Archaeologists working on India's south-west coast believe they may have solved the mystery of the location of a major port which was key to trade between India and the Roman Empire - Muziris, in the modern-day state of Kerala.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4970452.stm

Nice - at one point the Roman Empire considered protectionist trade policies, as their gold resevres were heading there :-)

Via HT delhi June 21 06

http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/3936/210620060090166zx.jpg

Step wells are a marvel - its great to see one so old.

Ancient rock art dating back to 1500 B.C. found in Tamil Nadu

http://www.hindu.com/2007/05/27/stories/2007052704181200.htm

Isai Tamil inscription in ruins

Karthik Madhavan

Erode: The oldest Isai Tamil inscription, dating back to the 2nd century, is no longer visible clearly. Soot, ash and stones have rendered illegible the inscription, which is in Tamil Brahmi, a script like Devanagari. It is in a cave, on the western end of the hillock in Arachalur.
The inscriptions are tala notes (adavu) that a Bharatnatyam dancer dances to. It has five lines and as many rows, resembling a five-row - five-column matrix. It has been arranged in such a way that read either from left to right or top to bottom it reads the same. It is a palindrome as well.
Close by is another inscription, which is also in Tamil Brahmi. It talks about the person who chiselled the above-mentioned lines. Most of it is damaged. The third inscription is equally bad. Tamil Brahmi Kal-vettukkal, a book on Tamil Brahmi, published by the State Department of Archeology, acknowledges the damage. What is pitiful is that the inscriptions came to light only about five decades ago, when Prof. S. Raju, an epigraphist of Erode, discovered them in the early 1960s. He says they were carved by wandering Jain monks, who came south during Chandra Gupta Maurya's time.
On the importance of the inscription, Prof. Raju says it is the oldest in Isai Tamil. He adds that apart from what the inscriptions convey, they hold additional importance in that they are a very important link in the evolution of Tamil vattaezhuthu (cursive letters).
Most of the inscriptions on Malai Vannakkan Devan Sathan are damaged. That these inscriptions were chiselled inside caves where the Jain monks used to rest has only compounded the damage. For, using the perfect cover that the rock-roof provides, locals indulge in merrymaking. Prof. Raju says he wants the State Department of Archaeology to immediately take up conservation work.

http://www.thehindu.com/2006/11/06/stories/2006110609370100.htm

Skeletons, script found at ancient burial site in Tamil Nadu

By T.S. Subramanian

An urn containing a human skull and bones unearthed by the Archaeological Survey of India at Adhichanallur, near Tirunelveli town in Tamil Nadu. Twelve of these urns (below) contain human skeletons. Three of them, which may be 2,800 years old, bear inscriptions that resemble the early Tamil Brahmi script. -- Photos: A. Shaikmohideen

CHENNAI, MAY 25. In spectacular finds, the Archaeological Survey of India, Chennai Circle, has unearthed a dozen 2,800-year-old human skeletons intact in urns at Adichanallur, 24 km from Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu. Three of these urns contain writing resembling the early Tamil Brahmi script. The dozen urns containing the skeletons form a part of about 100 fully intact urns unearthed in various trenches at the site, where excavation is under way. The urns were found at a depth of two to three metres. The finds may revolutionise theories about the origin of ancient culture in Tamil Nadu and the origin of writing in South Asia.
T. Satyamurthy, Superintending Archaeologist, ASI, Chennai Circle, the director of excavation at Adichanallur, said: "People generally think that megalithic culture is the earliest culture in South India, especially in Tamil Nadu. In our excavation [at Adichanallur], we have come across a culture earlier than the megalithic period." The megalithic period in South India ranges from 3rd century B.C. to 3rd century A.D.
Dr. Satyamurthy called Adichanallur "the earliest historical site in Tamil Nadu." The ASI would conduct "a thorough exploration of the area" to find out whether there had been any habitation nearby. If such a site was found, it would be the first discovery of its kind in Tamil Nadu. So far, no habitation belonging to this period had been found in the State. He described the discovery of writing resembling the early Tamil Brahmi script on the urns as "very important."
Samples of the skeletons have been sent to the National Geophysical Research Institute, Hyderabad, for carbon-14 dating.
Along with the skeletons, husks, grains of rice, charred rice and neolithic celts (axe-like instruments used in agricultural operations) have been found.
The skeletons found in two or three urns show that prior to the megalithic period, these people used to inter the dead in urns along with the items they had used. Early Tamil Sangam works contained elaborate descriptions of the urn-burial custom. At Adichanallur, pottery belonging to the early historic period, which stretches from 3rd century B.C. to 3rd century A.D., was found on the upper layers of the trenches and the urns were found below. So the discoveries at Adichanallur may go back to 7th or 8th century B.C., probably earlier than the Sangam period, Dr. Satyamurthy said.
He said that since the Brahmi script was found together with the skeletons, the date of the script could be determined if they could fix the date of the skeletons. "So far, we have been doing it on palaeographic grounds. Now, we will get a scientific date." He said that the script might refer to names.
Dr. Sathyamurthy said that the Brahmi script of around 500 B.C. had been found in Sri Lanka. Dr. S.U. Deraniyagala, former Director-General and now Consultant to the Archaeological Survey Department, Sri Lanka, called the discovery of the writing on the urns at Adichanallur "fantastic" and "very, very important." The evidence of writing on more than 75 pieces of pottery had been found in Sri Lanka and radio-carbon dating had established that they belonged to the period between 600 B.C. and 500 B.C. This discovery "sheds a completely new light on the origin of writing in South Asia," said Dr. Deraniyagala. Interestingly, there has been no evidence of habitation close to the cemeteries (burial sites) discovered there. According to G. Thirumoorthy, Assistant Archaeologist, ASI, Chennai Circle, many artefacts had been found along with the skeletons at Adichanallur.
They included miniature bowls made of clay that were used in rituals, black and red wares of megalithic period ranging from the 7th century B.C. to 2nd century A.D., potsherds with graffiti marks, iron spearheads, knife-blades and hopscotches of various shapes including those in perfect circles. These hopscotches were used as weights, he said.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/2004/05/26/stories/2004052602871200.htm

I got this image in an email. I dont want to go ga-ga till I know the article actually was published in the hindu. :bash:
http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/7993/image001ld8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/4093/giant1iu9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img295.imageshack.us/img295/1583/giant2sx9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/155/giant3jj2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/9774/giant4ag9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

I got this image in an email. I dont want to go ga-ga till I know the article actually was published in the hindu. :bash:


Well definitely not the hindu publication, its fake a photoshop work spread around in an email earlier. :bash:

