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A maritime Rigveda? — How not to read ancient texts
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To impute modern/medieval meanings when reading the Rigveda is a dangerous undertaking — as it is with all archaic texts, from Homer to the Bible to Confucius. Even Shakespeare, who wrote a mere 400 years ago, is not always immediately accessible to readers of modern English.
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In last week's Open Page, David Frawley or, as he likes to refer to himself, Pandit Vamadeva Shastri, who makes part of his living teaching "Vedic astrology" and providing private "astrological consultations, mainly along medical or spiritual lines" (http://www.vedanet.com/consultations.htm, http://www.vedicsoftware.com/training.htm), once more tried to establish the hoary antiquity and continuity of Indian civilisation from early post-glacial times onwards. He tried to forge a link between the supposed cities at Cambay at 7500 BCE, the Indus Civilisation (2600-1900 BCE) and the Vedic texts. It is unscientific and can easily be falsified on the basis of the available evidence (and with the help of Occam's razor).
Though virtually every other sentence in last week's write-up is demonstrably wrong, not all items can be discussed here in detail, and I will have to restrict myself to the main points.
Bad philology
Frawley complains that "many scholars who put forth opinions on ancient India seldom bother to study the Vedas in the original Sanskrit and few know the language well enough to do so." However, sure as he is of his own understanding of the Rigveda (RV), this is an amateurish, naive reading of the text, to say the least. His interpretations insert later meanings into this highly archaic and highly poetical text. Frawley's `innovative' thesis of a maritime nature of Vedic culture is diametrically opposed to the commonly held opinion of historians and philologists alike, of a landlocked Rigveda, composed in the Greater Panjab.
A key point is Frawley's understanding of the word samudra as `ocean'. This translation may be natural to a modern or medieval reader, but it does not take into account the linguistic, philological and mythological investigations of the term that have been carried out at great length for some 150 years. Frawley is unaware of, or unwilling to access this discussion, from C. Lassen (1847) to H. Lueders (1951-59) and to K. Klaus. Importantly, the last survey and summary by K. Klaus (1985, 1986, 1989) was written when this scholar still was unaware of and not biased by the then intensifying discussion in India about the Sarasvati river. In the Rigveda (and later on, in the Vedic texts at large), we have to distinguish at least three different types of samudra:
1. The "confluence of rivers" from sam `together' + udra, from the old r/n stem seen in English water, Old Norse watn, Greek hudoor, Sanskrit udan-, udr- (cf. udra `water animal, otter'). Such a confluence can be that of the Panjab rivers (as seen in most passages of the RV), a large lake such as the terminal lakes in the desert, and — at least theoretically — also the ocean.
2. Indeed, it is the mythical ocean at the end of the world that is meant a few times. This idea is not unusual as even landlocked people have the idea that the world is surrounded, as in the Puranas, by an ocean. This is also seen in the Iranian hendu (Avesta, Yasna 57.29 = Skt. sindhu!) situated at the two ends of the world (Witzel 1984), on the oldest Mesopotamian map, or in the Greek circular ookeanos of Homer. — The Muni (RV 10.136.5) dwells "on the eastern and western ocean." But the RV also has four oceans (RV 9.33.6, 10.47.2), and the Atharvaveda has a `northern, upper' one (11.2.25). What might it this be in India: G. Tilak's Polar Sea, the home of his Aryans? Rather, it is the `upper', heavenly ocean at night (see below). We also find, just as in Mesopotamia and elsewhere, a mythical (salty) ocean at the time of creation, RV 10.190 1 sqq.
3. The heavenly "ocean" is seen at RV 6.58.3 with `golden boats in the sea, in the Antariksha'; it is also called a heavenly `pond' (saras) in a Yajurveda Samhita Brahmodya. Many stories in the RV take place in the night time sky, notably that of Varuna's ship, or the voyage of Bhujyu (Oettinger 1988). All of this should have been well known since Lueders (1951-59) and Kuiper (summarised in 1983).
If we try to find a real, terrestrial ocean, that is the Arabian Sea or the Bay of Bengal, this may be possible only in a few passages, all discussed by Klaus (1986-9). Importantly, had the Rigvedic poets personally known the ocean and the long range maritime trade that Frawley desperately wants to discover, they should have mentioned, at least in passing, such typical features of the ocean as its salinity or its tides. We do not hear of it.
Further, the Rigvedic poetic diction concerning the samudra is exactly the same as that used for the rivers: swelling, spreading, growing (at snow melt in spring). Even in post-RV texts (Katha 17.17, Maitrayani 2.10.1, Vajasaneyi Samhita 17.4) it is a sweet water plant, Blyxa actandra (avakaa), that is connected with the samudra: "we cover you, Agni, with the avakaa (plant) of the samudra"!
