivation and population levels. Then came Vedic men with Sanskrit. The ridiculousness of this argument is on what happened next. After all these encounters, the Mundas promptly retreated into forests and became tribal!

What is remarkable throughout the narrative is the author’s inveterate hatred towards Sanskrit and Hinduism though she cleverly vails it in attacks against ‘Brahmanism’. The fundamental premise of the book that only males form migratory bands does not hold water and the entire logical edifice is built up on this shaky ground. Her example of gazelle herds in Masai Mara in support of this ridiculous proposition is made all the more comic by the fact that she found this idea about gazelles during one of her pleasure trips to that place, probably from a tour guide. Fact and truth are at a discount in the entire text and hearsay and opinion of dubious academics are assigned utmost credibility. An email from a correspondent is enough to convince the author to declare some preposterous idea as gospel truth. Her conjectures are marked by their weirdness and naivety. She once remarks that ‘perhaps Brahmin men had begun to secretly dislike the verb conjugations in early Sanskrit’ (p.81. This is the only reason she can think of regarding the disappearance of this feature in Sanskrit!

This book lacks sincere research and is a pure waste of time. Hence it is not recommended to any class of readers.

Rating: 1 Star

The Stone Tower

Title: The Stone Tower – Ptolemy, the Silk Road and a 2000-year old Riddle
Author: Riaz Dean
Publisher: Penguin Viking, 2022 (First)
ISBN: 9780670093625
Pages: 225

Rome flourished in the first century BCE by establishing colonies and client-states all over the Mediterranean littoral which pushed up trade like never before. They consumed spices and silk from Asia and supplied gold in exchange for them as they did not possess the items which the Asians would accept in lieu of their produce. A network of trading routes and caravanserais developed in central Asia as a conduit for the flow of trade from China and India to Rome and Egypt. This network was later christened the Silk Road and proved to be a unifier of the east with the west. It was not only trade that was carried along the road. Religion, culture, language, script, sculpture and technology changed hands. This road was thus instrumental in coining the destiny of all modern Asian societies, particularly China. This book is an attempt to solve a 2000-year old question of ancient geography about a stone tower at the exact middle of the Silk Road. Riaz Dean is an independent scholar and author. This book is the result of a solo journey the author made retracing the old Silk Road.

The term ‘Silk Road’ was coined only in 1877 by the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen. This was only an academic exercise as the actual route was copiously mentioned by ancient and early-medieval historians. A first century CE treatise called ‘Geographia’ by Claudius Ptolemy listed thousands of places along the Silk Road. It was he who first suggested the presence of a feature called ‘Stone Tower’ on the exact middle of the road. This was a special place high up in the mountains situated on the doorway to China’s western extremity called the ‘Roof of the World’. The book is split into three parts, the first of which explains the birth of the Silk Road, the second covers key events in history that determined the tower’s establishment at the halfway mark and the third pinpoints where the tower was actually located. The author narrates Chinese history of the second century BCE to explain how the trade route was established in the first place. Zhang Qian, a commander of the palace guards of Han empire led several missions to the west in an effort to find an ally against the hostile Xiongnu barbarians. Following Qian’s epic first mission, the Han began sending out more envoys to engage with newly found nations to the west. Other than goods to trade, they took expensive gifts for the nobles and their courts, an armed escort for protection, servants and ample supplies. For these long and arduous journeys, they needed caravans and the trade route came into being.

An overland route presents problems of its own, in the form of border protocols, brigandage and vagaries of extreme geography such as steep snow-clad hills and inhospitable deserts along the way. Naturally, the maritime spice route offered a better alternative for the movement of goods although the distances by sea were greater between the east and the west, particularly during times when the Silk Road became too dangerous. The rivalry between Rome and Parthia did not make the situation any better. The Romans controlled the maritime routes but the Parthians would not let them deal directly with the Chinese using overland routes. Rome then tried to bypass trade out of Parthia which levied heavy taxes for protection. This rivalry soon developed into full-fledged warfare that led to the doom of both the empires. Initially, silk was very costly, effectively worth its weight in gold. Even the very wealthy could not afford it, who sewed small patches of it on their clothing. Production of silk was a jealously guarded secret in China. On pain of death, no person was permitted to remove its eggs or cocoons; foreigners were not allowed near nurseries and guards searched merchants leaving China. However, paper was the most important item traded from the east, considering its impact on the transfer of knowledge through the printed word. Other forms of agriculture and technology, like cultivation of grapes, wine making and manufacture of coloured glassware travelled from west to east. Buddhism also spread along this route from India. This book describes Aurel Stein’s explorations in Xinjiang and central Asia which contributed greatly to archaeological and literary corpus of the ancient world. However, his appropriation of literary manuscripts by bribing Chinese monks was controversial.

The author’s quest for the Stone Tower fails to enthuse the reader on multiple counts. One reason is the uncertainty on the nature of the landmark. Ptolemy does not say whether the Stone Tower was a settlement, natural feature or a manmade structure. The inexactness in the suggested Ptolemaic coordinates signifies an area of 30,000 sq.km in which the Stone Tower could be found. Aurel Stein explored the regions in search of it in the first quarter of the twentieth century based on these coordinates and warned about the unreliable character of the information. Stein identified a settlement at Daraut-Kurghan in southern Kyrgyzstan as the location of the Stone Tower, because the Perso-Turkish name roughly translated to ‘a tower at the gorge’. Along with this, Dean also suggests three plausible locations – Tashkurgan in Xinjiang, Tashkent in Uzbekistan and Osh in Kyrgyzstan. Out of these four, the author selects a sacred mountain near Osh called Suleiman-Too as the Stone Tower. Unfortunately, the entire episode fails to excite the readers.

