Fascinating journey through Sindhu-Saraswati Civilization at LMU
Date Submitted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 http://www.indiajournal.com/images/1235780473-IMG_1124.JPG By K.B.NAIR India Journal is the leading Indo-American Newspaper in Southern California, having been printed weekly for the last 20 years, we are the oldest and most trusted name people turn to when they need up to date information on the Indo-American community.
http://www.indiajournal.com/pages/event.php?id=6116 Meet on Vedic-Sarasvati Hindu Civilisation-IV SUNDARAM | Thu, 19 Feb, 2009 , 02:29 PM (Newstoday) . ‘Though sixteen civilizations may have perished already to our knowledge, and nine others may be now at the point of death, we—the twenty-sixth—are not compelled to submit the riddle of our fate to the blind arbitrament of statis-tics. The divine spark of creative power is still alive in us, and, if we have the grace to kindle it into flame, then the stars in their courses cannot defeat our efforts to attain the goal of human endeavor’
— Arnold J Toynbee. (1889-1975)
http://newstodaynet.com/images/stories/columns/sharpshot/2009-images/1902-sun1.gif Dr Nalini Rao http://newstodaynet.com/images/stories/columns/sharpshot/2009-images/1902-sun2.gif Dr Christopher Key Chapple An international conference on the The Sindhu- Sarasvati Valley Civilization will be held on 21 and 22 February, 2009 in Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, California. DR NALINI RAO, Professor of World Art, Soka University of America and DR CHRISTOPHER KEY CHAPPLE, Doshi Professor of Indic and Comparative Theology, Loyola Marymount University have teamed up together to organize this important conference. Prominent scholars particularly archaeologists, linguists, anthropologists, historians, religious specialists and geneticists would be participating in this conference in order to debate and understand the nature of the interrelation between the Indus or Sindhu and the Sarasvati or Vedic culture(s) from about 3000 B.C. to 1000 B.C. They would also be attempting to bridge the chronological, linguistic and racial gap between the material and literary cultures of the Indus civilization and Vedic civilization. It is understood that the main focus of this International conference will be on the issues raised by the following questions:
http://newstodaynet.com/images/stories/columns/sharpshot/2009-images/1902-sun3.gif An artistic view of the dockyard at Lothal – a major metropolis of Sarasvati Civilisation
The prominent scholars who would be participating in the International conference include Jonathan Mark Kenoyer (University of Wisconsin), Carl C. Lamberg-Karlovsky), Dr B B Lal (Archaeological Survey of India) R S Bisht (Archaeological Survey of India), Louis Flam (City University of NY), S R Rao (Archaeological Survey of India, National Institute of Oceanography), Edwin Bryant (Rutgers University), Shiva Bajpai (CSUN) , Vijendra Kumar Kashyap (India’s National Institute of Biologicals), Subhash Kak (Oklahama State University), Ashok Aklujkar (University of British Columbia), Jim G Shaffer (Case Western Reserve University, Dennis Frenez (University of Bologna) and Nicholas Kazanas (Omilos Meleton Cultural Institute, Athens). The aim of the International Conference is to discuss, reconsider and reconstruct a shared identity of the Sindhu (Indus) and Saraswati cultures, using archaeological and other scientific evidence as well as Vedic literature. For two days eminent archaeologists, linguists, anthropologists, historians, religious studies specialists and geneticists will present and discuss their findings on the salient issues of the Sindhu-Saraswati civilization and assess its contribution to Indian culture. The conference hopes to inform the general educated public about the contribution of these early South Asian cultures to world civilization, and about the issues and problems of interpretation related to them. The discussion themes would include the following:
1 .Time: Chronology of Indus Valley and Vedic Cultures. 2. People: Linguistic Relationship 3. Place: Geographical location: The Saraswati and the Indus cultural habitats 4. Patterns of Cultural Interactions: Trade, Religion, Polity. 5. Origins: Homeland, Migration. Etc. 6. Continuities: Biological, Ethnological