Rock galleries
TEXTS: T.S. SUBRAMANIAN
PICTURES: K.T. GANDHIRAJAN AND P. MANIVANNAN
The discovery of rock art, dating back to 2000 B.C., in Tamil Nadu offers a peek into history.
http://i19.************/52pa55g.jpg
Four men, bound by a passion for exploration and art history, arrived at Puliyankandi village near Aliyar in Coimbatore district, Tamil Nadu, in the second week of May. The apparent aim was to conduct a workshop on the art and heritage of the Nilgiris for tribal children. Of particular interest to the group was the exploration of not-yet-discovered areas of rock art; the hill ranges formed an archaeological wonderland with all types of rock art, particularly cave paintings. This time they hit the jackpot.
Prof. G. Chandrasekaran, Principal of the Government College of Fine Arts in Chennai, has been on several such expeditions with his colleague K. Natarajan and K.T. Gandhirajan and P. Manivannan. Gandhirajan is a postgraduate in Art History from Madurai-Kamaraj University, Madurai, and Manivannan is Senior Designer at The Hindu, Chennai. The group's strategy is to quiz local people, shepherds, cowherds and honey-gatherers if they have come across rock paintings in their areas.
http://i15.************/5yx2erk.jpg
THE CENTAUR-LIKE IMAGE in white ochre at Karikkiyur, the largest rock art site in South India.
Thus, when Gandhirajan asked the children at the Puliyankandi workshop if they had seen any such paintings on rocks in their villages, a girl sprang to her feet and replied excitedly that she had seen paintings of elephants on a rock-shelter near her village. But she could not explain clearly where the hill was. However, that was enough for the group, which included a few students of Chandrasekaran's college, to head for the child's village, about 45 km from Valparai. Most villagers they inquired about rock paintings had seen no such thing but spoke about "stone-houses" (dolmens) in the area. However, an old woman remembered having seen rock paintings at a place called Koppathuparai. The group now trekked to Koppathuparai, from where a local guide took them to Mavadaippu village. What they saw there surprised them.
http://i8.************/5zgvgus.jpg
The rock surface in Mavadaippu has a mix of ancient rock art, contemporary tribal paintings, and graffiti.
"A massive rock surface, curving inwards, confronted us," said Gandhirajan. "It looked like an arched dome. The entire natural cavern was painted with rock art. A spectacular feature of the site is that the rock surface is an admixture of ancient rock art and contemporary tribal paintings, showing a continuity of tradition." There were modern graffiti, too.
http://i7.************/68jfa1h.jpg
PROF. G. CHANDRASEKARAN (extreme right) watching his team take estampages of the petroglyphs in a cave at Yerpettu near Kothagiri.
The painted surface is about 40 feet (12 metres) long and 20 feet wide. The images include a tiger, a deer with straight horns, anthropomorphic figures marching inside a circle, an elephant seizing a man with its trunk while another man chased it, and several paintings of a bamboo-ladder used for taking honey from the heights. Contemporary tribal paintings show the profile of a man wearing a headgear and that of another man in a tight-fitting coat with rectangular designs on it. This man has his right hand raised, while his left hand rests on the waist.
The Karikkiyur surprise
http://i19.************/6fh83dl.jpg
THERE ARE ABOUT 20 dolmens in four different locations about a kilometre from Mavadaippu.
Mavadaippu is the latest discovery by the team. It had discovered a prehistoric rock art site at Porivarai (2003), and ancient rock paintings at Salekkurai and Sundasingam (2005), near Karikkiyur, about 40 km from Kothagiri in the Nilgiris. In fact, the team was totally unprepared for what awaited it at Porivarai. It turned out to be the largest rock art site in South India with about 500 paintings in an area that is 53 m long and 15 m wide. Experts say the rock paintings at both Mavadaippu and Karikkiyur could be dated to 2000 B.C. to 1500 B.C. How did they stumble upon this treasure trove? The group was at Kothagiri to provide training in arts and crafts to tribal youth at the Don Bosco Community College when it visited Konavakarai, a tribal village, where a rock art site reportedly existed. But the villagers were not aware of its existence. Disappointed, the team returned to the college in Chennai. During a discussion on rock art that evening, an Irula tribal student from Karikkiyur said he had seen such paintings on a rock-shelter in a forest near his village. Chandrasekaran and Gandhirajan lost no time in making it to Karikkiyur. A 7-km trek through an elephant corridor led them to the rock-shelter, locally known as Porivarai.
The paintings in white ochre include a procession of bisons, monkeys clambering up a tree branch, a herd of deer grazing, human beings welcoming one another with outstretched arms, a battle scene with men aiming at each other with bows and arrows, men on horseback engaged in battle, a shoulder-clasping dance after a successful boar-hunt, a man with a mask, the depiction of sun and its rays, a spiral, a tiger fighting another animal, and a man and his dog sleeping.
http://i18.************/6894h84.jpg
THE MASTERPIECE OF Karikkiyur is a realistic depiction of bisons moving in a row, in red ochre.
Gandhirajan calls it "a huge gallery of ancient rock art, the biggest in South India in terms of size and the number of paintings". The rock surface had been continually painted for about 3,000 years by different artists at various times, he said. No other rock art site in South India can rival Karikkiyur by the sheer number of paintings and the themes they represent. Some figures are outlines or sketches; others are solid images. "The prehistoric artists used white kaolin and red ochre to paint them. They may have used animal fat or vegetable juice as a binding medium," he said. "The rock surface is in different shades of grey. The artists chose white pigment to paint in dark grey areas, proving how intelligent they were." A remarkable feature of the Karikkiyur rock art is that while the original artist made the painting in white ochre, the succeeding artist used red ochre to work on the same painting, trying his skill at ornamentation. Sometimes, the second artist mistook an animal and redrew it into another animal.
http://i10.************/4ue9pn6.jpg
REMARKABLE FEATURES OF Karikkiyur rock art are images like monkeys clambering up a branch.
An outstanding painting shows monkeys marching in a single file on the curved branch of a tree. The attention to detail is amazing. The monkeys on the lower side of the branch are shown clinging on to it upside down even as they stay in line. Another beautiful painting depicts a big herd of grazing deer. "This painting is in symmetry," said Gandhirajan. "It needs skill to draw the same image repetitively because you need to have a sense of proportion and symmetry."
http://i10.************/4vip91l.jpg
Victory-dance after a hunt.
Another set of solid images is that of a child sacrifice - a man holding a curved sword in one hand and dangling a child from the other, and a centaur-like figure.
The masterpiece at Karikkiyur is a red-ochre painting of a group of seven bisons moving in a row. One of them has a calf in tow. In the opposite direction comes another bison. Above the group of bisons is a solid white-ochre image of a monitor lizard (udumbu in Tamil).
http://i16.************/52ykcqp.jpg
A human sacrifice.
Another salient feature of the Karikkiyur rock art is the depiction of everyday life through scenes such as an animal playing with its calf or feeding it, two bulls fighting, a celebration, battle scenes or a fight between a man and an animal. There are also several X-ray-like images in white ochre, showing the rib cages of animals. Later generations of artists shaded them in red ochre. Also seen are trees and plants, which are generally not found in rock art.
NEW SITES
The first discovery of rock painting in Tamil Nadu was at Mallapadi in Dharmapuri district in 1978 by K.V. Raman, then Head of the Department of Ancient History and Archaeology of the University of Madras. In 2005, the State Department of Archaeology brought out a publication called Rock Art of Tamil Nadu. Its editor, T.S. Sridhar, who was then Special Commissioner, Department of Archaeology, wrote in its preface that Raman's discovery "flagged off the race for identifying new sites and the effort has not been in vain". He wrote: "Till date, more than thirty sites along the Western and the Eastern Ghats [in Tamil Nadu] have been identified, many of them by officers of the State Department of Archaeology. This has conclusively proved the existence of cavemen who inhabited the rocky shelters of Tamil Nadu in the megalithic period (the Iron Age). This has also established the State's claims to be considered as one of the important regions for studying and interpreting rock art."
http://i14.************/68k8uhw.jpg
A man and his dog sleeping.
"The rock art of Tamil Nadu displays great virtues of balance, appropriate use of colour, love of nature and a keen understanding of the life and times of the inhabitants. Scenes of battlefield, travel, hunting, festivities and food habits are depicted with realism and sensitivity. All the images etched on rock surfaces clearly demonstrate their urge to express themselves in forms that are intelligible... . Their study is at once fascinating and illuminating," according to Sridhar.
In Tamil Nadu, rock art is found in Villupuram, Dharmapuri, Krishnagiri, Madurai, the Nilgiris, Coimbatore, Sivaganga, Vellore and Dindigul districts. Notable among the sites are Kilvalai, Alambadi and Settavarai in Villupuram; Mallapadi, Maharajakadai and Mallachandram, now in Krishnagiri district; Konavakarai, Iduhatti, Karikkiyur and Vellerikombai in the Nilgiris; and Anaipatti, Muthupatti and Kidaripatti in Madurai.
Rock art falls into two categories. The first is petrograms or pictographs, which are paintings done in white or red ochre. The second is petroglyphs, figures chiselled out on rock surface. In Tamil Nadu, petroglyphs are found at Perumukkal, about 12 km from Tindivanam, and at the remote, densely forested Yerpettu, 25 km from Kothagiri. Mahalingam, an elderly Kurumba tribal person, led the team to the petroglyphs in a dark cave near Yerpettu. The images include that of a tree and human beings. The team has made estampages of the petroglyphs.
http://i15.************/6gnso43.jpg
A battle scene at Karikkiyur, depicting men with bows and arrows and on horse back. Gandhirajan, a tireless explorer, says it is not easy to locate a rock art site. "If we go in search of 100 sites, we shall consider ourselves lucky if we can discover rock art in ten," he said.
In fact, the team got a bonus on reaching Mavadaippu late in the afternoon on May 17: it discovered not just a rock art site, but about 20 dolmens in four different locations just about a kilometre from the village. Most dolmens are in good shape, some are broken down and in ruins. A few are big enough to accommodate four persons. The dolmens are in different shapes - square, rectangular and even circular. A particular big dolmen has a run-down "compound wall", about a metre tall, around it.
http://i14.************/63h4c9c.jpg
AT YERPETTU, A rare find of engravings that date back several thousands of years in a cave deep in the Nilgiri forests.
Mavadaippu, in the backdrop of the Anamalai hills, is a small, enchanting tribal village with huts made of bamboo plats packed with clay. It is about 7 km from the Kadamparai hydel power station. The area is full of bamboo forests and is a favourite haunt of elephants. The tribal people make intricate "ladders" using bamboo poles. According to Manivannan, the technology to make them is kept a secret. The tribal people rig them up at night. The leitmotif in the Mavadaippu rock art is the bamboo ladder. A number of mystic symbols also appear. There are paintings of elephants, cattle, tiger, deer, wild boar and porcupine, and of human beings dancing or fighting.
http://i7.************/4mhct9w.jpg
AT MAVADAIPPU, IN the backdrop of the Anamalai hills, human and animal figures in white ochre. The prehistoric artists used white kaolin, lime or even ash to paint these figures. Contemporary tribal people have used enamel paint to embellish some of these paintings. They also have made beautiful paintings of elephants, peacocks and so on. The painting of a bus indicates how the arrival of one there must have been an exciting event.
What mars the beauty of these paintings is the modern-day graffiti by people from the plains below, who have scrawled their names in Tamil. Chandrasekaran has appealed the State government to protect these and other rock art sites.

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20070629000206400.htm

fascinating

Well definitely not the hindu publication, its fake a photoshop work spread around in an email earlier. :bash:
Yeah, I've seen that before. Its from a photoshop contest

Sangam Age seal or brockage?

http://i18.************/6h6wt1l.jpg
The two sides of the silver seal.