This book is an excellent source of Chinese and central Asian history and ethnic movements in the three centuries starting from 150 BCE. It describes the unsettling periods in which the Xiongnu tribes made repeated onslaughts on the Han empire which has some parallels to the ravages Roman empire encountered about half a millennium later. It also truthfully captures the domino effect created by fleeing nomadic tribes in displacing more units on their run to safety. The Xiongnu displaced the Yuezhi, who upturned the Sakas who in turn rode into India and disturbed the political balance. The book also neatly summarizes the commercial, literary and cultural interchanges across different societies along the Silk Road. The Taklamakan desert harbours many secrets of the ancient trade and its unnaturally arid climate preserves the artefacts with surprisingly little damage. A well-funded archaeological mission backed by technology is sure to unlock many treasures from the dry sands of Taklamakan. Apart from these, the actual quest to find the Stone Tower appears to be ‘much ado about nothing’. At least, Dean is not much successful in convincing the readers about the absolute necessity of the perilous adventures he undertook in central Asia looking for the tower. The book is effectively a sequel to the author’s earlier book, ‘Mapping the Great Game’ (reviewed earlier here). The book includes many photographs which would have been breath-taking had they been in colour instead of monochrome.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Ashoka – Portrait of a Philosopher King

Title: Ashoka – Portrait of a Philosopher King
Author: Patrick Olivelle
Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2023 (First)
ISBN: 9789356993228
Pages: 356

This book is the first in a series called ‘Indian Lives’ which will be a collection of prominent personalities which will illuminate the rich, complex and contested history of the subcontinent. Ashoka stands out among all the kings and emperors of the world who held sway over the people over several millennia. He is made known to us by the edicts he carved in prominent rock faces and polished pillars spread out in his empire in which he exhorted his subjects to follow dharma meticulously and to lead a morally pure life following his example. Through these inscriptions, he offered religious freedom for all the diverse sects subject only to the contention that they respect other faiths which may differ from their ideology. This was a glowing model for later religions which was unthinkable in medieval Europe or even in modern Middle East where no opposition to the prevailing dogma would be encouraged. Also, Ashoka was the lone king in world history who was strong enough to say ‘I’m sorry’ and had had a distinctive moral philosophy which he sought to imbibe on his people. The Ashokan inscriptions containing 4614 words was the most studied piece of secular ancient Indian writing. This was tough work as the writing system did not separate words with blank spaces or punctuations. Patrick Olivelle is a Sri Lankan scholar who is currently professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of about thirty books on Indology and ancient Sanskrit literature.

Olivelle makes a short analysis of the salient points related to the country, its polity and Ashoka himself. The emperor used the name Piyadasi (Prakrit for priyadarshi, dear to behold) and the honorific Devanampiya (beloved of the gods) to refer to himself on the edicts; the name ‘Ashoka’ was first obtained from later Buddhist hagiographies, but the minor rock edicts in Nittur, Udegolam and Maski in Karnataka mentions the name ‘Ashoka’ (without sorrow) as well as ‘devanampiya’. The pillars on which later edicts were engraved were incredibly well polished. This superb quality of polish achieved for pillars and their capitals is intriguing because it was not repeated later. Ashoka intended the edicts only to preach morality is evident from the fact that one central aspect of the state that is hardly mentioned in Ashoka’s inscriptions is the economy. No mention is made even of revenue officers without whom taxes could not have been collected. Though a Sri Lankan, the author was educated and is working in western academia and appears more loyally inclined to western ideals than a native American or European. Without any corroborative evidence, the author credits Greek influence in moulding Ashoka’s administrative apparatus. He suggests familiarity to Greek customs and education brought on by the entourage of Greek princesses brought as wives of Ashoka’s father and grandfather Chandragupta Maurya as the reason for the expansive and Universalist vision of Ashoka’s moral philosophy.

The book makes an elucidation of the edicts and how it helped to promote literacy and fellow-feeling in the empire of Ashoka. Standardization of language (Ashokan Prakrit) and Brahmi script across most of the empire helped spread literacy across the country. Local dialects were spoken at various provinces and in the case of Karnataka, some form of Dravidian language was spoken, but the inscriptions were in Prakrit except in Afghanistan where Greek and Aramaic were also inscribed. The language, script and literacy gave a strong foundation to the new imagined community that he was trying to build in which he was the father and the people were children. Ashoka was more in contact with neighbours from the Northwest than from the South. He refers to his southern neighbours anonymously using ethnic or geographical names, but in the case of western Hellenistic regions, he refers to the kings by their exact names, suggesting better diplomatic contacts. The fourteen major rock edicts were located close to large towns at the borders of the empire, minor edicts are found at some distance from human habitations like hills or boulders, which were possibly pilgrimage sites. The pillar edicts are placed in the heartland of the empire. The author appears to be such a Hellenophile that whether it is the inscriptional techniques, construction of edict-bearing stone pillars or even the script itself, he credits the Greeks or Persians with it. For the pillars, he even suggests Egypt as a source only because Ashoka had sent a diplomatic mission to Alexandria. It seems like he does not want to ascribe originality of any kind to ancient India.

Ashoka extends great respect to all heterodox sects and to Brahmins in particular. In almost every rock edict, he exhorts others to honour them as a class. This flies in the face of left historians’ portrayal of Brahmins who were claimed to be working against the Buddhist system. Moreover, Ashoka is silent on the four-fold division (chaturvarna). He seems either not to have been aware of it or not to have thought it to be significant. The very term ‘varna’ or any of the names of the three varnas other than Brahmin are completely absent in Ashoka’s vocabulary. Even Brahmins are mentioned in the context of religious organisations and not as a social or demographic group. This contrasts with the author’s antipathy to Brahmins in his statement that ‘displacement of Brahmins from their privileged position within the social and political hierarchy was clearly one of the major consequences of Ashokan reforms’ (p.263). Further, Brahmins are always contrasted not to the other three varnas, but to wandering ascetics or Sramanas (p.57). This observation simply illustrates that the varna system was not internalized by the society. Olivelle suspects that the varna system was fabricated by later Brahmins and it was most likely aspirational and prescriptive, rather than descriptive. Non-Sanskrit inscriptions before the second century CE does not talk about varnas. The book also indicates a weakness of Ashokan dharma that might have contributed to its downfall after the patron’s demise. While Ashoka was downgrading the domestic religious rites, Brahminical texts like Apastamba’s dharmasutra and gruhyasutras which were penned at around this time were encouraging them. It served as an extension of Vedic ritual forms and Brahmin expertise into the realm of popular ceremonial that had previously lain beyond their purview. The book also includes a vitriolic attack by Buddhist monks made against Brahmins in the Anguttara Nikaya comparing them to dogs using filthy metaphors (p.242-3). Obviously, the antagonism existed on the Buddhist side too.

