I
heartily welcome you all to this gracious function to celebrate ICHR’s 45th
Foundation Day. On such occasions, ICHR usually organises a lecture by a
distinguished scholar. During the first year of my three-year tenure, I had the
honour of inviting Dr David Frawley, USA (Pandit Vamadeva Sastry ji) to deliver
the prestigious lecture. In his scholarly lecture he drew our attention to the
Vedic literature and explained how rich it is with historical content. Last
year, we invited a distinguished professor, Dr Satish Chandra Mittal who
presented an excellent exposition critiquing Indian historiography. This year,
ICHR proposed to have a 3-day national seminar keeping in view of the sincere
calls of these two eminent scholars who stressed the need for a fresh look on
our sources of ancient history and to revisit our history narratives in
colonial and post-colonial times. Further, we take this opportunity to take a
step forward in this seminar attempting a critical assessment of the latest
research finds in historical, geological, linguistic and other allied
disciplines so that we can correct, reaffirm and update our knowledge about our
past, both recent and remote.
Before
archaeology has emerged as a science, Indian history writing was solely
dependent on literary sources. Indian archaeology began in the second half of
19thcentury as an amateur subject. It took about a century to grow
as a scientific discipline. Organised archaeological exploration on scientific
lines has started mostly after we became politically independent. After Harappa
was found, the highly developed civilization was dated to about 4th millennium
BP (Before Present). Some Indian scholars argue that it was deliberately dated
posterior to Assyrian and Babylonian civilisations. We are also aware
that many issues came up with the identity of the founders of the most ancient
Indian civilization by the non-Indian archaeologists of the British times.
On
this auspicious occasion, I respectfully remember my pujya Guruji Mahamahopadyaya Dr.
Sivananda Murty who used to say that ‘our future lies in our remote past, not
the recent past’. We, Bharatiyas (Indians), are very fortunate to take pride in
our remote past, which needs to be brought into light with the application of
modern scientific tools evolved by the allied disciplines like archaeology,
geology, anthropology, environmental science, remote sensing technology etc.
Though most of these science subjects and their super specialties have their
respective limitations, they can still be of great help to us to develop proper
understanding of our ancient culture and civilisation.
The
historicity of many events and personalities of so called ‘pre- historical’
ancient Bharat as known to us even today through its ancient literature -
Vedas, Puranas, epics, kavyas etc – has yet to be proven to
satisfy modern intellect. Our concepts of life, its goal, ways and means to
achieve one’s goal and nation’s character are well described, preserved and
conveyed to us through generations by our ancient oral and literary traditions.
Unfortunately, we are not able to put it in a precise time frame through
geographical locations of many an event are clearly indicated with traditional
dating in our literature. This is the major problem relating to the dating of
major happenings in India in its remote past.
Now,
the main question before us is, what is this remote past? Was it entirely a
savage and barbarian past as archaeology points out? Archaeology cannot take us
back to more than 10,000 years for the transformation of the homo-sapiens to homo-fabers
which witnessed the gradual evolution of civilisations and cultures at various
places of world, whereas literary sources are pointing to indefinite periods
beyond 10,000 BP (Before Present). We are not able to bridge the gap between
these two types of sources.
The
major questions arise here in the context of ancient Indian history. When we
are sure that a high standard of urban civilization could be dated back to 6-7
millennia BP and recent excavations vouchsafe that urbanisation was widely
prevalent in India, then why should we doubt the existence of the Vedas in an
oral form from the same time period? Were both material and Vedic traditions
developing simultaneously? If it is so, like the civilization, the Vedic
literary tradition and knowledge systems might also be gradual developments.
Can we trace the beginnings of these traditions, which have no parallels in the
world? To what extent can we push back our historic antiquity?
When
we look at our recent past of proto-historic and historic civilisations we have
similar problems. Experts in the field state there occurred urbanization for
the first time in India in about 7th millennium BP and then
the second urbanization only started around the 3rd millennium
BP. There is a long gap between these two phases stretching over 2-3 thousand
years. The knowledge of the first urbanisation washed out with the
disappearance of River Saraswati and second urbanisation occurred in River
Ganga plains. Many explanations are given for this historic gap.
