Indo-Aryan

This chapter analyses the positionality of Halis—former bonded
labourers, ploughers and animal carcass removers—who constitute the most subordinated Scheduled Caste (SC) community within the Gaddi tribal orbit. For many
Halis, the struggle for Scheduled Tribe (ST) recognition begins with legally undoing
their ancestral conversion to the Ayra Samaj. In the early twentieth century, many
Halis officially replaced their caste name with ‘Arya’ or ‘Gaddi Arya’ in the Revenue
Record in order to combat tribal casteism. For a time, they adopted the purifying techniques and caste-obliterating ideologies of the Arya Samaj. This strategy of upward caste mobility backfired, however, when Arya was classified as a forward caste and converted Halis were denied SC/ST benefits in the initial constitutional scheduling. Their official status as Aryas continues to deprive thousands of Halis of much-needed reservation protections. Through fieldwork data collected between 2014 and 16, I highlight the psychosocial anguish of many Halis as they waste inordinate amounts of time and resources bribing bureaucrats, negotiating with state administrators, excavating the archive for non-existent property documents, and being exploited by lawyers—all in the pursuit of restoring their Hali caste name to qualify for SC benefits. Many Halis—non-literate village scratch farmers—are defeated by feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy. Their struggle is further complicated by a desire to
ascend the escalator of state recognition from forward caste Aryas to SC Halis to
ST Gaddi Dalits. Based on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that state
(mis)recognition can drive marginalization and coarsen psychosocial wellbeing.

“This science behind the creation of words, which was neglected for so long, should not be allowed to remain undiscovered,” claims Prabhat Rainjan Sarkar. “This is not only the case here – the same thing has been happening with all of the world’s languages. Wherever there are people, words are created based on these psycho-acoustic notes.” “First a vibration arises in the nerves when an object is seen, then a mental sound is created and finally a word is made based on that sound. In this way the original verbal roots of language are created based on psychic sounds, and different words have been created, and are being created, from these verbal roots.” P. R. Sarkar, (1921-1990), was a master of languages and a spiritual guru in the tradition of Shiva and Krishna, who founded the socio-spiritual movement Ananda Marga (“the Path of Bliss”).  –  Richard Gauthier, Department of Chemistry and Physics, Santa Rosa Junior College, Santa Rosa, California, USA, May 19, 2021.

The Indigenous Aryans theory, also known as the Out of India theory, proposes that the Indo-European languages, or at least the Indo-Aryan languages, originated within the Indian subcontinent, as an alternative to the established migration model which proposes the Pontic steppe as the area of origin of the IndoEuropean languages.
The indigenist view sees the Indo-Aryan languages as having a deep history in the Indian subcontinent, and being the carriers of the Indus Valley Civilization.
This view proposes an older date than is generally accepted for the Vedic period, which is generally considered to follow the decline of Harappan culture.

Този доклад е продължение (втора част) на лекцията озаглавена “Причерноморието – люлка на европейската цивилизация и Тракия като арийска сърцевина”, изнесена пред Международната научна конференция “Древна Тракия – сакрално и профанно. България, Балканите и Черноморската област”, Пловдив, 2019. Докато в първата част вниманието е фокусирано върху аргументи в полза на тезата за депресията, която днес е леглото на Черно море, като не само подслон за преживяване, но и “люлка” за създаване на генетичен резервоар благоприятстващ развитие на подслонената общност, втората част разглежда доказателствата за твърдението, че тук се развива бъдещата хронологически първа за човечеството цивилизация – тази на Арите (Арийците), които по-късно биват наричани също и Пеласги, Траки, Кимери, Илири и пр. Представени са няколко образци на урбанизирани общности на средна възраст около 7000 години, тоест, предхождащи всички други известни на човечеството. Представени са и оцелели във времето образци на протописменост, разпръснати преимуществено из Арийския континуум на Блаканите, тоест в ареала на Траките. В заключение е публикуван апел към всички – в научните среди, както и в кръговете на местния патриотизъм, за употреба на точна терминология, без ограниченията на политическата коректност и каквито и да е други съображения отвъд обективната реалност, за да се спрат спекулациите с нашето историческо и културно наследство.

A word-by-word explanation of the translation of the so-called creation hymn of Rigveda. The translation is very different from traditional ones.

As I demonstrate, the hymn has been completely misunderstood by previous translators.

The hymn has nothing to do with the origin or creation of the Universe. It is in fact, simply a prayer to God.

(This is my forthcoming research project. Actually, this is a continuation from my Master's thesis in Tribhuvan University (2003). In this work, I analyse the most archaic variety of the Darai language, spoken in the Pipaltar VDC, Tanahun, Nepal.)