This book takes some effort to understand the personality of Ashoka from his inscriptions since we do not have any other source to do so. Ashoka was a penitent, but not a pacifist. We see traces of his veiled threat to use force in his message to the forest people within his territories. He never forsakes capital punishment but allowed only a reprieve of three days for the convict to reflect on his life and to give gifts as part of dharma. Ashoka never said he became a vegetarian. Pillar edict V states that ‘whereas hundreds of thousands of animals were slaughtered in the royal kitchen, now only three are killed per day’. Obviously, this will be for the king! But the author quotes a phrase ‘Saka parthiva’ of Sanskrit grammarian Patanjali and gives the meaning as ‘vegetarian king’ after slightly modifying it to ‘saka bhoji parthiva’, which is unintended in the original. However, this is absolutely stretching things a bit too far. Saka parthiva can also mean Saka king. In variance to accepted wisdom, Olivelle does not think Ashoka was an avid follower of Buddhism after the ‘initial years of conversion’. He argues that Buddhism was widespread in India even before Ashoka became a lay disciple and began vigorously supporting it. After the early years, his interest shifted to a personalized concept of dharma rather than Buddhist religion itself. He uses it as a non-sectarian religious and moral concept. Ashoka does not mention any of the central doctrinal tenets of Buddhism anywhere in his edicts. The other ideas of ahimsa and doing good to others are to be found in the repertoire of all religious sects. The author then analyses the concept of Ashokan dharma. The word ‘dharma’ was coined by Rig Vedic poets. There are no Indo-European cognates for this term in any language. Upanishads handle this only marginally. Ashoka was in no small measure responsible for dharma assuming the centrality it did in Indian history.

Olivelle does not stop to find whether Ashoka had turned puritan in his prescriptions and pronouncements on dharma. Traces of coercion in Ashoka’s methods to spread his moral philosophy are also to be doubted. Minor Rock Edict I states that before the time Ashoka turned a lay disciple, men in Jambudvipa were unmingled with gods and they were made to mingle with them by Ashoka’s striving (p.45). Within a few years of becoming an upasaka, Ashoka issues a reading list for Buddhist monks and nuns to practice dharma better. In the schism edict, he virtually threatens any monk or nun who causes dissension in the Sangha with banishment. He forbade popular festivals for the merrymaking it entailed and frowned upon even domestic ceremonies as trivial and frivolous.

Part 1 of the book examines Ashoka’s role as a ruler of the land, composer of the moral lessons and builder of the finely polished pillars. Parts 2 and 3 deal with Ashoka as a lay disciple of Buddhism and his maturing to a moral philosopher respectively and Part 4 examines his character as an ecumenist. The author is a scholar of Sanskrit beyond doubt, but readers occasionally have some discomfort on his interpretation of words used in the inscriptions. He possibly misinterprets ‘janapada’ in edicts as rural countryside (p.35) which can also mean a republic. In the section on Mauryan state, he deems ‘rajuka’ officers to be assigned to rural districts. It is debatable whether an ancient kingdom would have rural development in their radar. There can be a possible error in his interpretation of Ashoka’s Lumbini inscription in which he makes the village of Lumbini tax-free and ‘to have a one-eighth portion’. Quoting another author Harry Fawk, the author surmises that this refers to one-eighth portion of Buddha’s remains are to be interred there (p.111). But this may more likely to be a cess on some merchandise in a nearby trading post so as to form an income stream for the village. Having read the entire book, readers are mildly surprised that the author has never considered for a moment the possibility that the entire edicts might be a politician’s hyperbole on how the empire is, and should be, run? Quite plausibly, this can be the ancient equivalent of the grand manifestos put out by political parties during election time in India. The book compiles the essentials of Ashokan dharma which is condensed into: few evil acts, many good deeds, compassion, gift-giving, truthfulness and purity of heart. The emperor was also tolerant. He permitted all religious sects under the overarching title of Pashandas to reside anywhere they chose and to carry out their sermonizing with moderation. He also visited them without discrimination, offered gifts and paid homages.

This book includes a foreword by Ramachandra Guha, the general editor of the ‘Indian Lives’ series, but looks lacklustre considering it is the first step in a supposedly great journey. Olivelle also tries unsuccessfully to project modern social constructs to Ashokan rule. He believes that Ashoka wanted to create ‘a community of people to socially bind them together’ in his empire. This is said to be similar to the idea of civil religion proposed by Rousseau to create unification of communities that form a nation and suggests that Ashoka’s obsession with dharma was a manifestation of this urge. This exemplifies the conclusion that the author is not much aware of how an ancient pagan polity worked in practice. Olivelle’s comparison of Ashoka to the much later Mughal emperor Akbar and India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru as the reincarnations of Ashoka in their ecumenism (p.274) is simply outrageous as well as ridiculous. This assertion only proves that the author belongs to the clique of historians who enjoyed the run of the place in modern Indian historiography in the post-independence period.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 2 Star

The Golden Road

Title: The Golden Road – How Ancient India Transformed the World
Author: William Dalrymple
Publisher: Bloomsbury, 2024 (First)
ISBN: 9781408864418
Pages: 482

William Dalrymple has become an Indian writer by now, living near Delhi and almost all his books related to Indian themes and interests. Each of his books lays before us one as yet unseen tapestry of Indian life that is noted for the richness of its warps and wefts tied to a syncretistic culture and firmly rooted in the popular mind. This book presents a refreshing change from others in the author’s oeuvre. No fewer than eight books in that eminent collection were based on an Islamic setting or theme. ‘The City of Djinns’ which showcased life in Delhi could as well have been penned about Baghdad or Samarkand – so completely was the Hindu element filtered out of the narrative like a noise-cancelling earphone cuts out background noise. This book examines how ancient India transformed the world before the Islamic occupation began in the tenth century or so. It is heartening for Indian readers to witness the change in which that ‘noise’ is now transformed into the ‘signal’. It aims to highlight India’s often forgotten position as a crucial economic fulcrum and civilizational engine, at the heart of the ancient and early-medieval worlds and as one of the main motors of global trade and cultural transmission in early world history, fully on a par with and equal to China. A sphere of influence – called Indosphere by the author – was created in Asia where its religion, art, music, dance, textiles, technology, astronomy, math, medicine, mythology, language and literature reigned supreme. This coveted position was achieved not by conquest, but instead by sheer cultural allure and sophistication. That’s why Xuanzang, the Chinese scholar, traveller and translator in seventh century CE, remarked: “people of distant places and with diverse customs generally designate the land they most admire as India”. The book covers three stages of the spread of Indosphere – towards China in the form of Buddhist theology, towards Southeast Asia as commerce, architecture and theology and finally to the Middle East and then to Europe in the form of scientific and mathematical wisdom after Islam’s conquest of these regions.

