third millennium B.C.) and
antecedent Early Harappan
neolithic cultures which were
responsible for its creation.
Comparison of the Vedic texts
with the Avesta and with the
West Asian documents relating
to the Aryan kings of Mitanni
suggests that the Vedic Aryans
entered the Indian subcontinent
from Northeast Iran and
Central Asia in the second
millennium B.C.
Moreover, it is abundantly
clear that the early Aryans
were nomads and that the
horse played a dominent role
in their culture, as it did in the
culture of their Proto-IndoEuropean-speaking ancestors.
The horse is conspicuously
absent from the many realistic
representations of animals in
the art of the Indus civilisation.
Comprehensive recent bone
analyses have yielded the
conclusion that the horse was
introduced to the subcontinent
around the beginning of the
second millennium B.C.
The Dravidian Hypothesis
There is archaeological and
linguistic evidence to support
the view that the Indus
civilisation is non-Aryan and
pre-Aryan:
urban, while the Vedic was
rural and pastoral.
• The Indus seals depict many
animals, but not the horse. The
chariot with the spoked wheels
is also not depicted. The horse
and chariot with the spoked
wheels are the main features
of Aryan-speaking societies.
(For the best and most recent
account, refer to David W.
Anthony, The Horse, the Wheel
and Language, Princeton,
2007).
• The Indus religion as revealed
in the pictorial depictions on
the seals included worship of
buffalo-horned male gods,
mother-goddesses, the pipal
tree, the serpent, and probably
the phallic symbol. Such modes
of worship are alien to the
religion of the Rigveda.
Ruling out Aryan authorship
of the Indus civilisation does
not automatically make it
Dravidian. However, there is
substantial linguistic evidence
favouring the Dravidian theory:
• The survival of Brahui, a
Dravidian language in the
Indus region.
• The presence of Dravidian
loanwords in the Rigveda.
• The substratum influence
of Dravidian on the Prakrit
dialects.
• Computer analysis of the
Indus texts revealing that the
language had only suffixes (like
Dravidian), and no prefixes (as
in Indo-Aryan) or infixes (as in
Munda).
There are several structural and
lexical Dravidisms even in the
Rgveda, the earliest preserved
text collection, pointing to
the presence of Dravidian
speakers in Northwest India in
the second millennium B.C.
The discovery in Tamil Nadu
of a late Neolithic (early 2nd
millennium BC, i.e. post-dating
Harappan decline) stone celt
allegedly marked with Indus
signs has been considered by
some to be significant for the
Dravidian identification.
However, as the Dravidian
models of decipherment have
still little in common except
the basic features summarised
above, it is obvious that much
more work remains to be done
before a generally acceptable
solution emerges.
The Truth?
Over the years, numerous
decipherments have been
proposed, but none have been
accepted by the scientific
community at large.
So to know the truth, go get the
TIME MACHINE.
Unless there exists a rosetta
stone these theories will fight.
RESEARCH
• The Indus civilisation was
RESEARCH 37