The Darai (ISO 639-3: dry) language is spoken primarily in the inner Terai and the western hill area of the Tanahũ, Pālpā and Gorkhā districts of Nepal. Tanahũ has relatively large village clusters consisting of numerous hamlets in the foothills and on the banks of the Mādi and Nārāyani rivers. The language is spoken throughout the entire ridge of the mid-western mountains up to the border of Gorkhā, Pālpā, Chitwan and Nawalparāsi districts. Darais have also recently settled on the plains of Chitwan district. The social situation contributes to the fact that Darai is increasingly being supplanted by the Nepali and Thāru languages. The variety of the Darai language spoken in Chitwan is different from Pipaltār (Tanahũ) and Damauli; so there are already three dialects of Darai (viz. Chitwan, Damauli and Pipaltār) identified in my previous research (Paudyal 2003). At a purely lexical level, based on cognate counts from the Swadesh 100 word list, the similarity between the major branches of Darai is about 50 to 60 %, which exhibits a high level of intelligibility between them. The count between Chitwan and Damauli, for example, is 57 %, while intelligibility between Chitwan and Pipaltār is lower (Paudyal 2003). All three names of the dialects are exonyms, and the speakers themselves, regardless of their dialect, refer to their language simply as Darai Kurā (kurā is a Nepali term for ‘language’). This is the language Grierson (1909) calls Darhi and Dahi and Hodgson (1874) calls Dadhi.

The Darai and their ancestral language are somewhat of an enigma. Physically the Darai resemble many ethnic groups speaking Tibeto-Burman languages. But linguistically they speak an Indo-Aryan language belonging to the Indo-European family. Darai religion is highly syncretic and in many respects does not conform to orthodox Hinduism. For example, worshipping ancestors and nature (eg. sansāri devī), offering and consuming alcoholic drinks (local beer), and shamanic healing are part and parcel of their religion.

The Darai language is on the verge of extinction. Though the total number of the Darai population is estimated to be 10,210 (CBS report 2001), there are barely 1000 active speakers of the language. If nothing happens it is likely that the current or the next generation will be the last one to speak Darai. This language does not have its own written tradition (they use the Devanagari script nowadays), and it will definitely vanish within a very short period of time. The reasons for the decline in the use of Darai are many and varied. Prominent among them is undoubtedly the one-nation-one-language policy of the Nepalese state in the past. At present people are increasingly aware of the need for language preservation and promotion, but without a supportive language policy by the state and without support from the government, most of the minority languages of Nepal are doomed to extinction. Nepali as the national, official language is being used extensively in administration, education, the media and so on, and therefore speakers of other languages have no choice but to use their language less and Nepali more. As opportunities for using their own languages decrease, the younger generation tends to use more Nepali, thus losing their language loyalty.

Семененко А.А. О прародине индоиранцев (ариев) // Власть и общество: история взаимоотношений. Материалы Десятой региональной научной конференции (г. Воронеж, 19 марта 2016 г.) / под общ. ред. В.Н. Глазьева. — Воронеж: "ИСТОКИ", 2016. — С. 339–343.

Asiatic Muslims have been using swastikas in architecture and calligraphy for a long time.  This paper will introduce the swastika, followed by a virtual tour of Islamic swastikas throughout Asia.  Finally, an analysis of the validity of this practice according to Islamic sources will be presented.

A fresh and original translation from Sanskrit of the dashrajnya hymn (hymn 7.18 of Rig Veda) describing this defining battle between Aryan king Sudas and his Aryan as well as non-Aryan foes. The decisive battle led to the uprooting of many tribes from the Sapta Sindhu area.

Many existing beliefs are shown to be merely due to misunderstandings. Further, it is shown that the existing translations fall well short of the true meaning.
For example, no Matsya tribe was involved in this battle.

Семененко А.А. О возможности размещения первичного очага носителей индоевропейских языков в пограничье Ирана, Афганистана, Средней Азии и Индостана // Труды Маргианской археологической экспедиции. Том 7. Исследования Гонур-депе 2014-2015 гг. / Ред. Н.А. Дубова (отв. ред.), Е.В. Антонова, Р.Г. Мурадов, Р.М. Сатаев, А.А. Тишкин. — Москва: Старый сад, 2018. — С. 202-220.

In India the race discourse was distorted in the nineteenth century by pseudo-scientific anthropological classifications of Indian populations. Long lists of fictitious races filled academic publications -- and sometimes continue to be taught today, even though the race concept collapsed long ago. In the last two decades, population genetics has emerged as a powerful tool of inquiry into prehistoric migrations, and several studies conducted by multinational teams have cast a fresh look at India’s huge genetic diversity. Most have concluded that genetic connections between North India and Europe are much more ancient than the proposed dates for the Aryan invasion / migration, and failed to note a major addition to India’s gene pool in the second millennium BCE. Other important conclusions, such as a genetic continuum between Indian castes and tribes, are bound to radically alter our understanding of Indian populations. This paper presents a summary of recent findings in the field.