Indian cultural radiance to China is marked by the accounts of Buddhist monks who came to India in search of unadulterated Buddhist texts written in Sanskrit, the sacred language of Mahayana Buddhism. By the first century BCE, great Buddhist monasteries were very wealthy. They worked and exported cotton and operated mines for mineral trade. They lent money at interest to merchant guilds to support themselves who in turn patronized the viharas like no other. As the paintings in Ajanta caves show, India was already a cosmopolitan and surprisingly urban society full of traders from all over the known world. Outside Europe and parts of the erstwhile Roman empire, India was the place where most Roman coins were unearthed. When Xuanzang entered India at Jalalabad, he remarked that he was entering a holy land, ‘the five Indias made up of more than seventy kingdoms’. But for all its political fragmentation, the idea of India as a single cultural, sacral and geographical unit was still clearly understood from the very earliest times (p.21). The author tells the story of Xuanzang’s sixteen-year trek to India which achieved its aim of transporting a treasure of valuable information on the liturgy of Buddhism which also earned the monk an exalted status at the Tang court. The alliance of him and Empress Wu Zetian transformed Buddhism into the Chinese state religion and having a great sway in the court. Never again would India have such influence at the heart of the Chinese world. Immediately on his footsteps came another monk Yijing in 671 CE. He notes that fifty Chinese monks were studying at Nalanda. Regular translation of authentic Sanskrit texts into Chinese was carried out at the prestigious university. A great maritime Buddhist empire of Srivijaya had prospered at this time in Sumatra based on naval contacts from the shores of Bengal.

Dalrymple notes a subtle shift in Indian maritime trade from Roman empire to Southeast Asia around the fifth century CE. He claims that instead of China, India was the greatest trading partner of Rome. Sea travel was the fastest, safest and most economical way to move people and goods in the pre-modern world. Land travel was risky due to brigandage and inhospitable terrain. The intervening Persian empire was often at war with the Romans, adding to the difficulty in caravan trade. He declares that the term ‘Silk Road’ was coined only in the nineteenth century and did not have such a great provenance in the ancient world as it is portrayed nowadays. This book envisages fervent interaction with Rome after the Battle of Actium in which it conquered Egypt and Cleopatra committed suicide. Many ports sprang up along Red Sea on the Egyptian coast. Roman painters and sculptors also sailed along with the traders and travelled to Kushan kingdoms in the northwest of India. This facilitated mixing of Roman artistic ideas with Indian themes. Dalrymple assigns the origin of Gandhara style sculpture to these Roman artists which is quite in variance to traditional consensus which credits the Bactrian Greeks – who were the descendants of Alexander’s entourage – for the creation of this splendid hybrid art culture. The switchover from West to East for trade probably began with the sacking of Rome and Persian trade blockade of Byzantium in the sixth century CE. Volumes dropped, profits plummeted and Indian traders refocussed to Southeast Asia. Islamic conquests in the seventh century further disrupted trade with Egypt for another two centuries.

While Buddhism was thriving in China, a harmonious blend of it along with Hinduism was finding the ground fertile in Southeast Asia. In the seventh century CE, under the rule of Mahendravarman Pallava and his son Narasimhavarman, trade with Southeast Asia and Suvarnabhumi (Indonesia) burgeoned. Works of the court poet and playwright Dandin began to be read throughout the Indosphere. Indian epics and books began to be read, copied and recited. Indian plays and dances were performed to Indian music. Reliefs of Ramayana and Mahabharata began to be carved on temple walls in Southeast Asia. Free mixing of Hinduism and Buddhism is a striking feature of the region from the fifth century CE (p.181). People learned Brahminical writings and revered the law of the Buddha. These two accommodated each other and often appeared coexisting with local belief systems. The new empire in Southeast Asia grew rich on the spice and gold trade and amassed the resources to develop Indic ideas more extravagantly than any of the relatively small kingdoms which then divided India between them. The vastly bigger architectural plans of Borobudur and Angkorwat attest to this. No Indian import had a deeper or more long-lasting impact than the deeds of the heroes of the Ramayana and Mahabharata. From the fifth century to today, these remain a major feature in the art and culture of Southeast Asia. In Khmer, Hinduism seems to be the favourite choice of the elite, while commoners continued with local deities and beliefs such as ancestor worship. When the kingdoms collapsed, the temples fell into disuse and eventually the jungle reclaimed the land. Was this the same fate of Buddhism in India, where some scholars say it was nothing more than an aristocratic curiosity until the very modern times? The author does not pose this question as well as the enigma of why Hinduism went totally off the board in Cambodia – modern Khmer.

In 2001, I was pleasantly surprised when I heard the name of the new Indonesian president – Megawati Sukarnoputri. I was flabbergasted a few moments later when I learned the name of Indonesia's national airline – Garuda! None of my earlier school textbooks had informed me of the strong ties which once existed between the two nations and the deep cultural bonds. Dalrymple provides the answer to this quirk with historiography in modern India. The Marxist orientation of most of the Indian historians until recently, led to a lack of interest in matters of religion and art, which meant there was little or no pushback from Indian academia against post-colonial Southeast Asian scholars negating Indian influence. Another myth spread by these same historians is the persecution of Buddhism by Hindu kings in India. The author also appears confused about ancient Buddhism as a monolithic cult in the modern sense. This is however contradicted by many facts which he describes at other places in the book. Durga was worshipped at Mes Aynak Buddhist monastery in Afghanistan. Relics of Hindu worship were also found alongside Buddhist remains in Berenike, Egypt. The three great scholars of Buddhism – Asanga, Vasubandhu and Kumarajiva – on whose shoulders once rested the entire theological underpinnings of Mahayana Buddhism, are recorded to be Brahmins. The Jataka tales also indicate that the varna order had some relevance to Buddhists also. Chinese texts of 400 CE talk about a thousand Indian Brahmins living at a small coastal court in the Malay peninsula to whom the locals gave their daughters in marriage (p. 203). Where was the much trumpeted taboo on overseas travel then? These cultured emigres carried with them their epics, literature, mythology, theology, and spiritual and yogic methods. Not only Brahmins, other castes also migrated to Southeast Asia. The author then points out that caste system as well as concepts on ritual purity made no impact on that society. He however assumes that these customs were part of Indian society of that period.

The book illustrates more instances of Hinduism and Buddhism peacefully coexisting side by side and sometimes even indistinguishably in India as well as those places where the Indic culture reached. In fact, it is debatable whether a practitioner of both religions was aware of the miniscule theological differences that separated them. The Kushan period proved to be a great melting pot to fuse civilizations and religions together, mainly Buddhism, Hinduism and Zoroastrianism. In this syncretic world of evolving divine pantheons, at a crossroads where different civilizations and deities merged, different people recognized and worshipped different gods in the same images. Kujula Kadphises, the Kushan king who patronized Buddhism and provided a conduit to its spread to central Asia also issued coins inscribing the earliest pictorial form of Shiva. In the Bimaran reliquary found near Peshawar, the primal figure of Buddha is flanked by the Hindu gods Indra and Brahma.

