Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Can the arrival of the Aryans in India explain the disconnect between Harappan and Vedic culture?

BOOK EXCERPT

There is a fundamental discontinuity between the two cultures, writes Tony Joseph in his book ‘Early Indians’.

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A seal depicting a unicorn at the Indian Museum, Kolkata | Wikimedia Commons (CC by SA 4.0)

Tony Joseph


Wednesday, December 25th 2018

"In the south, the migrating Harappans would have found a more congenial atmosphere for their language and culture, partly because the “Aryans” had not yet reached peninsular India and, perhaps, partly because of the presence of earlier migrants who may have spread Dravidian languages.

In the language of genetics, the Harappans contributed to the formation of the Ancestral South Indians by moving south and mixing with the First Indians of peninsular India and also to the formation of the Ancestral North Indians by mixing with the incoming “Aryans”. Therefore, in many ways, they are the cultural glue that keeps India together – or the sauce on the pizza, to build on a metaphor that we used earlier."

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