CHENNAI: A beautiful silver seal from the Tamil Sangam Age, probably about 2,000 years old, has come to light. Weighing less than 2 grams and with a diameter of about 1.8 cm, it was originally meant to affix a royal grant.
On the obverse side it has a mirror image of the Chera king of the Sangam Age, called Makkotai, facing left, and the legend ‘Makkotai’ in Tamil Brahmi script placed inside a dotted circle. It shows the king with a helmet, in a feature comparable to coins of Tiberius Julius Alexander of the first century A.D.
While the portrait coins of Chera kings Makkotai and Kuttuvan Kotai are uniface (with the reverse side remaining blank), this one has the word ‘Ponko’, engraved with a stylus, in Tamil Brahmi script, on the reverse. The legend is incomplete.
R. Vaidyanadhan, an Assistant Editor (Sports) with The Hindu, has obtained this rare find. He already has in his collection silver punch mark coins of Bimbisara and Asoka, and from British India.
R. Krishnamurthy, numismatist and Editor of the Tamil newspaper Dinamalar, who inspected the piece, said: “This is an important discovery. The importance is due to the inscription ‘Ponko’ [the golden king] engraved on the reverse.”
Mr. Vaidyanadhan initially thought it was a “seal” to accord a royal grant but later concluded it was a brockage. A study of the seals of the Roman kings of the first century A.D. showed that seals were made of hard material such as bronze, he said. Besides, he argued, this silver piece was not mounted on any other object, proving it was not a seal but a brockage. The impression on this brockage was incuse. Since it was a uniface coin, no image was registered on the reverse (but the legend ‘Ponko’ was engraved on the reverse), he added.
A Dictionary of Ancient Roman Coins by John Melville Jones (Seaby, London, 1990) says numismatists use the word “brockage” to “describe a coin which has been faultily struck because its predecessor has remained stuck in one of the dies (normally the upper one, where it might escape notice). The new coin, or brockage, then bears on one side an incuse impression of the previous coin rather than the relief type which should have appeared on it.” The word “incuse” is used to describe a coin that has an impression that appears to be recessed rather than standing out.
Dr. Krishnamurthy, however, said it was a brockage. It was a seal, he asserted. He explained that a die was made of metal such as bronze. When a coin got stuck in a die and another coin were to be struck on it, the metal impression would not be perfect on the subsequent coin. “But the impression of the Chera king is perfect in this seal. Besides, it is beautiful. This perfection will not be imparted to an image which is minted by a brockage material.”
He did not agree with Mr. Vaidyanadhan’s argument that the impression on the brockage was an incuse. “This seal has no incuse image. It has a raised image.”

http://www.hindu.com/2007/08/28/stories/2007082857992200.htm

http://www.hindu.com/2007/11/21/stories/2007112158412400.htm

http://www.hindu.com/2007/11/21/images/2007112158412401.jpg

A broken storage jar with inscriptions in Tamil Brahmi script has been excavated at Quseir-al-Qadim, an ancient port with a Roman settlement on the Red Sea coast of Egypt. This Tamil Brahmi script has been dated to first century B.C. One expert described this as an “exciting discovery.”

The same inscription is incised twice on the opposite sides of the jar. The inscription reads paanai oRi, that is, pot (suspended) in a rope net.

An archaeological team belonging to the University of Southampton in the U.K., comprising Prof. D. Peacock and Dr. L. Blue, who recently re-opened excavations at Quseir-al-Qadim in Egypt, discovered a fragmentary pottery vessel with inscriptions.

Dr. Roberta Tomber, a pottery specialist at the British Museum, London, identified the fragmentary vessel as a storage jar made in India.

Iravatham Mahadevan, a specialist in Tamil epigraphy, has confirmed that the inscription on the jar is in Tamil written in the Tamil Brahmi script of about first century B.C.

In deciphering the inscription, he has had the benefit of expert advice from Prof. Y. Subbarayalu of the French Institute of Pondicherry, Prof. K. Rajan of Central University, Puducherry and Prof. V. Selvakumar, Tamil University, Thanjavur.

According to Mr. Mahadevan, the inscription is quite legible and reads: paanai oRi, that is, ‘pot (suspended in) a rope net.’ The Tamil word uRi, which means rope network to suspend pots has the cognate oRi in Parji, a central Dravidian language, Mr. Mahadevan said. Still nearer, Kannada has oTTi, probably from an earlier oRRi with the same meaning.

The word occurring in the pottery inscription found at Quseir-al-Qadim can also be read as o(R)Ri as Tamil Brahmi inscriptions generally avoid doubling of consonants.

Earlier excavations at this site about 30 years ago yielded two pottery inscriptions in Tamil Brahmi belonging to the first century A.D.

Another Tamil Brahmi pottery inscription of the same period was found in 1995 at Berenike, also a Roman settlement, on the Red Sea coast of Egypt, Mr. Mahadevan said.

These discoveries provided material evidence to corroborate the literary accounts by classical Western authors and the Tamil Sangam poets about the flourishing trade between the Tamil country and Rome (via the Red Sea ports) in the early centuries A.D.

From the above postings it seems that what Epigraphist have told are true, that Tamil is older that 3000 years! and Why then hell the Indian Government had disclosed that Tamil has only 1500 old heritage! Eventhough it has more than 3000 years of proven record! It sounds only as politics in order to make Kanadigas and Telugu speakers to fight for the same! Typical pro-Sanskrit moves by non-dravidian rich central departments.

http://www.ciil-classicaltamil.org/tlpbprofile.html

From the above postings it seems that what Epigraphist have told are true, that Tamil is older that 3000 years! and Why then hell the Indian Government had disclosed that Tamil has only 1500 old heritage! Eventhough it has more than 3000 years of proven record! It sounds only as politics in order to make Kanadigas and Telugu speakers to fight for the same! Typical pro-Sanskrit moves by non-dravidian rich central departments.

http://www.ciil-classicaltamil.org/tlpbprofile.html

Please don’t see things with the perspective that first Britishers then communists and lastly self-hating Indians have put on us. It’s not pro-Sanskrit , anti-Dravidian phenomenon...

Indian subcontinent has potentially civilized history starting from last ice age, you can not see it in isolation from the north-south standpoint.
The way I look at Indian subcontinent, to understand this underlying composite phenomenon, yet extremely visible heterogeneous amalgamation of mankind is like this ...

Racial :- As such, if you look at India's demographic place, We stand in a point where towards the east of it humans start to develop Mongoloid features and towards north (via middle east) more Caucasian features...Now there has to be a consistent, subtle and continuous change starting from within Indian subcontinent itself. The moment you see "Welcome to Tamilnadu" human race would not change from so called Aryan to so called Dravid. I apologize for my sarcasm but if you observe without biased mindset, within India you can observe subtle changes, despite so much of inorganic tribal movement within India and fro outside to India. I just do not believe in anything called "Dravidian", from racial point of view...

Cultural/Linguistic :- Yes indeed we see distinctive features in cultural phenomenon in India, including linguistic. But here again I would rather attribute it to the very essence of Indian civilizations cultural values. If you look at it, our cultural value system or its foundations encourage diversification rather painting the whole civilization with same brush like western hemisphere tends to do. That is how you see mind-boggling diversity in this subcontinent in terms of cultural and also linguistic forms. With this much of diversification, there is bound to be highly noticeable differences at times, especially when there is an evolution of perhaps 10000+ years...

Now with this I do not try to conclude which came first chicken or egg (Sanskrit / Tamil OR So-called Aryan/Dravid) or perhaps in this civilization's case both chicken and egg were born independently and then organically started to converge over time, all I am saying this civilization is different from the way other civilizations have evolved, here we tend to produce the breeding ground for diversity and rest all other places humans tend to eliminate diversity...We got to understand Indian civilization from its fundamental values as others may not be able to think from the perspective of diversity preservation rather they tend to understand from the point of view of diversity elimination as that’s what the natural thought process in western hemisphere...

Cheers Buddy...If you start to see that all Indian languages belong to me as an Indian and all human languages belong to me as human, then you can get the perspective that I was suggesting..

My unconditional apologies if I have hurt you in anyways

Please don’t see things with the perspective that first Britishers then communists and lastly self-hating Indians have put on us. It’s not pro-Sanskrit , anti-Dravidian phenomenon...

Indian subcontinent has potentially civilized history starting from last ice age, you can not see it in isolation from the north-south standpoint.
The way I look at Indian subcontinent, to understand this underlying composite phenomenon, yet extremely visible heterogeneous amalgamation of mankind is like this ...

Racial :- As such, if you look at India's demographic place, We stand in a point where towards the east of it humans start to develop Mongoloid features and towards north (via middle east) more Caucasian features...Now there has to be a consistent, subtle and continuous change starting from within Indian subcontinent itself. The moment you see "Welcome to Tamilnadu" human race would not change from so called Aryan to so called Dravid. I apologize for my sarcasm but if you observe without biased mindset, within India you can observe subtle changes, despite so much of inorganic tribal movement within India and fro outside to India. I just do not believe in anything called "Dravidian", from racial point of view...

Cultural/Linguistic :- Yes indeed we see distinctive features in cultural phenomenon in India, including linguistic. But here again I would rather attribute it to the very essence of Indian civilizations cultural values. If you look at it, our cultural value system or its foundations encourage diversification rather painting the whole civilization with same brush like western hemisphere tends to do. That is how you see mind-boggling diversity in this subcontinent in terms of cultural and also linguistic forms. With this much of diversification, there is bound to be highly noticeable differences at times, especially when there is an evolution of perhaps 10000+ years...

Now with this I do not try to conclude which came first chicken or egg (Sanskrit / Tamil OR So-called Aryan/Dravid) or perhaps in this civilization's case both chicken and egg were born independently and then organically started to converge over time, all I am saying this civilization is different from the way other civilizations have evolved, here we tend to produce the breeding ground for diversity and rest all other places humans tend to eliminate diversity...We got to understand Indian civilization from its fundamental values as others may not be able to think from the perspective of diversity preservation rather they tend to understand from the point of view of diversity elimination as that’s what the natural thought process in western hemisphere...

Cheers Buddy...If you start to see that all Indian languages belong to me as an Indian and all human languages belong to me as human, then you can get the perspective that I was suggesting..

My unconditional apologies if I have hurt you in anyways

Its a diplomatic way to say shut up, i guess.
I am not against Sanskrit or any other language sir. Having a pluralistic society in the ligustic front, we need to have logistic stand point and when the rules are bend for the favour of bigger populations opinion, rather than the facts, the democracy is questioned.
I do love the fact of having multilingual society but how many of us Indian, esp. Sanskrit derived language speakers, learn a Dravidian language? It took 60 years after independence for making Tamil as a classical language and that too with completely biased rules, underestimating its real age. This biased rules had paved way to bring other younger cousins of Tamil to compete for the same. Hopefully if Tamils was a dead language, like other classical languages, people would had found it easy to acknowledge it as a classical language.