The author then turns to how Indian knowledge was disseminated first to Islamic world and from there to Europe. After the Muslim conquest of central Asia, the Barmakids of Balkh converted to Islam and rose to the position of hereditary viziers of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad. They encouraged the flow of Indian mathematical and astronomical theories. The place-value notation, usage of the numeral zero and computation of planetary positions assumed significance. This blossoming of Indian knowledge was brief, however, in the Abbasid capital. Jafar al-Barmak was treacherously beheaded by his childhood companion and caliph Harun al-Rashid (of the Arabian Nights fame), possibly to appropriate the Barmakids’ immense wealth and uprooted the entire family. After the fall of the Barmakids, Arab intellectuals focussed more on retrieving ancient Greek learning than on recovering that of India. The Umayyad caliphate was then flourishing in present-day Spain and Indian knowledge reached there through the medium of Arabic. When the Christian kingdoms reconquered this al-Andalus, the knowledge made its way into Christian Europe and kindled the scientific effervescence after the Renaissance. The medieval European universities were inspired by madrassas which in turn were influenced by Buddhist monasteries which typically had apartments and endowed scholarship for its students as well as a good library. The Indo-Arabic numerals – which are in common usage day – were slow at first to gain acceptance in conservative Europe. Its use was banned in Florence in 1299 as they were more easily altered than Roman numerals, for example, by changing 0 to 6 or 9.

The book then turns to address how the Indosphere collapsed in the medieval period with the rise of Islam. 664 CE was the year in which the Indosphere reached the peak of its influence. In that year, the Damascene Umayyad Arab army destroyed the resplendent Naw Bahar Buddhist vihara in Balkh. This monastery was much appreciated by Xuanzang just twenty years earlier on his journey! With the arrival of Persian-speaking elite seeking refuge following Chengiz Khan’s invasions, the court language in India was changed from Sanskrit to Persian. India’s descent into a centuries-long servitude and intellectual eclipse thus began. Also, the Mongols opened up a vast trade route from the Mediterranean to China by obliterating the intervening political boundaries. The marine routes of the Indosphere lost prominence by thirteenth century. The Muslim armies were fired by a ferocious religious bigotry as well, unlike all the earlier invaders of India. The book describes the sacking of the universities at Nalanda, Odantapura and Vikramashila in a carefully sanitised manner. Even then, it becomes evident that these eminent institutions of learning were decimated for no other reason than the religious zeal of the Muslim invaders. In some cases, the stones were carried off to the river and thrown into it as if to preclude any attempt to rebuild them.

A drawback of the book is the lack of an analysis on why the fabled Indosphere vanished from the daily lives of the people in Southeast Asia and China so suddenly. The author perhaps deliberately omits to point out the spread of Islam in the Malayan and Indonesian archipelagos which might have had a distinct role in its extinction. Or more crucially, he does not dwell on the possibility that the Hindu and Buddhist influence we see plainly in architecture and folk art did not filter down to the ordinary man in the street like Buddhism in ancient India. It might have remained an aristocratic fad while the common man cared little. This aspect requires further study. The text is an effortless read and very appealing as any of Dalrymple’s works. Several beautiful colour and monochrome plates of people, sculpture and temples are included in the book. Pictures of lesser known temples in Cambodia and Indonesia are unique for the richness of sculpture. Besides all these, the book is gratifying to read, with the claim on its flap that ‘India is the forgotten heart of the ancient world’. The book is mind-bogglingly well-researched, with 100 pages of Notes and 50 pages of bibliography. Even with the absence of an objective analysis of the role of Islam in destroying Indic culture and influence, this book is a must-read for all Indians and other enthusiasts of the Asian way of life.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 5 Star

The Buddhist Landscape of Varanasi

Title: The Buddhist Landscape of Varanasi
Author: Vidula Jayaswal
Publisher: Aryan Books International, 2015 (First)
ISBN: 9788173055416
Pages: 220

Varanasi is not just the holy city of Hindus. Buddhism also locates some of its holiest spots in or near the city. It was at Sarnath – a few kilometres outside the city – that Buddha preached his first sermon upon attaining Enlightenment at Gaya. Varanasi was a prominent city in Buddha’s time as well regarding the presence of learned scholars on religion, rich merchants to support the congregation and political power to patronize the new movement. That may be why the Tathagata chose to trek the 250 km path from Gaya to a place called Rishipattana which was famous, quite literally, as the abode of sages. Sarnath is nearby this town and the Buddha thus embarked on his noble work of ‘turning the wheel of Dharma’. Jataka stories contain the quintessence of Buddhist thought and a large many of them are narrated to have taken place at Varanasi, which was the capital of the Kashi kingdom. Prof. Vidula Jayaswal taught archaeology at the Banaras Hindu University for nearly four decades and has considerable field experience at her back. She is the author of eighteen books and research monographs. This book is a snapshot of her work which identified the hamlet of Aktha near Sarnath as the ancient town of Rishipattana. The sacred architecture of Sarnath as well as the ancient remains of Varanasi which provides the backdrop of Jataka stories is covered in this nice book. It is basically a monograph that emerged from a number of short articles which the author presented in national and international seminars on Buddhist art, archaeology and culture. It is aimed at reaching a larger section of society interested in Buddhism and Buddhist sites.

In the early part of the book, the nature of state formation in the Ganga plain is described. This took place around the seventh century BCE in two distinct clusters – janapadas which were monarchical and ganas that were republican. Kashi was ruled by a king. Then she explains why Varanasi was significant for Buddhism to a great extent and to Jainism also to a lesser extent. Both Buddha and Mahavira came to Varanasi. Apart from the former’s First Sermon at a deer park called Mrugadaya at that time and later known as Sarnath, Varanasi was also the centre of origin and development of religious thought, intricacies of skilled handicrafts, performing arts, trade and commerce. The city was the foremost urban conglomeration right from Late Vedic period. Sarnath flourished between the time of Ashoka (third century BCE) when he built stupas and religious buildings there to Kumaradevi (one of the queens of Gahadvala king Govindchandra, twelfth century CE) when the last of the structures were built there. This book covers the entire time span of these fifteen centuries.

