--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> > VA: Really? Harirud does not flow into the Hamum. Nor does the
only LARGE RIVER of Afghanistan, the Oxus.
>
> Oh, so there are two exceptions? Let me help you -- the Kabul is
another.
VA: Is it not a very imortant river?
******************
Piotr: Still, Hamun-e Helmand drains nearly the whole area of
Afghanistan, and since the Amu Darya does not, strictly speaking,
flow _through_ Afghanistan, the Helmand and the Arghandab, with their
numerous tributaries, form the most important river system in the
country.
VA: The Oxus actually arises in the Wakkhan corridor, WITHIN
Afghanistan. Its drainage area is the most well endowed agricultural
land, even within Afghanistan (and of course outside it)....
What proportion of Afghanistan's population lives in the Helmand
basin? What is the agricultural output of the area as a proportion of
the total output?
************************
Piotr: The Farah Rud, the Harrut Rud, the Khash Rud, the Khuspas and
several lesser rivers flow into Hamun-e Helmand as well.
VA: You forgot the Shela Rud which flowed into the Hamun in the past
but which disappears before meeting the Hamun now! Now, could you
tell me the ancient names of these rivulets and let us know whether
their names were transferred to N Indian topography or not?
*****************
>
> > Is the 'Sarasvati' attestation earlier or is Haraxvaiti earlier?
What are the 'Aryan' features of the culture in Helmand basin? Except
for one report that mentions horse bones (just a mention), ALL OTHER
EXCAVATION reports clearly state that no horses are found in the
region at those archaeological levels.
>
Piotr: What do you mean by "Aryan"? The Avestan Iranians were as
Aryan as the Vedic Indo-Aryans, and the whole area had probably
been "Aryanised" by the early second millennium BC. If no
distinctively Indian traits are visible at that stage, it's quite
simply because the Indo-Aryan culture as we know it developed in
India as a synthesis of the local and Aryan traditions, with
subsequent cultural innovations.
VA: OK, what are the Avestan features there? Where are the horse
bones? Chariots? Did the Indo-Aryans borrow the name for Saraswati
from Avestans?
********************
Piotr: However, if there are no Indian elements in the early local
cultures of Afghanistan, that must be a real problem for any "Out of
India" scheme.
VA: That is not my concern. I in fact have the same question for
OIT'ers.
In reality, the Siestan region on the Afghanistan side of the Siestan
area is quite bleak when it comes to pre-Historic artifacts. See
DALES, George F. 1995. "A Line in the Sand: Explorations in Afghan
Seistan". pp. 19-32 in Gregory POSSEHL (ed.). South Asian Archaeology
Studies. Oxford and IBH Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd.: New
Delhi/Calcutta/Bombay
There are other sites like Mundigak, but is there any credible
evidence for linking them to IIr?
**********************
>
> Since you ask, in terms of actual material attestation,
<haraxWaiti:> is older than <sarasvati:>. We find OPer. harauvati- in
Xerxes' list of Persian provinces; it's also mentioned in Babylonian
sources. The Rigveda and the Avesta are both old and respectable
sources. My contention is that both names are _equally_ old: they are
in fact the same name in two rather closely related languages.
>
VA: Is harauvati found in Avesta? Is there any evidence to link
Anahita to Harauvati, and to Sarasvati?
**************
> > And when compared to even Ravi (the smallest river of the Indus
system, contributing only 3.5% of the total water flow of the
system), even Helmand is a stream.
>
>Piotr: So what? Can't a "stream" be famous? Will you say that the
Indus is a mere stream just because it could be dwarfed by the Nile
or the Amazon?
VA: What makes you think that Indus is dwarfed by the Nile?? Indus
actually carries twice the water that Nile does. As for Amazon, it is
a special case. Most of its basin is still sparsely inhabited or
under the Tropical Rain forest. The Indus, the Nile, the
Euphrates/Tigris became great rivers in the Bronze age because of
certain features (period flooding, absence of thick forests n some
parts of the basin, flat plains, good pasture and so on), and mention
of Amazon is quite out of place here. The entire region south of
Helmand (the Helmand province of Afghanistan) is the MOST FORBIDDING
part of the country. Dales calls it 'Hell' (see article above. The
central pleteay, which forms most of the drainage area, is also
occupied by the persecuted Hazara minority, who have been
marginalized and pushed into that region by Pashtuns etc. Most of the
population of Afghanistan rather lives away from the Helmand basin.
***************
Piotr: The Helmand is still the largest and the most important river
of southern Afghanistan. The French consider the Loire (the longest
river of France) important, and its exactly the same length as the
Helmand -- 1400 km. The Seine and the Rhône, also famous rivers, are
little more than half that length. The Ravi, incidentally, is still
shorter.
VA: You are bringing COMPLETELY extraneous issues here. You had
stated that the name Sarasvati was carried over from Helmand to N.
India, and that by the time the IA speakers reached there, it was
already a dying river. It has also been suggested that the Sarasvati
in RV is actually the Helmand. Speculations and conjectures apart,
ALL the evidence from RV permits us to identify only the dry Ghaggar-
Hakra as the Sarasvati.
The RV Sarasvati is a large, mighty and a prominent river, celebrated
as the greatest river in the Vedic literature, along whose banks 'the
five peoples dwell and grow barley', 'along whose banks, the kings
live', 'which is high/resplendant as a chariot'...., which flows
along with the Drishdvati and the Apaya, where we find the sites
of 'Manusha' etc.