This
seminar is making an attempt to address the recent finds of researches in
various allied disciplines and the problems and limitations of these
disciplines, which are making serious efforts in delving into our past. Since
1920s, archaeological exploration activities have picked up speed. Scientific
methods have been introduced and new methods and disciplines have been involved
in this brisk activity. European and Indian archaeologists jointly and severally
were taking up projects. In the post independent era, this archaeological
research has gone entirely into the hands of Indian specialists. In the first
phase, major projects were designed and executed by the experts mostly with
governmental support.
A
historian has to interpret and understand the objective finds from
archaeological researches taking into account other collaborative evidences.
All the sciences we are employing today also have their own limitations but
under these limitations what best we can draw out of them is a historian’s job.
How the projections of these results of archaeological and other scientific
researches could throw light on our remote past is now lurking in the minds of
all the experts assembled here. We have amidst us a father figure like Dr. BB
Lal who is going to deliver a keynote address on recent developments in the
proto-history archaeology.
We
have received a good number of papers from allied disciplines by experts in
their fields for this seminar. We intend to allot sufficient time to everyone
for presentations and discussions. That is why this seminar is planned
for three days. I must say that I have no claim for the theme of the seminar.
We have involved many experts from various disciplines who are dealing with
varied topics in building a scientific and true history. Therefore, the
explicit theme of this seminar is not one person’s idea or design. Every line
has been chiseled by the respective experts.
The
object of this scholarly endeavor of this three-day seminar backed up by at
least two years constant consultations is to kick start a multi-disciplinary
approach to understand the major problems in constructing the true ancient
History of Bharat, presently called India. Many people have discussed these problems
on many platforms but they still linger on because, like habits, psyches also
die hard. It is no surprise that these predicaments would surely remain even
after many such seminars.
This
seminar has been planned to have five academic sections, history, archaeology,
geology, literature and philosophy:
There
is a session which is devoted to study historical perspective. Since the present
genre of history has developed in the past two centuries, many assumptions were
made by the early European historians without proper critical analysis and
assessment of Indian literary and archaeological sources. The early European
historians had no proper knowledge of ancient past of India and of Vedic
literature. Most of them had not lived in India. Most of them were interested
in their present and their interests in that particular present. In the modern
times, our contemporary historians are applying social science theories,
methodologies and techniques to historical studies. Is history a pure science?
Is it a pure philosophy? Or is it about only politics? Or only a critique
of social milieus? In other disciplines like economics, sociology or
political sciences there are many schools of thought and we are trying to apply
them in historical research. If you think closely about how these schools came
into existence in the past 100 or 150 years, we find that most of these schools
are based on hypotheses or speculations. Their influences on historiography
turns history a mere speculative social science. While arguing that history
should be true to its original sources, the perspectives developed in
presenting the past in the then contemporary light has become a far cry.
That is a major problem we are facing today. So much of literature has come up
in history on so many aspects of the present time and looking into our past
from the problems of the present. But history was not the same; society was not
the same; and the economy was not the same in the past. So, the relevance of
modern social science theories to historical research has to be examined
carefully. We have with us a very distinguished international scholar and
octogenarian, Prof Sivaji Singh to present a key-note address for this section
who explains the heart of History.
Another
section is exclusively earmarked to deal with the major limitations of
archaeological studies. Most archaeological discoveries were chance finds. An
archaeologist might dig with an expectation, but end up finding something
unexpected. An archaeologist is forced to accept what he finds irrespective of
his hypothesis. Another major problem is with the dating and interpretation of
the object. Many assumptions were made by the early archeologists, which have
been deciding the destiny of our country’s history. This will be discussed in Dr
B B Lal, the well-known Indian archaeologist’s, keynote address for the
archaeology section.
Yet
another important section and a major issue we have taken on is about the
geological formations of India. We have 5 eminent scholars specialising in Geology.