The ancient geography of Sarnath is examined in the book. The land contained many forest patches and a deer park named Mrugadaya might have come up. There was a settlement of sages named Rishipattana nearby, mentioned in Buddhist texts such as Mahavastu written in Sanskrit. The rationale for this place in becoming a resort for rishis was that it was situated at the junction of major trade routes passing through Kashi janapada. Even now, major highways pass near the town and their prototypes might have served the population in the second millennium BCE. The visit and stay of rishis and learned masters helped the town to gain the reputation of being a centre of wisdom. That may be why Buddha chose to preach his First Sermon there. The author has personally led excavations in the fields from 1994 and came out with the conclusion that Aktha is the modern face of the ancient Rishipattana. However, she has attempted to squeeze scientific test data into the straightjacket of established historical theories. Carbon 14 tests on the earliest remains at Aktha showed habitation from 1800-1450 BCE. This is in conflict with the much controversial Aryan Invasion theory which proposes that people should have settled in Varanasi a good five centuries later. Still, the author makes a compromise to settle the site’s ancestry in the Later Vedic period (1400-1000 BCE). This is in stark contrast to Carbon 14 data in a vain bid to salvage the Aryan Invasion theory. Considering that the research was funded by American/British agencies such as the Ford Foundation, this is expected. But the undisguised truth is that the middle Ganga plain was inhabited much before the dates which are postulated by this colonial-era theory.

A rather unique feature of Sarnath is that we have eye-witness accounts of how that place looked like in the remote past. This is from the descriptions of Fa Hien in fourth century CE and Xuanzang in the seventh century CE. Both these scholars had come from China with the intention of collecting the greatest number of documents related to Buddhism and to hold extensive discussions with its teachers. Sarnath being one of the cardinal places of Buddhism, both the Chinese travellers paid a visit to the place. Xuanzang says that the Ashokan column was standing at a majestic height of seventy feet which ‘glittered in the light’. Archaeologists have discovered the remains of the mentioned buildings and structures. On the other hand, the destruction and pilferage that happened in British times should force the colonial administrators to hang their heads in shame. Jagat Singh, the dewan of the local zamindar Raja Cheta Sign, scavenged the Sarnath stupas in 1794 for material to build a market nearby. He pulled down the Dharmarajika stupa and the vacant circular pit is now called the Jagat Singh stupa! In 1835, a British army engineer named Alexander Cunningham recovered a circular sandstone box from a stupa which contained pearls, silver, gold and three pieces of human arm bones. He also threw 48 statues and many other sculpted stones into the Varana river to erect a bridge over it (p.61). In the medieval period, vandalism of these sacred structures was carried out even by kings. Akbar built an octagonal tower on top of the Chaukhandi stupa in 1588 to commemorate an earlier visit of his father Humayun to the place. The fortunate part is that even though a Mughal, he didn’t bring it down.

In a fine example of archaeological detective work, Jayaswal pieces together the chronological sequence of construction of various structures in Sarnath which she categorizes into five time periods titled Maurya, Sunga, Kushan, Gupta and post-Gupta/early-medieval periods. There is a tendency among Left historians to claim that kings who favoured Brahminical practices did not contribute to build new Buddhist monuments. This fallacious notion arises from the anachronistic projection of the mores of a future era into the distant past. Since the distinctions between Hinduism and Buddhism are clear-cut now, they mistakenly assume that it was always so. This is wrong and the author writes about contributions made by Sunga kings who were thought to be anti-Buddhist. Some additions and constructions of railings had taken place at Sarnath in this era. It is also established that the stupa at Bharhut and the railings and gateways of Sanchi stupa were built in the Sunga period. This demolishes the myth of Sungas’ persecution of the Buddhists. The book also points out a hint to the development of Varanasi, which is outside the pail of Sarnath, as a place of brahminical worship. The growth of Shaivism during the reign of Vasudeva of the Kushan dynasty might have resulted in the decline of Sarnath and growth of Varanasi as a major centre of Shiva worship in the second century CE.

The author ingeniously attempts to link her research in archaeology to the very fundamental plane of Varanasi’s establishment as a major religious place. In this regard, she tethers her findings to places mentioned in some Jataka fables such as the fish that refused to move to the river when draught desiccated the muddy patch in which the fish ordinarily stayed. Readers get an impression that she has found that muddy patch! Even the presumption that tales involving mice and tortoises can be linked to archaeological discoveries is highly awkward. Jayaswal investigates into the origin and development of artisanal sculpture work at Varanasi. Demand for donation of icons from large beneficiaries like merchants created a flourishing of sculptural art in Sarnath in the Gupta period. Earlier, idols carved in Mathura were brought to Sarnath for installation. However, with the development of local industry supported by rich sandstone quarries at nearby Chunar, we see idols made locally. Lowering or almost closed eyes, divine smile and wet transparent drapery are some of the typical features of the Sarnath style. The book surprisingly does not bother much on the reasons why the Sarnath establishment collapsed in medieval period. In around thirteenth century CE, the flourishing Buddhist infrastructure here appears to have lost its glory (p.200). But what were the causes of it? The author makes a feeble guess that ‘whether the power of the Brahminical followers was the cause of the uprooting of the Buddhist establishment is difficult to ascertain’. This hypothesis is plainly ridiculous. There is evidence that even in the twelfth century CE, Brahminical followers contributed generously to it, such as the installation of the Kumaradevi stupa. Why should they rescind their patronage all of a sudden? Seeing her great reticence even to discuss the causes of Sarnath’s downfall, it is likely that Muslim invasions might have had a role in it. I am not suggesting it has, but the author’s squeamish efforts to slide this issue under the carpet make one suspicious. In an earlier chapter, she says that Akbar had made some modifications in the stupas without commenting on it.

The book incorporates several panoramic pictures of the archaeological work in Varanasi, Sarnath and their neighbourhoods. The level of competence of the people engaged in excavation and analysis are commendable in comparison to the haphazard British efforts in the colonial era. Even though being an established professional in the field, Jayaswal has been very careful to omit technical jargon as far as possible. Several photos and diagrams are included to complement the arguments in the text. The effort is a very fine example of the revival of Indian archaeology after independence. It is also a stark reminder that some of the real treasure underground may now have been lost forever as human habitation is overwhelming the sites before a detailed study could be carried out. The author’s effort to estimate the magnitude and capacity of the sculptural workshops in the Gupta period based on the present conditions of similar shops is somewhat bold and optimistic, yet is quite logical as the level of mechanization is still low.