According to Dr Nalini Rao, the interpretations by scholars in the conference will be rooted in Scientific scholarship and presented with clarity and brevity for the sake of the educated public. They will touch upon areas of consensus and contentions with a tentatively conclusive interdisciplinary understanding upon the topics like Indus and Sarasvati, Ecology and culture, Indus and Aryan: Race and Language, The Indus Script/Language, Population: Migration and Settlement, Socio-political Organizations and DNA and Astronomical evidences. http://newstodaynet.com/images/stories/columns/sharpshot/2009-images/1902-sun4.gif Dr S Kalyanaraman
According to Dr S Kalyanaraman—whom I have often described as Edward Gibbon on Saraswati Civilization and Culture—the proposed International Conference at Los Angeles is only a continuation of a Conference on “Vedic River Saraswati and Hindu Civilization” held at India International Center, New Delhi from 24 and 26 October, 2008. Participants included scholars from many disciplines including ancient Indian History, Archaeology, Space Imaging, Hydrology, Meteorology, Glaciology, Seismology, Ice-Age Geodynamics, Sea-level changes, Metallurgy and other Earth-and life-sciences. The scholars from various disciplines included Professor K S Vaidya, INSA Golden Jubilee Professor in Geodynamics, Jawaharlal Nehru Advanced Center for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangaluru; Professor B B Lal, Former Director General of Archaeological Survey of India; Dr. Gnaneshwar Chaubey, University of Cambridge; Professor Shivaji Singh, Former Head of the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Indian History, Gorakhpur University; Professor T P Verma of Benares Hindu University; Dr K N Dixit and Dr R S Bisht, Former Directors General of ASI and Dr M Rao, Scientist from ONGC working on Saraswati Project in Haryana-Rajasthan; Water Management Experts from Haryana working on reviving Vedic River Saraswati and Dr S Kalyanaraman, Director, Saraswati Research Center, Chennai.
The conference explored the validation of a consensus that the ancient civilization that emerged and prospered on the banks of Vedic River Saraswati is the precursor to the civilization that is known and exists today as a living force called Hindu Civilization, establishing a continuum of human society and achievement going back to the dawn of ancient Indian History. As a result of archaeological explorations ever since 1947, it became very clear over 80% of nearly 2600 archaeological sites were not on the banks of River Sindhu but on the banks of Vedic River Saraswati mentioned in Rig Veda in 72 rca-s. Their new findings are based on a variety of disciplines; hydrology, meteorology, glaciology, seismology, sea-level changes, ice-age cycles, evolution of metallurgical and other technologies, genetics, architectural, agricultural and other cultural artifacts. These findings throw a new light on the civilization which is now rightly called Indus-Saraswati Civilization or Saraswati-Hindu Civilization.
What is the cataclysmic effect of this crucial finding? As Dr Kalyanaraman puts it: ‘Underscoring the indigenous evolution of Hindu Civilization on this River (Saraswati) basin, theories propounded earlier about Aryan invasions/migrations stand negated. Projects are going on to revive the Saraswati River which provides an impetus for establishing a National Water Grid.’
Swami Dayanand Saraswati was the main Vishwakarma of the Conference on Vedic River Saraswati and Hindu Civilization held in New Delhi in October 2008. On the transcendental significance of Saraswati River Hindu Civilization, he has observed as follows: ‘The hoary and sacred River Saraswati played a great role in the simple lives of the Vedic people of India of the recent centuries. It was indelibly associated with the collective consciousness of the community, the precursor of the later Hindu Civilization. The achievements of the people of the Saraswati Region were extraordinary. The great Vedas, the Vedic Sanskrit language and the cultural symbols, practices and achievements have formed a continuum over thousands of years….It is a matter of great satisfaction that thanks to the efforts in the State of Haryana, Saraswati stands rejuvenated above the ground right into Rajasthan. Those who take pride in their civilizational identity will indeed be happy when the Saraswati River finally joins the sea waters on the West of our country, after traversing through Gujarat. The ancient symbol will then once again acquire renewed significance in the memory and rituals of the people of the country.’