Via HT delhi June 21 06

http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/3936/210620060090166zx.jpg

What a treasure! Step wells always are

Living rocks

TEXT & PHOTOGRAPHS: BENOY K. BEHL

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20080104242506600.htm
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Mamallapuram, to the south of Chennai on the Tamil Nadu coast, is a marvellous town of temples carved out of rock.

SHORE TEMPLE, 8TH century. It is one of the finest examples of Indian structural stone temples. The Nandis along the outer wall seem to greet and invite one into the sacred space within.
WHILE the early western Chalukyas ruled in present-day Karnataka, by the end of the 6th century A.D., the Pallava rulers from present-day Andhra Pradesh extended their control southwards over much of Tamil Nadu. They created the first large empire of South India. It is from the time of the rule of the Pallava king Mahendra, from A.D. 600 to A.D. 630, that numerous inscriptions have been found and Pallava history is documented.
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DESCENT OF THE Ganga, 7th century. This vast rock in the ancient port town has been transformed into a world teeming with beings: human, animal and divine. This is one of the most marvellous creations in the whole of Indian art.
On the Tamil Nadu coast, is a marvellous town of temples carved out of rock. Mamallapuram, or Mahabalipuram, was one of the greatest sea ports of ancient times. In those times this bustling town would have had a cosmopolitan culture. In its markets, people from South-East Asia would have rubbed shoulders with Romans. Coins found here testify to extensive trade with Rome and other places from at least the 1st century. Colonies of Romans are also known to have been present in this part of Tamil Nadu at that time.
This port town was called Mamalai, or “great hill”. Mahendra’s successor, Narasimhavarman, known as Mamalla (or the “Great Warrior”), expanded the facilities of the port. He changed its name to Mamallapuram, or “city of Mamalla”. Ships sailed constantly from here to Sri Lanka and South-East Asia.
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SIVA WITH HIS many "ganas" around him. They represent those persons who have spent a lifetime devoted to him and have been granted the boon of remaining perpetually close to him. An ascetic is seen doing penance.

Here, over perhaps a hundred years, from about A.D. 630 to A.D. 728, marvellous monuments were cut out of outcrops of hard grey granite. Cliff faces were transformed into a teeming world of animals and people. Boulders were carved into fine temples. Rocks were chiselled into the shapes of animals. The magnificent temples of Mamallapuram reflect the fully developed styles of South Indian temples. Obviously, such temples must have been made for a long time before this period. The earlier ones must have been made out of ephemeral materials and have not survived.
Facing the ancient port and not very far from it is one of the marvels of the sculptural art of India. The face of a vast granite rock, almost 100 feet (30.5 metres) by 50 feet (15.25 m), has been transformed into a world of divine and earthly beings. This giant relief is believed to be of the early or middle 7th century.
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DIVINE FIGURES AND "kinnaras" populate the upper parts of the tableau. "Kinnaras", or composite creatures, part human and part bird, are perennial images in Indian art, from earliest times. These embody the Indic vision of the oneness of the whole of creation.
The tableau presents the auspicious moment of the descent of the river Ganga to bestow her blessings and her treasure of fertility on the world. Some scholars have also interpreted this scene to be a depiction of the penance of Arjuna, the hero of the epic Mahabharata. A deep cleft in the rock has been artfully used to represent the great river as she descends. In fact, a storage tank was made above it. On ceremonial occasions, water must have been let out to rush down the cleft, giving a sense of reality to the sacred scene.
The teeming world of a forest has been created around the river. About a hundred figures of animals, men, women and divine beings all turn in reverence towards the life-giving river. These are all made approximately life-sized and naturalistic and with great sensitivity. Bhagiratha, the sage, is seen performing penance and imploring Siva to bear the force of the fall of the river from heaven.
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DIVINE NAGAS AND Naginis swim up the river as the Ganga descends from the heavens. These beings, which are part human and part serpent, are among the oldest images of Indic art. They represent fertility as well as the protective forces of nature.
Next to him stands Siva, whose gesture indicates that he is granting a boon to the ascetic. Nagas and Naginis, divine serpents who live in the waters, are shown swimming up the river. Below Siva we see a shrine of Vishnu, with an elderly sage and his disciples before it. Beside the river, other ascetics perform puja and penance.
On the opposite bank is a charming depiction of a cat performing penance. He has deluded some mice into believing that he is an ascetic. This could be a story from the Mahabharata in which a sad fate overtakes the trusting mice. It could also be a witty comment being made by the artists on hypocrisy in contemporary practices.
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DESCENT OF THE Ganga, another detail. Even as these figures fly through the skies, their expressions inform one about another reality, one that is deep within and not in the activity of the outside world.
The many beings that populate the world created around the river are made with a great sense of liveliness. In these beings there is a sense of freedom and the joy of creation expressed by the artists.
In Indic vision, there is no marked division between the divine and the earthly. All that there is, is sacred. There is a grace that underlies all that there is. Our response to that grace when we see it is considered to be a moment when we get a glimpse of the Truth. Bringing this realisation to us is the purpose of Indian art. All forms and all deities are a means towards the realisation of the inherent unity of the whole of creation.
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BHIMA RATHA, MID- to late 7th century. The barrel-shaped roof has been one of the designs in Indian temples from early times. It is often seen in the case of apsidal temple structures.

The world as seen by the early Indic artist has a sense of sublime continuity in all living things, whether animal, vegetable or divine. It is like a fabric with a continuous texture or a great tapestry of interconnected things. If one were to cut or break one part of this tapestry, one would damage the whole. That is the spirit that animates all Indic faiths. Here the hard stone face of the granite cliff is cajoled into elaborating this very profound and contemplative approach to the universe.
The realism and lifelike softness of the elephants in one of the reliefs are remarkable. The details of the baby elephants show the artists’ deep concern for all beings. Another detail, of a deer scratching its nose, shows the artists’ great sensitivity and keen observation of the natural world. Close by is another relief depicting the same subject. However, it is unfinished.
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DHARMARAJA RATHA, MID- to late 7th century. This is another unfinished temple of the group of five "rathas". It is a replica of the most popular form of the South Indian temple structure. The superstructure has three storeys, which diminish in size as they ascend.

A little to the left of the great “Descent of the Ganga”, a Krishna Govardhan scene is carved out of a boulder. Krishna holds up the Govardhan mountain to protect a village from the fury of a storm. It is a charming scene. With peace restored and the storm forgotten, a cowherd plays the flute and another milks a cow. This is one of the finest depictions in Indian art of rustic life. In Pallava times, when this relief was made, there was no mandapa in front of it. Therefore, it would have been possible to see clearly the whole mountain above Krishna as he lifted it. In later times, with the coming of more formalised norms, a mandapa was made in front of the scene to accord due status to the deity. The effectiveness of the theme was then largely lost.
The soft rendering and slender forms of the Pallava idiom can again be seen in the Varaha mandapa of around the middle of the 7th century. Here the development of Pallava iconography and architectural styles can also be seen. The seated lions made on the bases of pillars are characteristic.
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VARAHA CAVE, MID-7TH century. To fight the evil of ignorance, Vishnu is envisaged as descending upon the earth in the powerful Varaha "avatara", that is, in the form of a boar. Varaha is believed to have saved the Earth goddess, Bhu Devi, from drowning. This myth represents the great power within us that can save us from the ocean of ignorance.
There are four major sculptural panels in the cave. Vishnu is shown in the Varaha avatara saving the Earth goddess, Bhu Devi, from being submerged in the ocean. All Indian myths operate at many levels, and saving Bhu Devi also signifies the saving of mankind from the ocean of ignorance. Vishnu is also presented in the form of Trivikrama, the conqueror of the three worlds. The rear wall of the cave has Gajalakshmi on it. Lakshmi, who represents prosperity, is shown here being lustrated by elephants. Also on the rear wall is a relief of Durga, who represents victory over ignorance.
In Pallava art, the figures are slender and delicately made. The scale is naturalistic. A depth is given to the relief by figures that turn inwards and others that are seen from the back. Such arrangements of figures were also seen in the paintings of Ajanta of the 5th century and in the art of the Krishna Valley in Andhra Pradesh.
One of the most magnificent depictions in Mamallapuram is that of Mahishasuramardini made in a 7th-century cave. It is entirely different from earlier representations of this subject. Durga battles the demon buffalo, or Mahisha, who represents the evil of ignorance. It is a most animated scene, and unlike before, the scale is naturalistic. Here, the demon has a human body and the head of a buffalo. The natural poses of the figures, advancing from one side and pulling back upon the other, enhance the drama and realism of the subject. The self-assured ganas of Durga’s army of Righteousness are unforgettable.
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KRISHNA MANDAPA, 7TH century. This is an endearing image of a cow being milked while she lovingly licks her calf. Such depictions bring the village scene made in this cave to life.

The Adivaraha cave is notable for having portraits of King Narasimhavarman with his queens. There is also a representation of his son with his wives. After the period of the Kushanas, who hailed from southern China and had portraits of themselves made in royal shrines in the 1st century, these are the earliest surviving portraits of Indian kings.
In early India, the purpose of art was always to take one’s thoughts away from the passing reality of the world to that which was eternal. Therefore, art did not traditionally depict ephemeral personalities. From here onwards, a shift takes place and the emphasis begins to come upon the personality of monarchs.
There are nine monolithic free-standing temples cut out of boulders. Five of them are in one group. These are the earliest such edifices in India to be carved out of rock, both on the outside and the inside. They are called rathas, or temple chariots. This is a misnomer as they are meant to be temples. They are a marvellous record in stone of the many forms of temple architecture in South India at that time.
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ELDERLY MAN AND child, Krishna Mandapa. Amid all the grandeur of divine themes, the pulsating details of life are not forgotten by the artist. This delightful detail appears on one side of a Krishna Govardhan scene.