In sum, in the personal experience of the Rigvedic poets we can find only the confluence of the Panjab rivers, the mythical or "night time" ocean, but apparently not the Arabian Sea or the very distant Bay of Bengal.
To impute modern/medieval meanings when reading the RV therefore is a dangerous undertaking — as it is with all archaic texts, from Homer to the Bible to Confucius. Even Shakespeare, who wrote a mere 400 years ago, is not always immediately accessible to readers of modern English.
Frawley's discussion represents a simplistic approach to myth and mythology. Very briefly, god Varuna is not just the lord of the ocean, as he is now, but in the RV he is, much more importantly, the chief (raajan) of the Adityas, the group gods reinforcing Law and Order (Rta, later on called Dharma). Therefore it does not matter at all that the RV sage Bhrigu supposedly is a descendent of the "sea god" Varuna, or that certain rishis like Vasistha have been born from a pot — which is a long way from a ship! Or, Manu's flood myth is widely spread, not just in Mesopotamia and the Bible, but in a large area from the African Sahel belt to Hawaii(!) and the Amazon. There is nothing typically Rigvedic about all of this.
Incidentally, he does not even get his history of Vedic S'aakhaas right: the Taittiriyas may have been South Indian at least since Gupta times, but their Samhita and Brahmana texts clearly point to their homeland in U.P. (Witzel 1987).
There also is obvious misinformation in his Open Page article, e.g. when "kings like Sudas were said to receive tribute from the sea (RV I.47.6)." The hymn does not contain any such thing; instead the Ashvin deities are asked to bring "us" riches from the samudra or heaven(!) Or, that "Harappan seals portray a three-headed bull-like animal. Such an animal is described in the Rig Veda (III.56.6)" Frawley probably meant verse 3, not 6. But, the whole hymn plays on the number `3' and there is nothing special to the bull in verse 3, with 3 heads, 3 udders(!!), and 3 (not 4!) stomachs.
Antiquity frenzy
Be that as it may, Frawley's elaborations in the last Open Page are, as is more and more commonly seen now, due to the increasing zeal to prove the hoary age and "continuity" of Indian civilisation ever since the Ice Age. In this kind of antiquity frenzy (see http://www.umass.edu/wsp/methodology/antiquity/index.html), even a little fudging is welcome, for example in the case of the Cambay finds. It has been pointed out by competent scholars and lay persons from the very beginning that a dredged piece of wood carbondated to c. 7500 BCE, amusingly one found in an area with strong currents, does not make for proof of a contemporary "city" whose outlines are supposed to be seen on some sonar pictures. Having secured this unique piece of "evidence," Frawley connects it straightaway with the "Harappan cities in 3300-1900 BCE" — conveniently forgetting that at 3300 BCE Harappa was just a village and that planned settlement with a grid network of streets began only by 2600 BCE.
Similarly shaky is another piece of early "evidence", that of Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador to the Maurya court (c. 300 BCE). He tells us that 153 Indian kings go back to c. 6700 BCE, thus, with Frawley, right back to a date "reflected in the Gulf of Cambay site." Ancient `kings' of what? Of Neolithic villages? Secondly, all such dynastic schemes are built, in India, on the principle of putting one dynastic list before another, even if these `royal' houses reigned as contemporaries (Witzel 1990). The application of the method could still be seen in process in the Rajatarangini of Kashmir, in M.A. Stein's time, a mere hundred years ago!
Just as his philological expertise, Frawley's historical acumen is seriously lacking. Yet, he has other arrows in his quiver, "material evidence", thus "hard core" natural science. That should convince us! Alas, his use of "material evidence" suffers from the same type of shortcomings, notably, a lack of scientific background reading and from misreporting. For example, I have never advocated "to separate Vedic culture from India" but I have described (also above!) the RV as an already genuine South Asian text of the Greater Panjab, even if its Indo-Iranian antecedents lie outside the subcontinent (but so does the Greek poetry of Homer, that is outside of Greece). I also do not subscribe to a "one shot argument" (note the Wild West terminology!) about missing Indus horses, "that not enough evidence of horses has been found in Harappan sites to prove a Vedic connection..." and I do not "ignore any other evidence to the contrary." There is, instead, a host of other evidence, from the lack in the Rigveda of Harappan style big cities, large buildings, great baths, ocean going ships, long distance trade, to a completely differing spiritual world (deities, myths, rituals).