When I asked Dr Kalyanaraman whether he would like to propose any additional issues relating to Vedic Sarasvati Hindu Civilization for scientific examination at the ensuing International Conference at Los Angeles in June 2009, he suggested that the following two fundamental questions have to be researched further:
1. The emphatic continuity of the Sarasvati Civilization evidenced by cultural markers all over India and the neighbouring regions; 2. The formation and evolution of languages in a linguistic area of the Sarasvati civilization proved by the decoding of the Indus script (Sarasvati hieroglyphs) 3. Language and culture have to be viewed as intertwined, continuing legacies. In this context the following aspects have to be further explored:
Dr Kalyanaraman has summed up all this in one brilliantly compressed sentence pregnant with multiple forms and shades of sparkling meaning: “Cultural continuum justifies search for mleccha glosses from ancient forms of words of the linguistic area.” Without the impulse of curiosity, there cannot be any intellectual action in any field. As Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) puts it: ‘Action is the crux. To fail to take action, or to miss the right moment for taking it, is as disastrous for intellectual work as it is for practical work; and in the intellectual field the danger of miscarriage through inaction is more insidious, because the nemesis is usually not so quickly manifest. Since curiosity is the generator of intellectual action, an imperative and pertinacious curiosity is the intellectual workers prime need. If this curiosity is strong enough it can move mountains’. No wonder Dr Kalyanaraman is always able to move mountains in the field of historic, archeological and linguistic Research.
(To be contd...) http://newstodaynet.com/col.php?section=20&catid=33
Meet on Vedic-Sarasvati Hindu Civilisation-II V SUNDARAM | Fri, 20 Feb, 2009 , 03:31 PM (Newstoday evening daily of Chennai) http://newstodaynet.com/images/stories/columns/sharpshot/2009-images/2002-sun1.gif
In Bharat, the civilization finds its continuity, exemplified by the Bha_rati_ya cultural traditions, a veritable legacy of the modes of living describe in the Vedic texts and a living testimony to the evidence of arts and crafts of the copper and bronze ages, found in thousands of archaeological sites. The Croats (of erstwhile Yugoslavia) claim that they are “SARASVATS”! The Behistan (Iran) inscription of Darius does refer to the region called Hravat (Haraquaiti) which is a phonetic transform for Sarasvati. Sarasvati—Haraquaiti—Hravat-Kravat-Croat! (They have URLs linked with Sarasvati website on the internet; http://sarasvati.simplenet.com)
Dr. Kalyanaraman, the foremost international authority on Vedic Sarasvati Civilization and Culture has rightly observed: ‘Indus Sarasvati (or Sarasvati-Sindhu or Sarasvati-Hindu) Civilization flourished circa 2500 to 1700 BCE on the river valleys of Indus and Sarasvati and the cultural continuum is evidenced right into the historical periods. The drying up of the Sarasvati river led to migrations of people. The search for the language of the times may have to be based on identification of the ancient morphemes, starting from a study of comparative morphemes (with similar sounds and similar meanings) of the present day languages spoken in the linguistic area of South Asia in the regions extending from Gandhara to Assam, from Nepal to Srilanka. This approach enables the rebus decoding of the Sarasvati hieroglyphs (so called Indus script). Hindu Civilization was nurtured on the river basin from Rig Vedic times and the cultural indicators evidenced by archaeological discoveries and textual references, attest to the continuity of Hindu culture into historical periods. These make the Sarasvati River basin the fountain source of a continuum called Hindu civilization which can be traced back to at least 8500 years Before Present (BP) (cf. the evidence of sankha bangle made of turbinella pyrum shell in the burial of a woman at Mehergarh, 500 kms. North of Karachi. The nearest source for this shell is Makaran Coast near Karachi.’