The monoliths are named after the five Pandava brothers of the Mahabharata and their common wife Draupadi. They form a coherent group and were probably made in the middle of the 7th century. The smallest temple is called the Draupadi Ratha. It has a curved roof, which is believed to be modelled after the thatched roofs of that period. The shrine is dedicated to Durga. The lion on which she rides is outside the temple.
Arjuna’s ratha is on the same platform as the Draupadi Ratha. This is an early example of a developed Dravida, or South Indian, style temple. The two-tiered pyramidical roof is capped by a domelike element called a stuti. In South India, the term shikhara refers to this crowning element, whereas in North India shikhara means the whole temple tower. The half figures on the upper levels convey the impression that they are partly hidden because of the viewer’s perspective from below. Bhima’s ratha is a rare record of a barrel-vaulted type of temple. The long shape is appropriate for the large depiction of the Anantasayana Vishnu, which remains unfinished inside.
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ADIVARAHA CAVE. AFTER the 1st century A.D., the period of the Kushana rulers, it is the Pallava period that brings us the first portraits of rulers in India. King Narasimhavarman is depicted here.

The unfinished Dharmaraja Ratha is the largest of the group. Inscriptions with the name of Narasimhavarman I suggest that the temple was begun in his time. It presents the fully developed southern temple style as seen in the Arjuna Ratha. These form the basis of the temples to come in the later Chola, Vijayanagar and Nayaka periods. A portrait here of Narasimhavarman I is remarkable. Unlike the relaxed postures in the portraits of other Pallava kings, in the Adivaraha cave, this one is made just like a deity in a niche and is accorded strict frontal formality. The unfinished structure shows how the sculptors cut the stone from top to bottom, using the uncut rock below as a platform to work on.
The fifth temple of the group takes on an apsidal shape, which was not used very often in Indian temples. This is known as an elephant-back-shaped temple. Interestingly, the sculptors made an elephant adjacent to it, perhaps to illustrate the point.
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GAJALAKSHMI, VARAHA CAVE, 7th century. Gajalakshmi has been a theme in Indic art since the Buddhist art of the 2nd century B.C.

One of the glories of Mamallapuram, built right next to the lapping waves of the sea, is a temple with two towers, known as the Shore Temple. The finely worked slender towers are among the most beautiful structures in the Indian subcontinent. The temple was probably made by Narasimhavarman II (Rajasimha) in the early 8th century. He is believed to have established the tradition of building structural stone temples in Tamil Nadu.
Below both the towers of the Shore Temple are shrines with Siva Lingas. The rear walls of both have relief panels showing Siva, Uma and their son Skanda. The group is known as Somaskanda, and it became the favourite icon in Pallava shrines. It also served as a metaphor for the Pallava royal family. A shrine in between the two dedicated to Siva has a depiction of the Anantasayana Vishnu. This was carved in situ out of an existing rock.
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MAHISHASURAMARDINI CAVE, 7TH century. Even while great themes were made in rock-cut relief at Mamallapuram, caves were excavated out of the hills, continuing the tradition seen in western India.

Over twelve hundred years of salt-laden winds have taken their toll on the temple, and the profusion of sculptures on it has been considerably eroded. However, what remains shows the highest standards of artistic achievement.
Perhaps, the most memorable aspect of the art of Mamallapuram is the depiction of the many beings that inhabit the world: deer, cows, elephants and others. Man is seen amidst the world of nature as one of its many manifestations. The Indian sculptor manages to communicate the living, breathing quality and emotions of animals with a rare empathy.
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SOMASKANDA, SHORE TEMPLE. The favoured representation of Siva in the Pallava temples is of him with his wife, Uma, and son Kumara, or Kartikeya. The image may also symbolise the paternal benevolence of the Pallava ruler.

What gives the art of ancient India a special place is its vision of the world: a vision that sees the same in each of us, men and women, and in animals, plants, trees and even the breeze that moves the leaves. It sees a unity in the whole of creation, which imparts a great harmony and compassion to this vision. For a thousand years, the prolific creation of sculpture was an art sponsored by people.
Inscriptions and royal portraits show that by the 7th and 8th centuries, the Pallava kings began to take a direct interest in sponsoring art.

Its a diplomatic way to say shut up, i guess.
I am not against Sanskrit or any other language sir. Having a pluralistic society in the ligustic front, we need to have logistic stand point and when the rules are bend for the favour of bigger populations opinion, rather than the facts, the democracy is questioned.
I do love the fact of having multilingual society but how many of us Indian, esp. Sanskrit derived language speakers, learn a Dravidian language? It took 60 years after independence for making Tamil as a classical language and that too with completely biased rules, underestimating its real age. This biased rules had paved way to bring other younger cousins of Tamil to compete for the same. Hopefully if Tamils was a dead language, like other classical languages, people would had found it easy to acknowledge it as a classical language.

Hey Buddy, I am so sorry if I have hurt your emotion in anyway. Definitely, India has it baggage of colonial past, our nature of politics, our socio and more importantly economical positioning right now etc etc...All these elements also point to "different languages to be learnt as a necessity". This phenomenon already forces Indians to learn multiple languages anyway. How much more appetite they may have, I doubt. This is the practical constraint of it.

Yes, in the heart of my hearts, I would like to see Indians pick up other Indian languages for simply the sake of demonstrating respect for varied cultures in India; of course socio-economic integration would be a by-product of that. DO I see it happening? No, as I said above because of the constraint that being an Indian we already need to learn 3-4 languages...

Despite this, what I think, we can and should spread awareness of the need of linguistic integration. By picking/popularizing south Indian or North-eastern languages does not mean, we have to become proficient, so a bit of these languages can definitely be picked up to merely demonstrate the mark of unconditional respect to our fellow cultures/languages.

And in fact I took clue from your message and taught my little one to count 1 thru 10 in Tamil and also kunjam-kunjam .. I dont think she can ever go beyond this on any southern language for all practicle reasons but at least she would be always conscious of our southern languages...And who knows, a generation after we may have eliminated the constraints that I talked about in Para 1.

Video link for "The lost temple of India"- a special report about Great Raja Raja Chozhan and his empire.

There are six episodes and links are given below.

pCHeeGpy4eo
Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVHQPWxmdAM&feature=related
Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfhesYL_wp0&feature=related
Part 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLRCFoQWuqM&feature=related
Part 5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DqBiL2t__U&feature=related
Part 6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zKCecWTWJo&feature=related

self deleted

^^Thanks!

I just read that ther are now definate links between harrapa & settlemenst east in the jmuna/ganga basin therefor tracing Indians back to those anient times .Thats 7000bc.they're discovering new stuff about this as we speak .V interesting.
and that there is mantras in kerala that resemble pre linguistic patterns of sound, possably meaning that the indian concept of mantra pre dated language.And that language it self sparang out of communities originaly from Africa developing it in india...

I just read that ther are now definate links between harrapa & settlemenst east in the jmuna/ganga basin therefor tracing Indians back to those anient times .Thats 7000bc.they're discovering new stuff about this as we speak .V interesting.
and that there is mantras in kerala that resemble pre linguistic patterns of sound, possably meaning that the indian concept of mantra pre dated language.And that language it self sparang out of communities originaly from Africa developing it in india...

Sorry dude, no posting without reference :bash:. All that you said sounds very biased:ohno:.

Biased?Its not biased just cos there aint a reference.
Reference is Micheal Woods 'story of india' book.however he aint supplied refrences as its not anacademic work.Just quoted people hes met in the field, who are involved in the digs.This is stuff that i've come accros in other places too.But this is the most recent & therfore up to date one.

http://www.hindu.com/2008/01/13/stories/2008011355961800.htm
http://www.hindu.com/2008/01/13/images/2008011355961801.jpg

“Jallikattu,” which is bull-baiting or bull fighting, is an ancient Dravidian tradition that was practised about 4,000 years ago during the Indus Valley civilisation.

A well-preserved seal found at Mohenjodaro in the 1930s attests to this, according to Iravatham Mahadevan, a specialist in Indus and Brahmi scripts.

This seal realistically brings alive a vigorous scene of bull-fighting. It portrays a ferocious bull in action, several men or a single man (according to two different interpretations), thrown in the air by it as they try to control it.

Clearly, the bull is the victor. This seal, made of stone, is on display in the National Museum, New Delhi. It can be dated to 2,000 B.C., Mr. Mahadevan said. Several scholars had commented upon this seal as portraying bull-baiting during the Indus civilisation, he added.

Jallikattu is in the news after the Supreme Court on January 11 declined to give permission to Tamil Nadu Government and some villages for the conduct of this sport. It is traditionally organised in the State during Pongal which falls on January 15 this year.

The seal found at Mohenjodaro, now in Pakistan, shows a single bull with curved horns in the “action” of goring a single man or several men. Its horns are shown in the middle to depict the speed and fluency of its action: the angry bull has suddenly turned its neck sideways to toss the daring men and then its neck has come to its original position.

The seal has used the frieze technique to portray the charged atmosphere. There were two interpretations to what was engraved on the seal, Mr. Mahadevan said. One school is of the opinion that the seal shows several men, who tried to control the bull, thrown up in the air by the animal. A couple of men are shown flying in the air with their legs and hands spread out, a third man is seen jumping to grab the bull, another is somersaulting and yet another has pathetically come to rest on his haunch.