The presence or absence of the horse in the Indus-Sarasvati civilization has long been a matter of debate, especially in the context of the Aryan invasion theory. The argument is familiar: the Rig-Veda uses the word ashva over 200 times, ergo the Vedic society must have been full of horses, ergo the Harappan civilization, from which the noble animal is conspicuously absent, must be pre-Vedic and non-Aryan. The horse must therefore have been brought into India around 1500 BCE by the invading Aryans, who used its speed to crushing advantage in order to subdue the native, ox-driven populations. However, on closer scrutiny, there are serious flaws at every step of the argument — and indeed several concealed steps. This paper first examines the physical evidence of the horse from various Harappan sites, both in terms of skeletal remains and depictions, before turning to problems of methodology that have compounded the confusion, in particular the double-edged use of negative evidence, and the persisting colonial misreadings of the Rig-Veda.

Although there is some literature on compound and complex verbs (Boyé 1999, Pokharel 1999, Lohani 2003), as well as on finite verbs (Genetti 1999), no work has been done on three-argument verbs and the ways they code arguments in Nepali. This paper is the first work which describes three-argument verb constructions in Nepali. The linguistic data for this paper was mostly collected following the Questionnaire on Ditransitive Constructions (Comrie et al. 2009) and the ditransitive paper (Malchukov et al. 2009). It describes and analyses the coding properties and different types of syntactic alignments. It also addresses the effect of animacy and definiteness in differential object marking in Nepali.1 Moreover, it also deals with the behavioural properties of three-argument constructions with regard to a number of syntactic constructions such as passivization, incorporation, constituent questions, reciprocalization, reflexivization, relativization and Quantifier float.

Semenenko, Aleksandr Andreyevich. The absence of the sword from Rigveda and Atharvaveda and the problem of Indo-Aryans’ origin // Journal «Bulletin Social-Economic and Humanitarian Research». — № 1(3). — 2019. — e-ISSN 2658-5561. — P. 83–96.

During the Vedic Age in India, a group of people called the Aryans became a dominant culture if north India. These people spoke an early form of Sanskrit, “an Indo-European language closely related to Persian and more distantly related to Latin, Greek, Celtic, and their modern [linguistic] descendants” (McKay, 68). The Indo-European Aryans created a complex society with it’s own distinctive social structure, religious beliefs, and technologies.

Many languages within the northwestern region of Indo-Aryan display contrastive lexical tone. Most of these languages, and their tone systems, have not yet been extensively studied. I briefly survey these languages and propose an initial division into three groups, based (rather simple-mindedly) on the number of contrasting tones in a language (two vs. three vs. more than three). Geographically, the three groups correspond to three distinct areas on the map. I discuss each group and show how they are different from one another, not only with respect to tone itself, but also in the way tone interacts with word stress in those languages.

Agreement with both Agent and Object marking is a typologically less common feature of the languages of the world. It is rare in Indo-European/ Indo-Aryan languages. However, it is widespread in many Sino-Tibetan languages including Kiranti, Siberian and Caucasian languages as well. Darai stands out in this respect from other Indo-European languages not only because it has poly-personal agreement where both the subject and the object trigger agreement in transitive clause, but also due to its linear agreement of arguments in terms of person hierarchy. Besides this, it is also unique for hierarchical agreement marking where the highest-ranking non-first person argument triggers the agreement in some persons of the paradigms. This is reported to be an uncommon feature of the languages of the world; and it has not been observed yet in South Asian languages. But it has been reported for a number of Native American languages (Mithun 1991, 1999, Jany 2008).

ÖZET Oluşturulduğu dönemde " Millî Tarih Tezi " olarak isimlendirilmiş olmasına rağmen, Türk Tarih Tezi'nin argümanlarının büyük bölümü Batılı kaynaklardan özellikle de dönemin etkin akımlarından olan Aryan teorilerinden derlenmiştir. XX. Asrın başlarında bilim dünyasının tamamında benzer teoriler hâkim olduğu için bu türden bir derleme yapılmasında zorluk çekilmemiştir. Türk Tarih Tezi'ne yönelik eleştiri ve değerlendirmelerde genellikle benzer tarih teorilerinin o dönemdeki yaygınlığı üzerinde fazla durulmamaktadır. Bu çalışmamızda Türk Tarih Tezi'nin oluşumundaki dış ilhâmlar, etkiler ve diğer ülkelerdeki benzer tarih teorilerine değinilmiştir. Türk Tarih Tezi ile çağdaş olan benzer " romantik-milliyetçi " tarih teorilerinin incelenmesi Türk Tarih Tezi'nin oluşturulduğu atmosferin daha iyi anlaşılmasını sağlayacaktır.
Although it was entitled “National History Thesis” at the period of Turkish History
Thesis creation, most of the thesis’s fundamental arguents are collected from occidental –
especially Aryan theories- resaurces. Since similiar theories predaminate all over the world of
science at the beginning of the twetieth century, it’s collected similary withouth diffuculty. In
the criticisms and evalvations about turkish history thesis, it isn’t insisted on extremely this
period’s prevalence of similar history theories. In this study, it’s mentioned about foreign
inspiritions, effects of the creation’s turkish history thesisi and similar history theories of
other countries. The examination between turkish history thesis and similar history theories
which are romantic- national pravides to be understood very well the atmosphere of created
turkish history thesis.

