Burden of old lies
A case of Ancient Indian History and its antiquity
Mohen jo Daro was released and internet with all its brimming energy came out with all critiques and questions for the movie. In that absurd display of historical preciseness, that was the only time I saw thousands of people interested in a topic that I involve myself in. For once, I had a lot of peer learners. Today, I am using that same curiosity to make you inquire more.
The Vedic Age
The Vedic Period dated from 1500 BCE to 500 BCE, said our history textbooks. For many years, I took it as a fact, only to know that I was being fed someone’s guess.
Honestly, age of the Vedic period is unknown. That is because the age of Vedic Period was calculated by linguistic dating of Rig Veda.
So, technically it was Rig Veda which was compiled between 1700 BCE-1300 BCE.
So was Rig Veda compiled around that time ?
No, the age of Rig Veda is unknown.
The dating is based on an incorrect and somewhat mischievous linguistic analysis done by Orientalists. These orientalists were also Christian Literalists, hence they had an added pressure to wrap up the antiquity of the Vedas before 2500 BCE, to make Vedic Age, ante-deluvian.
For them the creation began on 4000 BCE and in 2400 BCE, it was hit with a flood that swept everything away. See..We read history written by people, holding such infantile views.
But the damage had been done, their work made to our textbooks much before Indian intelligentsia could gather enough guts to counter such non-sense. And once we were independent, we had an army of historians bred in Orientalist fashion incapable of breaking the branches they stood on.
From then on, every single discovery, every single excavation was explained from the reference point of Vedic Age, and the Indian History was made into a mess, it never was.
The antiquity of Vedas is a corroborated guess, rather than an established fact. This is that one carefully crafted guess, which makes Indus Valley Civilization aliens, and rest of Vedic people invaders.
This one fact, makes you think of Indus Valley Civilization as something not of your own. This fact, made you an alien in your own homeland.
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Stay Awesome.