The Expansion of Early Vedic Age

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Initial Aryan settlements in India, seem to have been the Punjab and Delhi reigon. Most frequently mentioned rivers are the Sindhu (Indus), the Saraswati (modern Sarsuti), now lost in the Rajasthan deserts, the Drishadvati (Ghaggar) and the five streams of Sutudri (Sutlej), Vipas (Beas), Parushni (Ravi), Asikni (Chenab), and Vitasta (Jhelum).

The geographical knowledge of he early Aryans did not extend beyond the Yumuna.

The early Aryan settlers were engaged in taking possession of the Land of the Seven Rivers (saptasindhava) represented by the Indus and its principal tributaries. This often led to conflicts between various Aryan tribes. Read more

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Tags: Aryans, Battle, dass or dasyus, Early Vedic Age, expansion, india, kings, punjab, rig veda, vishvamitra, wars

Where Did Aryans Come From?

There are, several schools of thought regarding the original home of the Aryans.

As per Prof. Macdonell, their original home was in South-East of Europe. A.C. Dass says that their original home was India. Others say that they first lived in central Asia, whereas another theory believes them to have come form Arctic regions.

According to Prof. Max Muller, a great German scholar, there was a time when the ancestors of the Indians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Germans and the Celts, lived at one place. The study of the languages of these people clearly shows that at one time these different nations must have had one common habitat.

Words like The ‘Pita’ and ‘Mata’ of the Indian are essentially the same as the Persian ‘Pidar’ and ‘Madar’ the Latin ‘Pater’ and ‘Mater’, and the English ‘Father’ and ‘Mother’. These are words of everyday use in families which could not have been adopted unless, at some distant time, the ancestors of these people had lived at one common place.

The Aryans, who today occupy European countries, migrated by a route south of the Caspian, through Asia Minor to Greece and Italy; and one of their groups came to India through the north-west passages.

But Shri Bal Ganga Dhar Tilak, the great Maratha scholar and nationalist, in his “Arctic Home in the Vedas” has tried to prove that the original home of the Aryans was the Arctic region.

By a careful and close study of the Rigveda and Zend-Avesta, by comparing the Flora and fauna in these books with those of the area which we today call the Arctic region, he has formulated a theory that our ancestors originally lived in the tract between the North Pole and the Arctic Circle.

Geologists have proved that in pre-historic times there was a congenital climate and perpetual spring in those areas.

The theory of Tilak, therefore, cannot be rejected.

A.C. Dass, a Bengali historian locates the original home of the Aryans in the ancient Sapt-Sandhu or the modern, Punjab. He says that all the plants and animals mentioned in the Rigveda and other ancient books were found in the ancient Punjab, which was called Sapt-Sandhu. The geography of the ancient Punjab was also the same, which the internal study of the Rigveda reveals as to the original habitat of the Aryans.

A.C. Dass sayys

The original cradle of the Aryans was, therefore, Sapt-Sandhu, which included the beautiful valley of Kashmir on the north and Gandhara on the west. Its southern boundary was Rajputana and its easern boundary covered the Gangetic trough.

It was completely cut off from southern India by sea, but it was connected by land with western Asia in the direction of Gandhara and Kabulistan through which waves after waves of Aryan immigrants advanced to the west and to Europe the earliest Aryan tribes had left Sapt-Sandhu having been pushed farthest into Europe by those that followed them at long intervals and in different stages.

But this theory is not convincing.

The theory which is generally accepted these days is that the original home of the Aryan was in south-east Europe. Prof. Macdonell says that the common trees like the oak, the beech and the willow, and the common animals like the horse and the cow with which the ancestors of the Aryans were familiar, could, in those days, be found only in southern Europe.

We cannot say with certainly what the original habitat of the Aryans was, however, it is generally accepted that the ancestors of Persians, Indians, Greeks, Germans and English once lived at one common place.

Though essentially a nomad people, they were acquainted with agriculture. The called themselves “Arya” or “Airya”. The Sanskrit “Arya” in Zend-Avesta means persons living on agriculture or of good family. The Aryans who settled in India are distinguished from the other groups of the Aryans and are called Indo-Aryans.

Note: The Zend Avesta (”Book of the Law”) is the principal Zoroastrian scripture. The Zend Avesta is a collection of prayers, hymns, and other works, and includes the Gathas, or hymns of Zoroaster. The Zend Avesta as seen today was compiled from older oral traditions around the thirteenth century and may have existed in a different formn much earlier. According to legend, the original scriptures were destroyed by Alexander the Great, who is still reviled to this day

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Tags: aryans theories, central asia, father mother, max muller, original home, pidar madar, pita mata, punjab, south east

Changing Face of Crop Production In Punjab

After a year after the war with Pakistan, India faced a daunting food insecurity in 1966 made worse by failing monsoons. India had to import 10 million tones of wheat from USA .India also imported 18,000 tonne of wheat seed from Mexico, high yielding varieties of the grain. Read more

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Tags: crop production, farmer, green revolution, IRRI, punjab, punjab socio economic, wheat