Mr. Mahadevan, however, is of the opinion that the seal shows only one man, who is flung into the air by the bull, his flying, his plunging, his somersaulting and finally sitting on his haunch.

A colour photograph of this seal is found at No. M 312 in The Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions, Volume 1, edited by Asko Parpola and others.

There is no script on the seal. Mr. Mahadevan’s The Indus Script: Texts, Concordance and Tables, is a seminal book on the Indus script. It was published in 1977 by the Archaeological Survey of India. He has also published Corpus of the Tamil-Brahmi Inscriptions (1966).

Bull-baiting figures in the Mahabharatha, which describes Krishna controlling a ferocious bull in the forecourt of Kamsa’s palace.

Outside India, bull-baiting is practised in Spain and Portugal.

ROCK CUT: A painting of bull chasing on a massive rock surface at Karikkiyur in the Nilgiris. These pictures, according to specialists in rock art, are dateable to 2,000 B.C. to 1,500 B.C. Karikkiyur is the biggest rock art site in south India, with the rock surface teeming with about 500 paintings.
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That bull chasing is an ancient sport in Tamil Nadu is attested by the discovery of paintings on rock surfaces or caves in the State. There are several rock paintings, more than 3,500 years old, at remote Karikkiyur village in the Nilgiris district in Tamil Nadu that show men chasing bulls.

Kaikkiyur, situated about 40 km from Kotagiri town, is the biggest rock art site in south India. The rock surface site, teeming with more than 500 paintings, was discovered by K.T. Gandhirajan, art historian, Prof. G. Chandrasekaran, Principal of the Government College of Fine Arts in Chennai and others in 2004.

The paintings on a massive rock surface at Karikkiyur are done in white kaolin or red ochre, and show men chasing bulls, which seem to be a sturdy lot, with big humps and long and straight horns. A particularly arresting scene shows several men chasing three bulls, done in X-ray painting. The bulls, originally painted in X-ray fashion in white kaolin, were later painted in red ochre. The Kaikkiyur paintings are dateable between 2000 B.C. and 1500 B.C.

Another single painting discovered in a cave at Kalluthu Mettupatti, about 35 km west of Madurai, between Madurai and Dindigul, shows a lone man trying to control a bull. Mr. Gandhirajan estimated that this painting, done in white kaolin, was about 1,500 years old.

Protests have broken out in several villages including at Alanganallur and Palamedu in Madurai district and Siravayal in Sivaganga district after the Supreme Court on January 11 disallowed the organising of jallikattu (bull-baiting or bull fight) in Tamil Nadu. Jallikattu is held in several villages in the State during the Pongal festival. Mr. Gandhirajan, who is a post-graduate in Art History from Madurai-Kamaraj University, said the ancient Tamil tradition was “manju virattu” (chasing bulls) or “eruthu kattuthal” (lassoing bulls) and it was never “jallikattu,” that is baiting a bull or controlling it as the custom obtained today. In ancient Tamil country, during the harvest festival, decorated bulls would be let loose on the “peru vazhi” (highway) and the village youth would take pride in chasing them and outrunning them. Women, elders and children would watch the fun from the sidelines of the “peru vazhi” or streets. Nobody was injured in this. Or the village youth would take delight in lassoing the sprinting bulls with “vadam” (rope).

It was about 500 years ago, after the advent of the Nayak rule in Tamil Nadu with its Telugu rulers and chieftains, that this harmless bull-chasing sport metamorphosed into “jallikattu,” said Mr. Gandhirajan.
Gallery sport

The establishment of the “zamindari” system aided this, he said. The zamindars, to demonstrate their power, converted it into a “gallery sport” or spectator sport. They associated the sport with the local, village deities. Many zamindars grew sturdy bulls but they were never let into the ring for fear that some daring youth might succeed in baiting or controlling it and the zamindar would lose face. When it became a gallery sport, a narrow pathway with a gate (called “vadivasal” in Tamil) was built to let the bulls one by one into the open and the youth would be about 100 feet away to control it. Often, the ferocious bull would run into the excited crowd and a few may get killed. Sometimes, stampedes would erupt.

Mr. Gandhirajan said that while ancient rock and cave paintings showing bull chasing had been discovered in Tamil Nadu, there were no murals or sculptures in temples that showed “jallikattu.”



http://www.hindu.com/2008/01/15/stories/2008011553700400.htm

S'all very interesting.
And , no one seems to know exactly where the dravidian langauges are from.
The conjecture is that it may also be from harrapa as no one can read the script from there.but its a massive conjecture

^^
The simplistic assumptions of the past are now being questioned. For example, where scholars once assumed the entire vast Harappan civilization was mono-linguistic and culturally singular, experts now argue they may have spoken multiple language families, and been culturally diverse, just like in later Indian history. That would explian why the Harappan script has been so hard to decipher - it may be that it was used to represent multiple spoken languages, from different families, like Munda, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman and even Indo-European. Unfortunatly however, vast numbers of people with no understanding of the complexities of history still subscribe to various idealised interpretations of the past, whether that be nationalist, regionalist, or whatever.

^^
The simplistic assumptions of the past are now being questioned. For example, where scholars once assumed the entire vast Harappan civilization was mono-linguistic and culturally singular, experts now argue they may have spoken multiple language families, and been culturally diverse, just like in later Indian history. That would explian why the Harappan script has been so hard to decipher - it may be that it was used to represent multiple spoken languages, from different families, like Munda, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman and even Indo-European. Unfortunatly however, vast numbers of people with no understanding of the complexities of history still subscribe to various idealised interpretations of the past, whether that be nationalist, regionalist, or whatever.

I don't know if you are referring to the Indus script when you say Harappan script. I felt that both these scripts are same. I am confident that the Indus script was used to write sanskrit in those times after the Mahabharata War. The work of Natwar Jha and N.S.Rajaram is pretty remarkable on deciphering Indus script. Please check the link for more information on deciphering Indus script.

http://www.indiastar.com/wallia27.htm

As usual the western scholars rejected this claim on dubious grounds.....

I don't know if you are referring to the Indus script when you say Harappan script.

Of course I am.

Anyone who has ever looked at the topic of the Indus Valley Civlization in any detail should know this.

So I suggest you read up on the subject further, before forming an opinion.

I am confident that the Indus script was used to write sanskrit in those times after the Mahabharata War.

No example of the Indus script has ever been found from the time of the Mahabharata, or after.

How can you then be confident?

Do you have a time machine at your disposal?

The work of Natwar Jha and N.S.Rajaram is pretty remarkable on deciphering Indus script.

Over a dozen different people have claimed to have translated the Indus script into several different un-related languages.

There is insufficient evidence to support any claim.

Please check the link for more information on deciphering Indus script.

I checked the link and found an un-referenced article, containing conjecture.

As usual the western scholars rejected this claim on dubious grounds.....

1). Please dont display prejudice toward westerners who have devoted their lives to the persuit of satya by rigorous scientific means.

2). Please dont display prejudice toward the majority of Indian scholars, who share their opinion, and have also devoted their lives to the presuit of satya by rigorous scientific means.

3). Please dont form hasty judgements on the professional opinions of the above mentioned people when they have studied this subject in great detail, and you clearly have not.

For your personal enjoyment, I reccomend the following books:

- India A History: John Keay
- Understanding Harappa: Shereen Ratnagar
- Early India: Romila Thapar

thought the harrapan 'sript' is a form of hieroglyphs?And as yet there is no one who has deciphered them.I dont wanna take sides here but I've often found many indian experts with severe points to prove in many varied fields who use not exactly empirical methods(there are many brilliant ones too)
Claims of national or ethnic greatness should always be looked upon with scepticism whatever there source.

^^
Although im definatly no expert in written scripts, ive looked into it out of interest, and it seems that the number of charecters included in the Indus script are too many to represent a syllable-based script, and yet too few to represent a pictographic script (i.e. like hieroglyphs or the Chinese script), so, it really is a mystery. Some people have even suggested that it isnt a script at all, but infact a collection of symbols used to represent trade goods, or guilds, or geographical regions (i.e. like a logo). Thats how little people know about the Indus script, the truth is, the international archeological community may never decode it, and it may not even represent a language for all anyone knows.

Unfortunatly, if you try hard enough to match a language to a script, you can almost always find a way, so various interest groups have matched languages like proto-Dravidian and proto-Sanskrit to the script, to claim the Indus civilization for partisan purposes. It seems that every forum you go on has a few people who know next to nothing about the methodology of the archeology or linguistics involved, yet believe in various Hindutva or Dravidian or Dalistani type views on early Indian history. Often people who present the views of the worldwide archeological community are labeled a 'Marxist' or 'psuedo-secular' or 'Hindu nationalist' or 'Brahmin' depending on which partisan viewpoint they are disagreeing with.

I am very confident that Indus script represents Sanskrit. This is how I came to conclusion.

In the first Canto of Bhagavata Purana which was written in sanskrit says the following verse.

sa kadācit sarasvatyā
upaspṛśya jalaḿ śuciḥ
vivikta eka āsīna
udite ravi-maṇḍale

Translation : Once upon a time he [Vyāsadeva], as the sun rose, took his morning ablution in the waters of the Sarasvatī and sat alone to concentrate.