They are holding an exclusive section in this seminar. They will look into
geological formations and how they influenced rise and fall of civilisations;
how the rivers have been changing courses; how some of them disappeared and
reappeared; and how the fluctuations in sea-levels changed the course of
history on the coastal lines. In this seminar, the distinguished scholars in
Geology who are currently working on the disappearance of the Saraswati River
are presenting papers in that exclusive section. The keynote address of this
section is being presented by a very eminent, internationally known geologist,
Dr Valdiaji.
The
fourth section of the seminar focuses on taking our culture back to ancient
times and dating events in history based on astronomical data drawn from
literary sources. Our team of experts are aware of the limitations in using
astronomical data when writing history. Many historians have reservations in
accepting the astronomical data, as it does not come anywhere close to
archaeological findings or dating. Nonetheless, an event in history cannot be
termed myth or imagination on the grounds of not being able to arrive precisely
at an agreeable date from literary source. The events described in literary
sources deserve consideration rather than being stroked off as a myth.
This
section is devoted to discussion on the specificities of Linguistics and
Literature and also on their limitations. Languages and vernaculars transform
over time. For example, the vernaculars spoken in India currently are only 1000
years old, but a different set of local languages was there some 2000 years
ago. Specialists have to look into developments and draw connections.
Unfortunately, some judgments have been made by European scholars about our
history with limited knowledge of our linguistics. Europeans started making
judgments based on their own knowledge of Greek, Latin and then drew a few
analogies to the newly learnt Sanskrit. They concluded that there are
commonalities in all these languages so they are contemporary languages and
therefore contemporary civilisations. If they are all contemporary ancient
languages and civilisations then why don’t we have literature in those
languages as old as the Vedic literature? Since we have never looked into this
from the Indian point of view, we are accepting their theories dating Sanskrit
as 2000-2500 years old, and that Sanskrit has come from the earlier Prakrit. We
accepted this theory by the West that linguistic development happened in a
linear progression. The course of languages has to be tracked carefully with
open mind.
Now,
looking at literary sources like Rig Veda and other Vedas to build a chronology
and periodisation of history one encounters with a few limitations. Which part
of the Vedas came first? Who wrote it and how many Rishis were involved? What
were the times of those Rishis? Were all of them contemporary? What are their
lineages? Many seminars were held and many theories were made but the answers
are eluding our search. We have a list of lineages of sages and Kings in
ancient history. When we look closely at the approximate reigns of kings in
each dynasty, how can we strike accurate averages to their reigns? It is very
difficult to work out the reigning times of the kings by just having a list of
kings on hand. We have invited Dr David Frawley (Pt Vamadeva Sastry, USA) a
renowned Vedic scholar to present a keynote address for this section.
The
fifth most important section of the seminar is the continuity of philosophical
thought from Vedic literature down to Buddhist literature. This section is led
by a very eminent international scholar and thinker, Prof S R Bhat, Chairman
ICPR. He will be speaking on the continuity of philosophical thought in Bharat right
from the Vedic times through to the Buddha. While Jains claim contemporaneity
with Vedic tradition, the Jain thought shares much from the Vedic and vice
versa. A careful study of ancient philosophical thought would reveal that
the basics of the tradition is still seen and practiced in Bharat.
These
are the major questions before us. We have all these distinguished scholars
here to deal with these major issues in writing our history. This seminar is
only a beginning to find solutions to the major problems in writing history of
our ancient past. ICHR should continue to work on these particular issues to
establish history of our remote past. For the present, our objective is to
examine whether there was continuous development in all aspects from 7th millennium
to 2nd millennium. The recent finds suggest that there is a
linkage between these civilisations and it was a surely continuous civilisation
for at least past 5000 years, archaeologically proven.
I
am very happy to receive prompt and positive responses from the distinguished
specialists in history and its allied fields. We expect that the scholars
attending this seminar may be raising some key questions in each special
section requiring some intensive workshops for further discussion as follow up
action.
Finally,
I humbly acknowledge my irredeemable debt to my Guruji Mahamahopadya Dr.
Sivananda Murty for my understanding of ancient Bharat.