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
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
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