This is a power point presentation done at the SI3 conference on December 23, 2017 challenging the assumptions and methodology of Iravatham Mahadevan's Indus decipherment. This dismantles the 'horse argument' of the Aryan Invasion Theory by showing that the animal motifs of the Indus are the same as the emblems of the losers of Mahabharata war and that no king of India until the Common Era ever had horse as their emblem. Another important idea discussed in this presentation pertains to similarities shared by Tamil, Sanskrit and Pali making them sister languages coming from a common proto-language.

The transcript of the paper presented in the Conference can be read here: https://www.academia.edu/40148326/Harappan_was_Vedic_but_Tamil_was_not_Dravidian_A_critical_evaluation_of_Iravatham_Mahadevans_works

El período histórico situado entre la así llamada “desaparición” de las culturas del Indo y la emergencia de la cultura védica es, indudablemente, uno de los más difíciles de interpretar, debido a la multiplicidad de restos arqueológicos encontrados y a la escasez de vestigios literarios que hagan referencia a la época.

Semenenko А.А. Watery Humpback Cattle Pattern in Rigveda and Archaeology of the Ancient East // Актуальные проблемы аграрной науки, производства и образования: материалы VI международной научно-практической конференции молодых ученых и специалистов (на иностранных языках) (Россия, Воронеж, апрель 2020 г.). ─ Воронеж: ФГБОУ ВО Воронежский ГАУ, 2020. ─ С. 306–309.

The paper deals mostly with the watery humpback cattle pattern in the Rigveda and should be read alongside with the watching of the author's presentation of the archaeological record of the RigVedic watery humpback cattle pattern in Baluchistan (from 4000 BCE and later), Afghanistan, Bactria-Margiana, Iran and Central Anatolia (between 2800 and 1000 BCE) (https://www.academia.edu/41216692/)
and the map of the archaeological dispersion of the watery humpback cattle pattern in these regions of Asia (https://www.academia.edu/41671121/).

The article is based upon the thesis of the existence of intense relations between the Northern Black Sea and Macedonia towards the end of the 2nd and the beginning of the 1st millennium BC, confirmed with various traditions related to rivers. Toponyms and ethnonyms containing the following roots sind-, sinth-, sith-, are given as a first indicator, confirmed in both regions through ancient sources, thus considering its Indo Aryan interpretation as a river. Such interpretation is considered in context of the theories of Indo-Aryans moving south of the Northern Black Sea at the second half of the 2nd millennium BC; the Balkans being one of their directions. This last trajectory is related to the presence of Cimmerians and Hyperboreans at this peninsula, also verified in ancient written sources. A special significance is given to the ancient reports of Aria as the oldest name for Thrace. Numerous archaeological finds also refer to these motions, confirmed with a relevant literature. Moreover, different traditions witnessed in ancient sources are noted regarding the role of rivers in the spiritual culture of populations of both regions, especially in genealogical myths. Bull as a zoomorphic epiphany of river gods is especially emphasized, manifested with similar traditions, among which the roots taur-, taor found in the toponymy, ethnonymy and the theonymy of both regions.

Key words: Indo-Aryans, Macedonia, river cults, Thraco-Cimmerians, Sindoi, Tauria

Семененко А.А. О «нестандартных» ригведийских «колесницах» (ратхах) // Труды Маргианской археологической экспедиции. Том 7. Исследования Гонур-депе 2014-2015 гг. / Ред. Н.А. Дубова (отв. ред.), Е.В. Антонова, Р.Г. Мурадов, Р.М. Сатаев, А.А. Тишкин. — Москва: Старый сад, 2018. — С. 221-239.

Семененко А.А. О крепостях в Ригведе и Атхарваведе Шаунаки и (Пре)Хараппе и датировке Самхит // Проблемы гуманитарных и социальных наук. Научный журнал / ФГБОУ ВО «Воронежский государственный технический университет». — Выпуск № 2 (15). — 2018. — С. 85–95. — ISSN 2587-7046.