This verse clearly indicates that the sage Vyasa atleast resided close to the banks of Saraswati.This above event occured some roughly 3000 B.C. This was well confirmed by many scholars , through the interpretation of time at which Mahabharata War Occured.
River Saraswati was quoted in Rig Veda at Several Places.As we all know Saraswati River dried some where around1900 B.C. There is enough information about this cataclysmic event. Now we all know that Indus river and Sarawati River flow almost parallely and also closely at that time. If that is the case, people at that time had definite links between them. Their language and culture are very influenced by each other. We can atleast agree to that Sanskrit was not dead by that time when Indus civilization was flourishing.

http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/366/jhabookboarday6.gif

This above sign is the famous Dholavira sign board, which is translated into English as "I was a thousand times victorious over avaricious raiders desirous of my wealth of horses.", which is a warning to the would-be horse thieves.
Indus script is written from right to left, unlike the old-brahmi script which was written from left to right,although it was sometimes from right o left.
If you do enough research on the City of Dholavira, it has 3 different divisions. Jyestha ( Upper), Madhyama ( Middle), Kanishta ( lower). These words Uttama, Madhyama and Kanishta are sanskrit words. I believe the Sanskrit language is intrinsic part of this city.
In Mahabharata, Shanti Parva, Chapter 343 ( CCCLXIII ), Couplet no 73 is directly related to the Indus seals, Couple no 92 refers to Aryan trend of considering Lord Vishnu in the form of Unicorn ( bull with a single horn ). called Eksringah Nandivardhanah in Sanskrit.

Sri Veda Vyas, in his classical composition of Vishnu Sahasranaama reveals thousand names of Vishnu. These names are very important for understanding the iconography of Unicorn. One such peculiar icons of Unicorn in three heads is given below:

maharsih kapilacaryah krtagyo medinipatih/
tripada- stri- dasa- dhyaksho mahashringah kritant-krit//(Visnu Sahasranama -slokam 57)

Here the reference of tripadah and mahashringah are very important. The tripadah refers Varaha with three heads. In Vishnu Dharma ( 63.59), we come across this verse:

sattvanam upakaraya pradhanam purusham param |
darsayishy-ami lokeshu kapilam rupam asthitah ||

“For the benefit of all beings I am going to reveal the three forms viz. , pradhana, purusha and paramatma . This tripadah incarnation has been explained in his Varaha form, where he is an animal with three heads ( tri-padah - tavaivasam trika-kudo varaham-rupam-asthitah (Mahabharat / Moksha. 343.63).
The mahashringah refers to the horn of an animal. In Srimad Ramayana, we find verse in support of this mahashringah as ekasringo varahastvam (Yuddha. 120.14).

Which means animal with one horn. The Shanti Parva of Mahabharat explains Ekashringah as:

eka sringah tato bhutva varaho nandi vardhanah/
imam ca udhritva bhumim - ekasringah// ( Mahabharat : Moksha Dharma Parva)

Varaha With Three Heads. This is a Indus seal.

http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/1117/threeheadsealmediumnt3.jpg

In verse 81, again we find reference of Ekashringa:

tejo-vrisho dyuti -dharah sarva sastra-bhritam varah |
pragraho nigraho vyagro na - eka-sringo gadagrajah ||

Which literal meaning is that - He Who took incarnation as the one-horned Varaha.
This term has been clearly interpreted in the Mahabharat –

buddhi-yogah sarathyam anayudha
grahana vyajah praptakale tad-grahanam
iti bahu-vairi-badhakam asya iti na-eka-sringah

Translation : “He is Eka sringah as He (Lord Krishna ) adopted several devices for bringing about the fall of the enemies, like giving sound advice, skillfully driving the chariot, pretending that he would not use a weapon but actually making use of His weapon at the opportune moment, etc”.

It is clear from the work of the Natwar Jha that we have the interpretation of all the Indus signs. I have read references to the book and with that book any Indus sign can be easily deciphered .

Dear Mr. skganji, I am not sure if you are qualified, seen from your writing, to make the above review.:ohno: You need to be an Archeologist or Scientist with knowledge in languages, not just one, to predict or make such literary conclusion or in making any comparison. Also Archeological survey of India and worldwide have already predicted only non-Sanskrit connection, not sure which one though. If it would had been Sanskrit pocket, it wouldnt had been a big surprise with the discovery considering its location and there wont be these many head breaking studies going on until now.
I am very confident that Indus script represents Sanskrit. This is how I came to conclusion.

^^
Although im definatly no expert in written scripts, ive looked into it out of interest, and it seems that the number of charecters included in the Indus script are too many to represent a syllable-based script, and yet too few to represent a pictographic script (i.e. like hieroglyphs or the Chinese script), so, it really is a mystery. Some people have even suggested that it isnt a script at all, but infact a collection of symbols used to represent trade goods, or guilds, or geographical regions (i.e. like a logo). Thats how little people know about the Indus script, the truth is, the international archeological community may never decode it, and it may not even represent a language for all anyone knows.

Unfortunatly, if you try hard enough to match a language to a script, you can almost always find a way, so various interest groups have matched languages like proto-Dravidian and proto-Sanskrit to the script, to claim the Indus civilization for partisan purposes. It seems that every forum you go on has a few people who know next to nothing about the methodology of the archeology or linguistics involved, yet believe in various Hindutva or Dravidian or Dalistani type views on early Indian history. Often people who present the views of the worldwide archeological community are labeled a 'Marxist' or 'psuedo-secular' or 'Hindu nationalist' or 'Brahmin' depending on which partisan viewpoint they are disagreeing with.

T.S. Subramanian, the author of the article 'Bull chasing, an ancient Tamil tradition', is a world famous Archeologist and columnist, and is in the field for more than 20 years. He knows more than 10 Indian languages including Sanskrit. I have seen his research presentations during my PhD time in India. You know where you will stand infront of such a humble and famous professional with your ideas!

^^
He sounds very qualified, and I would certainly defer to his judgement, unless the majority of the archeological community didnt agree of course. Since im not familiar with his work as much as you, I cannot comment on his reputation. I am not sure why you chose to tell me that, afterall, ive not commented on him or his article. Perhaps he is a scholar who has matched proto-Dravidian family languages to the Indus seals? I hear that current work in this area has been systematic, and yielded some results, but ultimatly, cannot be confirmed either way.

why do i get the feeling that people have conclusions & fit theories around them.
if sanscrit represents indus script then presumably the aryans were not invaders from the persian plateau, did not massacre the natives & did not write stories that later became holy books about it?
M S im probably not going to get to read subramanians book for a while at least.whats his conclusion?cheers d

^^ TSS new article in the present edition of Frontline!


Harappan link

T.S. SUBRAMANIAN

Discoveries made at Bhirrana in Haryana provide the missing link in the evolution of Harappan civilisation archaeology.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF INDIA
http://i17.************/6wwlvk3.jpg
The red potsherd with the engraving resembling the Dancing Girl bronze figurine of Mohenjodaro, found at Bhirrana.

THE Archaeological Survey of India’s discoveries at the Harappan sites of Bhirrana and Rakhigarhi, both in Haryana, in the past one decade testify to the importance of these sites in the evolution of the Harappan civilisation. While excavations were carried out in three consecutive seasons – 2003-04, 2004-05 and 2005-06 – at Bhirrana in Fatehabad district, excavations at Rakhigarhi in Hissar district lasted from 1997 to 2000. Both sites are on the banks of the Saraswati river, now dried up.
In a rare discovery during the excavations of 2004-05 at Bhirrana, the ASI found a thick red potsherd with an engraving that resembles the Dancing Girl, the famous bronze figurine found at Mohenjodaro in the early 1920s. Bhirrana is a few hundred kilometres from Mohenjodaro, which is now in Pakistan. The potsherd with the engraving was discovered by a team led by L.S. Rao, Superintending Archaeologist, Excavation Branch, ASI, Nagpur. It belongs to the mature Harappan period.
L.S. Rao called the discovery “the only one of its kind” because “no parallel to the Dancing Girl, either in bronze or in any other medium, was known” until the potsherd was found. Bhirrana is an “exemplary site” because, for the first time in post-Independence India, Hakra ware belonging to the pre-early Harappan period were found as independent, stratified deposits. L.S. Rao also called it a “paradigmatic site” because “to put it in a nutshell, the importance of the excavation at Bhirrana lies in the fact that we have strong evidence for the first time of an unbroken cultural sequence, starting from the village culture represented by Hakra ware and its evolution gradually into semi-urban and urban cultures till the site was finally abandoned.” Excavations at Bhirrana conclusively show that during the period of Hakra ware culture, people lived in circular pits cut into the soil. There were auxiliary pits for cooking and for industrial activities (such as melting copper) and for religious purposes, including animal sacrifices. “In the present state of knowledge,” L.S. Rao said, “the Hakra ware culture belongs to the fourth millennium B.C., or 6,000 years before the present.”
In the early Harappan period, people came out of the pits and built houses made of sun-baked bricks. The whole settlement was within a fortification wall. In the mature Harappan period, the entire settlement was once again reorganised and the city layout reoriented with major and minor lanes, by-lanes and streets, which had house complexes. The streets always cut one another at right angles.
The discoveries at Bhirrana include underground dwelling pits; house complexes on streets and lanes; a fortification wall; bichrome pottery; terracotta vases, bowls and cups; arrowheads, fish-hooks and bangles, all made of copper; terracotta toy-carts and animal figurines; and beads made of semi-precious stones such as faience, lapis lazuli, agate and carnelian. One of the arrowheads, of the mature Harappan period, still retains a fibre impression of the wooden haft.
Several mature Harappan period seals made of steatite were also found in Bhirrana. The animals represented on the obverse of these seals include unicorns, deer with wavy antlers and a bull with outsized horns. The seals have typical Harappan legends. The reverse side of the seals has a knob with perforations.
D.R. Sahni discovered Harappa (which is also in Pakistan now) in Punjab in 1921 and R.D. Banerji discovered Mohenjodaro in Sind a few months later in the same year. Both were archaeologists of the ASI. The existence of these sites was known to scholars for about 85 years before their actual discovery. What came to light after the discoveries was that a highly developed civilisation (the Harappan civilisation, or the Indus civilisation) had flourished on the banks of the rivers Indus and Saraswati, around 3000 B.C. It was Banerji who discovered the “Dancing Girl”.
The Harappan culture was a highly developed, urbanised culture. People lived in houses that had several rooms, bathrooms and underground drainage. The discovery of Harappa and Mohenjodaro, and the many other sites that were excavated later, revealed the grandeur of this civilisation, and scholars made consistent attempts to find out what had preceded it. This curiosity drove archaeologists to locate more and more Harappan sites.

http://i15.************/7x146sl.jpg
BENOY K. BEHL/COLLECTION: NATIONAL MUSEUM, NEW DELHI

The Dancing Girl, the iconic bronze figurine of Mohenjodaro.