The book is strongly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Aryans

Title: Aryans – The Search for a People, a Place and a Myth
Author: Charles Allen
Publisher: Hachette India, 2023 (First)
ISBN: 9789357312684
Pages: 387

The word ‘Aryan’ rose to prominence in European languages by mid-nineteenth century as denoting a race destined to rule over the others. It was virtue of the superlatives they possessed in every factor that ensured a competitive advantage in the fight for survival – such as intelligence, physique, beauty, language and organisation. This was part of a post-factual justification after the Industrial Revolution had made Western Europe prosperous and thriving on colonialism. Concepts of the unadulterated genome of the master Aryan race widely circulated leading to the growth of Nazism in its most horrific form in Germany as well as racism on a full spectrum from the very mild to eugenics in other countries. At the same time, the term ‘Aryan’ was being used in Sanskrit literature for several centuries to denote persons marked by noble demeanour and deeds. When language families were discovered by early Orientalist scholars, they clubbed Indo-European languages under the misnomer of Aryan. The desire of the British colonial regime to legitimise their rule in India was the driving force behind the colonial masters’ research pursuits into India’s religion and sacred literature. Without any credible scientific evidence to support it, the British fabricated the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) which postulated that the Aryans who came from central Asia had colonized India much before the British did. It also questioned Indians’ moral high ground as the original inhabitants. However, as more evidence was collected over the subsequent decades, not only a hole but a huge crater was formed in this argument. This book is a recent effort to vindicate the racially tinged fantasies of imperialist scholars trying to establish the central Asian or south Russian ancestry of Aryans and their ‘invasion’ of India. Charles Allen is the author of a number of best-selling books on India. Two of his books Ashoka and Coromandel were reviewed earlier in Aug 2014 and Dec 2021 respectively. His lasting legacy lies in a series of books about British involvement in India and the effort of early Orientalist scholars. Allen died in 2020 while the book was almost complete. It was edited by David Loyn who has authored the Introduction to this book.

Allen confesses three motives for writing this book. The first and foremost is that he was sorry at the way professional historical research has been ‘hijacked’ in India by the Hindutva movement which deny the influx of Aryans. The second is to give his opinion on how the word ‘Aryan’ became so prominent in the West as a racial indicator and the final reason is his love of archaeology. As a result, this book has a clear political intent and is a tool to influence public opinion in India possibly in view of the general elections in 2024. Can you believe that this book on a people who lived three millennia ago talks about the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) of India and Narendra Modi? The author also admits that he was greatly influenced by Marxist interpretations of history along with those of other Left-leaning historians such as Eric Hobsbawm and Christopher Hill in his student days (p.176). At the same time, he shows clear traits of white supremacism in his undisguised contempt for Indian scholars and unflinching belief that only the Western scholars understand Sanskrit texts even though it was only the Indians who regard them as sacred. He stoops so low as to abuse critics of Max Muller by calling them ‘zealots’ (p.62). To keep his exit route clear, he then accepts as true their allegations against Muller that he was employed by the colonialist English East India Company to translate Sanskrit texts for the company’s use at the exorbitant rate of GBP 4 per page (equivalent of GBP 800 today) but justifies this robbery of India with the flimsy argument that each page took weeks to produce and the entire project took 25 years to complete. The nostalgic part was that I still remember a researcher from my graduation days who took this much time to complete a project. ‘Why don’t you Indians just shut up and be thankful to the white colonialists who compiled your sacred books at the cost of your freedom?’ is the refrain that resounds silently and between the lines in the entire book.

The book offers a very fine overview on archaeological finds in the former Soviet republics in Central Asia which broadly bear the title of ‘Kurgan’ culture. The places he describes include Arkaim, Yamnaya, Ordek’s Necropolis and Hallstatt. These may be excellent for Google explorers to have a wonderful visual experience visiting these sites in cyberspace. At this point, Allen succumbs to the usual folly of armchair enthusiasts to link two concepts solely relying on how their names sound similar. The Yamnaya culture in Ukraine is examined in interesting detail showcasing the pit-grave burials characteristic to this culture. The author then irrelevantly burps out that ‘in a clear link with South Asia, Yama is also the Hindu god of death’ (p.179). This is only a pipedream as ‘Yama’ in Ukrainian only means a ‘pit’. Allen continuously uses such tricks to fool gullible readers into believing his outrageous conclusions. However, the author also points to the truth in some unrelated parts of the book as if to ease his conscience. He admits that the progress of Proto-Indo-Iranian people (the primal group which split into Aryans in India and Ariyas in Iran) has left little physical trace (p.207). It is also conceded that horse burials are totally absent in India but was widely practised in central Asia. The book cites a medieval Scottish document which recites their migration myth and concludes this as definite proof of how the Aryans migrated from Russian steppes to Scotland (p.128). Here again, words resonating similarly in Old Norse and Sanskrit are considered as enough evidence of their mythologies also being similar (p.133). The German archaeologist Friedrich Klopfleisch, who unearthed several ancient pottery from burial mounds in Jena in nineteenth century is introduced to us and then makes a strange claim that ‘Klopfleisch quite rightly believed them to be speakers of proto-Indo-European and thus ancestral Germans’ (p.143). How could he conclude like this? Can you deduce the language spoken by a person long dead, just by looking at his mummified bones and a few potsherds he used while alive? Inconsistencies similar to this one plague this text in its entirety.

A detailed narrative on the development of Aryan racial feeling in Europe and the appropriation of its supposed symbols by the Nazis and racists are found in this book. Racist thought developed in mid-nineteenth century Europe through the writings of Comte de Gobineau. He found enthusiastic admirers in Nietzsche, Richard Wagner and other thinkers. With German unification in 1871, patriotic sentiments fertilized the hope of descending from a master race (ubermenschen). Germans thought they were destined to bring in a new world order by conquering others by their racial superiority. German society was willing to absorb notions of Aryan supremacy and to suspend belief in matters of national self-image. This book proves that the four-handed Nazi symbol which is commonly confused with the auspicious Hindu symbol of Swastika is in fact ‘hakenkreuz’ (hooked cross). The hakenkreuz symbol was used in the coats of arms of many German municipalities even before theories of Aryan origins had emerged. Hitler had a personal connection to this symbol. The hakenkreuz was prominently displayed in the Lambach monastery where Hitler served as a choir boy. The symbol was engraved on a heraldic shield which was the personal seal of Theodorich Hagn, abbot of the abbey from 1856 to his death in 1872. This makes it obvious that the accursed Nazi symbol has no relation to India or Hinduism. Allen also examines how the false link between ‘Aryan’ and race came about. The word ‘Aryan’ comes from Sanskrit and Avestan where it changes to ‘Ariya’ in the latter. Both these languages give the meaning of ‘good or noble people’ or the ‘venerable ones’. Max Muller postulated that the Indo-European language was spoken by an Aryan race erroneously assuming that the speakers of similar languages were united by blood as well as tongue. But by the end of nineteenth century, consensus emerged that ‘Indo-European’ referred only to a language or group of languages rather than a people. Racist thought had far advanced in Europe by this time portraying the Aryans as a ‘tall, pale-skinned, blue-eyed, fair-haired, clever and martial race’. Muller later corrected this by clarifying that by ‘Aryan’ he meant only language and not race, but the damage had been done.