Many scientist and scholars have established the courses of the ancient channels of Saravati River using satellite images and geological/earthscience studies. Professor K S Valdiya, Professor of Geodynamics, Jawaharlal Nehru Advanced Center for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangaluru, has given a vividly brilliant account of the rediscovery of Vedic River Sarasvati. A major river known as the Sarasvati was formed by the confluence of the Shatadru (Satluj) and the Yamuna (of the past) which flowed through Haryana, Southern Punjab, North-Western Rajasthan and Eastern Sind and emptied itself in the Gulf of Kutch. This river was greatly revered by the Rig Vedic Scholars and it nurtured the Harappan Civilization until it disappeared during the Late Holocene time 3000 to 4000 years Before Present. K S Valdiya has described this in his own inimitable style: ‘The disappearance of the Sarasvati is a case of river piracy by branches of the Ganga and Sindhu rivers’.
Map of Vedic Sarasvati drawn by Professor KS Valdiya, Professor of Geodynamics, Jawaharlal Nehru Advanced Center for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangaluru, who is the world’s foremost authority on geohydrology of Himalayan rivers. The map also explains the diversion of Yamuna and Sutlej away from Sarasvati due to plate tectonics and resultant river migrations.
Professor K S Valdiya has woven together various threads of evidence adduced from Archaeological, Geomorphological and Drainage-related studies and gleaned relevant information from satellite images. Putting all this together in proper perspective, he has surmised that the Sarasvati River rose in the snowy realm of the Himadri in Northwestern Uttarakhand and flowed Southwest through one of the tributaries of the present day Ghaggar River of the foothills, meeting the then Southeast flowing Shatadru (Satluj) at Shatrana about 15 kms south of Patiala. At the confluence, the channel was 6 to 8 kms wide, pointing to a very high discharge of the Sarasvati. The Ghaggar River is known as the Hakra in its middle reaches and as the Nara in the lower regions.
Professor K S Valdiya concludes like an academic Jurist : ‘Significantly, the ground water recovered in the middle reaches from tube wells deeper than 60m was found to be 22000 to 6000 years old, whereas in the shallow-well water carbon has been dated at 5000 to 1800 years. The age of the water increases downstream from Kishangarh. Since the tritium value is negligible, these waters do not represent the rain water fed through contemporary recharge by rain water. The deeper—and older—water must be attributed to the ancient Sarasvati River that flowed in the time earlier than 5000 yr BP….Later during the time of Gautama Buddha (who lived in the East 2600 yr BP) the Shatadru River (Satluj) betrayed the Sarasvati, as it abruptly swerved westward to join the Beas River of the Sindhu system. Deprived of the waters of these two major Rivers, the Sarasvati became a dry channel. The collapse of the Harappan Civilization seems to be wholly due to the disappearance of the Sarasvati and its associated rivers’.
http://newstodaynet.com/images/stories/columns/sharpshot/2009-images/2002-sun2.gif
There is an organized gang of evangelical anti-Hindu academic gangsters in United States led by one Professor Witzel. Any one can see that he is a man with a closed mind on all things relating to Hindu Religion, Hindu Civilization, and Hindu Culture. He seems to be very upset (not intellectually but religiously and culturally in the evangelical sense or nonsense!) over the great initiative taken by Dr.Nalini Rao and Dr. Christopher Key Chapple to organize an international conference on Vedic Sarasvati Hindu Civilization at Los Angeles in June 2009. We can clearly see Witzel talking like a third grade pseudo-secular anti-Hindu Congress Politician in India. He has said ‘Whenever the Harappan or Indus civilization is relabeled ‘SINDHU-SARASVATI CIVILIZATION’, everyone involved in the field, if not the public, recognizes that he or she has stumbled into extremists HINDUTVA (Hindu nationalist and/or fundamentalist) Territory…. This being said, why—besides all-too-familiar Hindutva apologists including Subhash Kak, Nicholas Kusanas, BB Lal etc.—are a handful of major Western archaeologists including most notably Mark Kenoyer, Maurizio Tosi and Carl Lamberg-Karlovsky, taking path in the Conference? Certainly not because any of them would personally endorse the absurd ‘SINDHU-SARASVATI CIVILIZATION’ label in print—since they wouldn’t. Instead, to put it frankly, due to (1) money and (2) in some cases earlier access to Harappan Archaeological sites on the Indian side of the Indian-Pakistan divide. It takes enormous funds to run these conferences, doled out freely for honoraria and expenses (the invitees are flown in at huge expense by the rich NRIs (non-resident Indians) who fund them from Europe, India and the United States.; Evangelical academics like Professor Witzel are known internationally for their simple and Spartan living and tortuously complicated thinking!