As for the ever-elusive Harappan horse, Frawley believes that the "Rig Veda with its seventeen-ribbed horse (RV I.162.18) describes ... a native Indian breed and not any Central Asian or Eurasian horse that has eighteen ribs." Again, had he read the literature or even the Open Page this year, he would have seen that the number of ribs and lumbar vertebrae is not a genetic feature but a variable trait in horses, — as duly pointed out by me here between January and April. Incidentally, this is an interesting case. Over the past two years I have watched, with some amusement, how "Vedic Harappan" enthusiasts have convinced themselves on various email lists about this "native Indian horse with 17 ribs" — without any scientific study quoted; by now, it is part and parcel of "Sarasvati folklore" and Harappan "urban myth" — but it is not found in zoological handbooks.
It also is simply not true, as Frawley alleges, that there is "no trail of horse bones or horse encampments ... during the 1500-1000 BCE period," through Afghanistan/E. Iran, of the speakers of Indo-Aryan (Vedic). What about the finds of horses and horse implements exactly on the right track down from the steppes, at Pirak in E. Baluchistan (c. 1800 BCE) and in the Gandhara Grave Culture around 1400 BCE? Even though the area between E. Iran (Khorasan) and the Panjab plains is largely archaeologically unexplored for the mid-second millennium BCE, we already have the clearly intrusive Pirak and Gandhara cultures. (Steppe influence is also seen in the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex). In addition, the study of male genes (Y chromosome) is now beginning to detail the ancient movements of groups and tribes. Further, comparative linguistics is beginning to provide a layer of loan words, found both in Old Iranian and Vedic, that have been taken over from the Bactria Margiana Archaeological Complex (2400-1600 BCE), — that is before their respective movement into Iran and the Greater Panjab (Witzel 1995, 1999).
Therefore, instead of Frawley's supposed "smokescreen" of Indologists and historians denying to accept his supposed "no such break in the continuity" between the Indus and the Vedic cultures, his (pseudo-Vedic) Harappan "fire altars", the "shift of the centre of culture from the Sarasvati to the Ganga at the end of Vedic period," all these developments have their own explanations. This would need further discussion that cannot be given here in detail (but has been supplied already a year ago in EJVS 7-3, see http://users.primushost.com/india/ejvs/issues.html, a criticism that has not been dislodged by Frawley et al.). Frawley further alleges: "Witzel would have the Vedic people coming into India after the Sarasvati was already gone and yet making the river their ancestral homeland and most sacred region!" — This is, of course, not at all what I have written: the Rigvedic homeland of the Indo-Aryans was the Greater Panjab (Witzel 1995), and only post-Rigvedic economic, social and political processes in the emerging Kuru Realm were at the root of the shift of the Vedic "centre" to the Kuruksetra area, on the eastern outskirts of the Rigvedic Panjab (see Witzel 1997, further details in a book forthcoming in India). Frawley has not studied, or indeed read, about the complex forces at work during this foundational period of Indian civilisation that set the framework for most social and religious formations to come, — often until today (Witzel, EJVS 1-4, 1995, EJVS 5-1, 1999)
Frawley's `vision'
In the end, Frawley simply repeats his Mantra (mildly contradicting his own current fascination with a southern, oceanic Rigveda) that "We can no longer separate this great literature and this great civilisation, — particularly given that both were based on the Sarasvati River" ... "Vedic literature requires a great urban culture to explain it, just as the great Harappan urban culture requires a literature to explain it." This "vision" is plainly impossible: geographically there may be a degree of overlap, but it is one set apart by centuries of intervening cultural developments; and there is comparatively little overlap as far as the nature of the material and spiritual cultures of both civilisations are involved. (No one denies that certain Indus elements, particularly on the village and folk level, continue during the Vedic period).
However, in spite of some recent creative, but not philologically informed, writing to the contrary (such as seen in G.C. Pande, ed., The Dawn of Indian Civilisation, 1999), nothing in the Vedic texts indicates the Harappan urban culture reflected in archaeology. Just because the Indus Civilisation lacks large written texts (as seen in the Near Eastern, Chinese or the Maya cultures) this does not require this gap be filled by the next best texts, those of the Veda. Instead, the archaeological, literary and linguistic facts have to be accepted, even if they are not pleasant for one's fantasies of great post-glacial cities and the cradle of world civilisation in the Gangetic basin.
Thus, there is no need to lament with D. Frawley/Pt. Vamadeva Sastri: "It is sad to note how intellectuals in India are quick to denigrate the extent and antiquity of their history... I don't think there is any other nation on earth that would be so negative if such ancient glories were found in their lands." He again overlooks another important trait in Indian civilisation, present since the Rigvedic Brahmodya type discussions, that is a consistent spirit of inquiry and debate (vivaada). No one is convinced, as the constant back and forth on this very Open Page shows, by a monolateral and monolithic "vision" of an elusive Golden Age that is now increasingly imposed on schools and universities.
My publications referred to above can be found at: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/witzel/mwpage.htm.
MICHAEL WITZEL
Harvard University
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