As noted earlier, this book begins with a political promise that it is a propaganda piece against Hindutva in India, which is alleged to have a xenophobic agenda and lack of respect for Western scholars specializing in Sanskrit. However, Allen confuses Hindutva with Hinduism proper and considers the religion as part of the game and hence a legitimate target for attack. He accuses that ‘intolerance of the Other and the persecution of minorities have been a feature of Indian society not just for centuries but for millennia’ (p.280). This is shocking as India was famous the world over as a safe abode of minorities facing persecution at home. The funny thing is that just four pages before, on p.276, he excitedly informs us about the excellent preservation of Parsee culture in India whereas it had crumbled in its homeland of Iran. As noted in para 3 above, this book is full of such gaping inconsistencies and glaring contradictions. More than that, he uncritically retells half-truths such as crossing the sea resulted in loss of caste and asserts that only the Paraiyar outcastes engaged in it. He is totally unaware of the robust Gujarati merchant class that flourished in East Africa and the Middle East without losing their ‘caste’. Read Chhaya Goswami’s excellent book ‘Globalization Before Its Time’ reviewed here in Dec 2020. Allen puts Swami Vivekananda in a bad light by asserting that he ‘used publicity photos to sell himself to the public’ as ‘a clean-shaven and muscular modern Guru’ (p.293). He accuses ISKCON for ‘helping bring the chauvinist and sectarian Hindutva repackaging of India’s history into the mainstream’. The chapter on ‘Holy Cows and Gurus’ is a brazen attempt to paint a black picture of all great leaders India admire and respect such as Dayanand Saraswati, Tilak, Swami Vivekananda and Aurobindo. After this tirade, the author arraigns against some Indian freedom fighters who died fighting for their motherland. Allen calls them ‘hotheads led by Tilak’s call for violent action’ and notes with smug satisfaction that ‘they were tried and hanged’. He doesn’t mention their name, but is obviously referring to Chapekar brothers who killed W. C. Rand who used vandalism and assault on Indians while working as the Plague commissioner.

The chapters on Indus Valley Civilization and its archaeological remains is a rigmarole of wrong conclusions and even plain ignorance. This book admits that John Marshall’s excavations at Mohenjo Daro were chaotic without any concern for stratification. In short, Marshall’s work was qualitatively more like tilling a farm field than archaeology. Even then he came out with a result which the author grudgingly concedes as something which ‘came as a gift from heaven to the ideologues of the nascent Hindu nationalist movement’ (p.214), because it buttressed their ‘Out of India’ and ‘No Aryan Invasion’ hypotheses. Swastikas were also found on Indus seals. Allen is also confused about what he is trying to establish and confirms at one point that ‘there may have been fighting [between Aryan invaders and original inhabitants of Indus Valley] but few today believe that Aryans put a sudden stop to the Civilization’ (p.217). While balancing the evidence offered by cultural specimens, he claims that the Daimabad Charioteer is an Indus legacy, but this area in Maharashtra was not inside the Culture’s accepted geographical range. In fact, this argument only strengthens the Out of India theory. When unable to find a plausible provenance for the famous ‘Dancing Girl’ sculpture of Indus Valley, he puts forward the silly argument that ‘they were not locally produced’ (p.222). Is he hinting that Amazon and FedEx had a pre-historic franchisee in Mohenjo Daro? Another fallacious and unsubstantiated conjecture is that the people of pre-Aryan Indus cities were lactose intolerant because ‘there is evidence that they produced ghee, which is lactose-free’ (p.230). By the same logic, a country which manufactured insulin must be full of diabetics! When DNA sequencing was done on a female skeleton found from Rakhigarhi, it ruled out any link to Central Asian genes. Allen accepts only those genetic studies done by western academics like David Reich as authentic while the strong protests against his work from Indian researchers are ignored. Based on this cherry-picking and shaky evidence, the author concludes that prior to 2200 BCE, there had been no admixing between original inhabitants and incoming Aryans whom he calls ancestral south Indians (ASI) and ancestral north Indians (ANI) respectively. Then in one instant they mixed like the flick of a switch and immediately stopped mixing thereafter till modern times due to the development of caste system. So embarrassingly naïve is Allen’s grasp of Indian society that I seriously doubt whether he has understood the concept of caste.

 The author tries both sides of the argument of Aryan invasion to see which has better purchase. If he cannot find remnants of Central Asian practices in India, he is equally willing to transport Indian practices there. He then makes a pointless claim that caste system was part and parcel of the proto-Indo-European worldview and cites the two respected groups of druids and mounted knights in ancient European societies as forerunners of Brahmins and Kshatriyas. He invents another category of his own as ‘workers’ to rise the count to three and then atrociously claims that a French mythologist Georges Dumezil who lived in India in the 1920s recorded only three divisions in Indian society. The claim is that since Dumezil has said so, it must be so. Such is the level of white supremacism seen in this book. The skin tones of Aryans also do not match his narrative. Rig Veda describes god Indra as pot-bellied and ‘tawny-skinned’ (brown coloured). This is thought of as the model of a marauding bronze-age chieftain. This human figure is not white, blonde or tall as he ascribes to Aryans in the early chapters. The author also tries to improve upon the Parsee holy book Vendidad by claiming that the sequence of migrations of its early ancestors is not correct and suggests a new itinerary whose only relevance is that it agrees with his theory. Max Muller described the soma plant mentioned in Rig Veda as a creeper, but Allen thinks it is a fleshy, twig-like bush. Either Muller or Allen must be true, but not both. Maps given in the book are not effective in monochrome and the marked regions are difficult to differentiate. Altogether, the book is designed more as a wrecking ball on Hindutva than to serve any constructive purpose. Its sole aim is to debunk the Out-of-India theory that is gaining momentum. It is also an example of the folly that is produced by a scholar whose outlook is blinkered with politics.

The book is still recommended for the fine introduction to archaeological finds in Central Asia.

Rating: 2 Star