Witzel is a viciously brazen and brazenly vicious anti-Hindu evangelical racketeer. This is his legally known academic background. An important Hindu Civil Rights casse is being fought in UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA related to the textbook and educational material prepared by California State Board of Education (CBE) to teach Hindu civilization to 8th grade students. The textbooks indoctrinate children with Abrahamic religions and teach biblical events as actual facts while treating Hinduism in a derogatory manner. The board failed to provide equal opportunities and equal representation to every religion and culture. CAPEEM was formed to represent parents in California in a lawsuit against the State Board of Education.
It has been presented in the California court that this evangelical Witzel who was engaged as a consultant by CBE has worked with the Church in Colorado and even edited their Wikipedia entry to suppress the evangelical nature of the church. Asian Invasion Theory is Biblical and that is why Witzel and his anti-hindu hate group cohorts support it. The intervention of Witzel and co. in California textbook content was part of a plan to induct Biblical beliefs into the curriculum. Witzel was a central figure in the motivated evangelical effort!
Harvard Donkey Trial pits science against creationism with Hindus on the side of science and the Harvard professor Witzel, who has been some sort of a volunteer for a fanatical evangelical group in Colorado, on the side of creationism. Witzel famously claimed that horses in India were donkeys in order to push the biblical Japhetic Race Theory into textbooks.
CAPEEM which is fighting the text book case, which I call Harvard Donkey Trial, served a number of subpoenas to various parties including textbook publishers, Hotmail, Dalit Freedom Network, Michael Witzel, Stanley Wolpert, Charles Munger, Dalit Solidarity Forum operating out of St. Alban’s Church in New Jersey, and also sought documents from the officials of CDE and SBE. In the discovery process, Witzel turned over some more documents including an email uncovering the fact that the CDE had conducted a secret meeting that was previously unheard of. This meeting with anti-Hindu groups was in addition to the secret meeting that CDE had conducted with Witzel and others.
CAPEEM (California Parents for the Equalisation of Education Materials) also uncovered a link between Michael Witzel and Dalit Freedom Network (DFN), a group that operates out of a church in Colorado. Witzel coordinated his campaign with DFN and planned in advance the details of what would be spoken at meetings. Witzel also sent an email alerting DFN to the description of their organization on Wikipedia and stated that whenever he erased the description, it kept coming back. An office bearer of DFN followed up on this email by saying that she did not want to ‘start being identified as a missions organization’ and wanted to know if they could edit it themselves. (Source: http://capeem.org )
I asked Dr Kalyanaraman (whom Professor Witzel and others would love to describe as an ignorant and savage paganish heathen without any hope of redemption!) as to what he has to say about Professor Witzel’s views. He told me ‘I wonder why the very words/phrases Sarasvati and Hindu Civilization sends some anti-Hindu hate groups into tantrums. I think the reason is simple; it is related to a saying in Tamil: ‘Muzhu poosanikkaayai sottile maraikka mudiyaadu (an entire pumpkin cannot be hidden in a small plate of cooked rice) Sarasvati River is such a reality that it cannot escape the attention of any geologist or student of Civilization Studies.’
(Concluded)
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