This description does not apply to Helmand, but applies better to
other rivers traversed by the Aryans in their 'victorious march'
accross the Saptasindhavah.
And now archaeological evidence CLEARLY corroborates what we read in
the texts. But there is a problem - this evidence is a 1000 years
early than the date assigned by linguists. Which is sad.
Clearly stated evidence must not be twisted to satisfy non-verifiable
linguistic speculations.
***************
>
> > BTW, why would Indo-Iranians wait to reach Helmand before coining
the word 'Samudra', when Ural Sea, Caspian, Balkash were much
larger 'samudras'?
>
> PIOTR: <samudra-> is a common noun, and there is no reason why it
should not have been applied to the Aral Sea etc. There is no textual
documentation of such usage merely because the Rigveda is the oldest
surviving Indo-Aryan composition.
VA: It could have applied to lake Manchhar also in Sindh. We need to
distinguish between speculation and proof. If the RV
mentions 'eastern' and 'western' samudras, what are these. (Oh yes,
there is actually a pair of lakes, with one lake east of Hamun in the
Afghanistan. Voila!!).
**********
> >VA: And, don't you think that going from Central Asia to Helmand
(on Iran/Afghanistan border), and then move up the Helmand valley,
and then make a right turn through Bolan into forbidding Baluchi
areas, cross the trans Indus desert, and then cross Indus, and then
manage to transform all language X speakers over an area of 2
millions sq km, without leaving any proof, or even a mention in their
religious corpus, is asking for too much??
>
> Piotr: It didn't happen all at once. The linguistic Indo-
Aryanisation of India began in the late second millennium in the
upper reaches of the Indus system and in the Gangetic Plains,
reaching Bihar for good by the seventh century BC. And don't you see
that going out of India covering your tracks and shedding any
strictly Vedic cultural traits, then expanding from Ireland to
Xinjiang (perhaps some 15,000,000 sq km, if not more) and imposing
your language on all sorts of peoples all over the place means asking
a bloody good deal more?
>
VA: You are unnecessarily setting up straw men and associating me
with OIT? Curiously, I sent out the text of a weboage to some people
for review and in that I CLEARLY state that there is no
archaeological proof for OIT.
The Rigveda mentions 'Kikata' in hymn III.57 which in the whole
length and breadth of Indian literature means only Jharkhand plateau.
Only the AMT/AIT transport it to Kurukshetra, just as they transport
Sarasvati to Arachosia. The mention of Kikata clearly tallies with
the story about migration of Vishvamitras to E India in the Aitareya
Brahmana. This event is therefore much before 700 B.C.
The exact time when the IA languages spread in E India is totally
based on speculations - again no proof is offered by you why IA
languages spread to Bihar only by the seventh century and not
earlier. Others who say similar things base it on, horse bones and
spoked wheels - things which should not be associated uniquely
with 'Aryans'.
What do you mean by 'Aryanization' BTW? A good article for reading in
this case is
Erdosy, George . "Ethnicity in the Rigveda and its Bearing on the
Question of Indo-European Origins." South Asian Studies. 5 (1989): 35-
47.
As for the absurdity in migrations out of India, the conventional PIE
homeland theories conceive ALL IE tribes migrating in ALL directions
and imposing their language over speakers of umpteen language
speakers, cultures... Is that less ridiculous? Please see the URL
http://www.bharatvani.org/general_inbox/talageri/ejvs/introduction.htm
l
where the following words are relevant - it is a pity that the same
kind of remarks are repeated again and again.
QUOTE
"I do not claim to have exposed the wanderlust of any "Rgvedic
tribes". As I have made very, very clear in my book
in a whole chapter, five, as well as throughout the rest of my
book the Purus are the only Rigvedic tribe(s). The other
tribes are NON-Rigvedic Indo-European tribes. They are
not "Rigvedic" simply because they are named in the
Rigveda, anymore than Egyptians, Persians and Babylonians are
Biblical tribes or peoples because they are named in
the Bible. I claim to have "exposed" the "wanderlust" of two NON-
Rigvedic Indo-European tribes, the Anus and the
Druhyus. And this should be clear even to a biased reader.
Even if the title were to be reframed substituting "Indo-European"
for "Rgvedic", the word "incredible" still stands out
in its incongruity. My account postulates a "wanderlust" only in
one, WESTWARD, direction for sections of two out
of many Indo-European tribes: every other theory postulates
a "wanderlust" for every single Indo-European tribe in
every conceivable direction: westwards, eastwards, southwards
If
anything, my theory is the least incredible of all.
Moreover, scholars do not even agree on the original homeland of
these proto-Indo-Europeans. At least 30 of them
have been postulated by them to date! " UNQUOTE
You have mentioned Xinjiang above. Note that the region has had many
close contacts with India for several millennia now. Many historians
actually equate it to the 'Uttarakuru' of Aitareya Brahmana. The
Tukhar are mentioned in dozens of Indian texts.
Note that RV X.75 mention rivers like Marudvrdha, Sushoma, Arjikya
etc., which are not very far from that region. Till the Sikh rules,
traders from Xinjiang were a common site in the Kashmir valley.
The Munjavat of RV is often identified with 'Muz' in Tajiskistan, not
very far from Munjavat. It was not a place where the Rigvedic people
went for picnic, but there were trade relations at least by the time
the RV was composed/redacted.
Regards
Vishal
Vishal