Author: Press Trust of India
Publication: www.expressindia.com
Date: November 24, 2002
URL: http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=17072
Former director-general of Archaeological
Survey of India (ASI) B.B. Lal on Saturday dubbed the hypothesis of "Aryan
invasion of India" a myth. He alleged that it was still accepted for reasons
other than historical.
"The theory that there was an Aryan
invasion of India is completely wrong," Lal stressed in a seminar in New
Delhi and alleged that political reasons were behind its being in the textbooks.
The dating of the Vedas to 1200
BC by Max Muller was ad hoc and even he confessed it to his colleagues,
Lal claimed and argued that the Rig Veda could not be later than 2000 BC.
He also discounted the discovery
of skeletons at Mohenjodaro site, the basis for hypothesising an invasion
and said, "the hard fact is that these came from various levels, some from
the middle and some from the late, and some were found in deposits after
the site was abandoned".
There were no remains of weapons
and material culture of the invaders at the site, the former director-general
said.
He also came down on those historians
who assert that the 'Dravidians' are descendants of Harappans who dispersed
after the 'Aryan invasion'. None of the four southern states of Tamil Nadu,
Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala has any Harappan sites, but sites
of Neolithic culture, Lal said.
"Do the proponents of this theory
expect us to believe that urban Harappans, on being sent away to south
India, shed overnight their urban characteristics and took to a stone age
way of living?" asks Lal.