Since the 1920s, about 300 Harappan sites have been excavated in Pakistan and India. The sites excavated in India include Bhirrana, Kunal, Rakhigarhi, Banawali, Bedhawa and Farmana in Haryana, Sanauli in Uttar Pradesh, Dholavira and Lothal in Gujarat, Kalibangan and Baror in Rajasthan, and Daimabad in Maharashtra.
At its height, the Harappan civilisation flourished over an area of 2.5 million sq km, from Sutkagendor in the Makran coast of Balochistan to Alamgirhpur in the east in Uttar Pradesh and from Manda in Jammu to Daimabad in Ahmednagar district in Maharashtra.
Between 1972 and 1974, M.R. Mughal, former Director-General of Archaeology and Museums, Pakistan, explored Bahawalpur in the Cholistan region of Punjab, situated just across the international border from adjoining Rajasthan. Mughal found a lot of pottery on the surface there. The ware was named after the Hakra river, which flows there. Ultimately, Hakra ware was found stratigraphically during the excavations at Jalilpur, on the banks of the Ravi river near Harappa. It was found lying beneath early Harappan deposits. This was the story on the Pakistani side.
On the Indian side, although many excavations were carried out at Kalibangan, Banawali, Rakhigarhi and Kunal, they did not yield any independent horizon of Hakra ware culture in their earliest levels. So there was a missing link in the Harappan civilisation archaeology between Pakistan and India.
“For the first time now,” L.S. Rao said, “in post-Independence India, stratigraphically positioned Hakra ware culture deposits have been exposed at Bhirrana. They show a typical early village settlement, wherein dwelling pits were cut into the natural soil.” These pits had a superstructure. Interestingly, no post-holes were found on the floor of the pits. (Posts would have supported the roof of these dwelling pits).

ASI
http://i16.************/8fy9pw4.jpg
The site of the Harappan excavation at Bhirrana.

In their article entitled, “Unearthing Harappan Settlement at Bhirrana (2003-04)”, published in Puratattva (number 34, 2003-2004), L.S. Rao and his colleagues, Nandini B. Sahu, Prabash Sahu, U.A. Shastry and Samir Diwan, say the pits are mostly circular in shape with occasional brick lining. “The bricks used are of irregular shape and as such do not conform to the known ratio of early Harappan brick sizes. The inside walls of the pits were mud-plastered. The average diameter of the pit was 2.30 metres…. This unique tradition of pit dwelling, especially in the early Harappan context of Haryana region, was in practice” at Mitathal, Hissar district, and Kunal, Fatehabad. “The distinguishing ceramic of the period is the bichrome ware where the outlines of the motifs are painted in black and the space within is painted in evanescent white,” the authors say.
In the transitional period, there was a phenomenal change in the settlement pattern. “The entire site was occupied and the town appears to have been fortified. People started living over ground in houses, built of mud bricks of pink and buff colour, of size 30 × 20 × 10 cm, 33 × 22 × 11 cm or 36 × 24 × 12 cm, conforming to the ratio of 3:2:1…. Besides, a few rectangular mud brick platforms with circular fire pits and hearths were exposed,” the writers say.
The Bhirrana excavation in 2003-04 also yielded two inscribed copper celts, each bearing typical Harappan alphabets of the mature Harappan period.

ASI
http://i14.************/7wgnafn.jpg
TERRACOTTA HORNS among the exciting finds.

Copper smithy, which began with the Hakra ware culture, advanced in technology over a period of time, and bigger objects such as shells, bangles, fish-hooks and arrowheads made of copper were found. There was a flourishing bead industry, and beads were manufactured out of semi-precious stones such as lapis lazuli, carnelian, agate, faience and steatite.
It was during the second season of excavation, in 2004-05, that the sturdy red ware with the incised figure of the Dancing Girl was found.
In an article in Man and Environment (Volume XXXII, No.1, 2007), the journal of the Indian Society for Prehistoric and Quaternary Studies, Pune, L.S. Rao says, “…the delineation of the lines in the potsherd is so true to stance, including the disposition of the hands, of the bronze that it appears that the craftsman of Bhirrana had first-hand knowledge of the former.” The bronze, 11 centimetres in height, occupied a unique position in the sculptural art of the mature Harappan period. “With its tilted head, flexed legs, right hand resting on the hip, and the left [hand] suspended by its side, the bronze sculpture, although nude, enjoys a modest ornamentation with a necklace, wristlets and armlets.” The engraving on the potsherd was a highly stylised figure whose torso resembled that of an hourglass, or two triangles meeting at their apex. In consonance with the bronze, on the potsherd, “the right hand is akimbo, and the left is suspended by its side. Slight oblique strokes on the right upper arm are suggestive of the presence of armlets….”
During the Harappan civilisation, seals were made as a mark of trade and commerce. Those made during the early Harappan period were button seals, but later, they were made out of steatite. An important seal, made out of black steatite, has an engraving of an animal with three heads – those of a bull, a unicorn and a deer. A horned deity standing nearby holds the deer’s neck with his right hand, and his left hand is raised. There is a manger in front of the animal. Interestingly, this seal does not have any Harappan legend.

ASI
http://i6.************/8aw0iu1.jpg
SEALS, FOUND AT Bhirrana, with animals such as a deer, a three-headed animal, a unicorn, and a bull. These seals have typical Harappan legends.
Other exciting finds at Bhirrana include terracotta horns and terracotta wheels with painted spokes.

Largest site
The Rakhigarhi site, discovered in 1963, is the largest Harappan site found in India. For three seasons, from 1997 to 2000, Amarendra Nath, who recently retired as Director of the ASI, headed the excavations there, with important contributions coming from Alok Tripathy and Arun Malik. Since 1963, several archaeologists have visited the site and carried out exploratory work.
“The site has acquired importance,” said Amarendra Nath, “because we have been able to extensively identify the purpose behind early Harappan structures and trace the beginning of the emergence of town planning in early Harappan levels, wherein the structures were well laid-out with evidence of a public drainage system.” The use of burnt bricks could also be traced to the early Harappan level at this site.

ASI
http://i16.************/82j4v1e.jpg
PAINTED TERRACOTTA TOY wheels were also discovered at the site.

Other sites have yielded potsherds with graffiti marks. But Rakhigarhi is important because “here we have graffiti arranged in a sequence, which suggests the beginning of writing in the early Harappan level”, Amarendra Nath said.

ASI
http://i19.************/72vaa8g.jpg
THE EXCAVATION OF 2003-04 yielded inscribed copper celts.

The finding of a needle suggested that some kind of a stitched clothing was used. As if to confirm this, a potsherd with a painting was found: Amarendra Nath said, “This is a rare painting in the Harappan context, wherein you get evidence of a person wearing a dhoti and a stitched upper garment.”

ASI
http://i14.************/6to4ft4.jpg
THE ARTEFACTS UNEARTHED include pottery and potsherds, an ivory comb, bone points and chert blades.

A number of sealings and seals were found. (A seal is an original stone object, which is carved in depth. A sealing is an impression of a seal.) One of them is a cylindrical seal, which indicates contact with contemporary urban centres in Iraq. This seal has an engraving of a crocodile on the one side and Harappan characters on the other. Such types of seals have been found in Iraq. The significance of the Rakhigarhi site also lies in its having 11 burials, with the skeletons aligned north to south. The skeletons were laid in pits with grave goods, copper bangles and shell bangles. Arun Malik found an intact skeleton in a pit. The burial site is located north of the habitational site.


http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20080201504012900.htm

why do i get the feeling that people have conclusions & fit theories around them.

Probably because that is the case, at least when it comes to partisan views.

if sanscrit represents indus script then presumably the aryans were not invaders from the persian plateau, did not massacre the natives & did not write stories that later became holy books about it?

From my understanding of history, here is what experts believed happened:

In the Indian subcontinent, there were multiple cultures, each at different stages of development, depending on their local environment. In the Indus Valley, deforestation allowed farming, and later urban civilization, while elsewhere in India, other cultures remained in a neolithic stage of development. Due to environmental change, the Indus Valley Civilization declined, and urban civilization later rose again around the Ganges Valley, as it was deforested, and permenant settlement took place. How much of the Indus Valley Civilization's cultural practices survived into later India is unknown, but judging from world history, it probably became incorporated into later Indian culture to some degree. During the later Indus Valley Civilization, one of the other Indian cultures that existed was the Cemetary H Culture, which existed to the east of the IVC. Scholars believe this may represent the culture which formulated the Rig Veda, since it existed in the geographical area talked about in the Rig Veda. If so, then the culture of these people seems to have been the one which was ascendant when the Ganges Valley urbanised. Some or most of the people living in the Ganges Valley spoke Indo-European language, introduced from outside the Indian subcontinent (there is no evidence that it was introduced by nomadic invasion, and may have been via an exchange of ideas or trade). These people conquered neighbouring tribes who did not follow the same Indo-European customs, and this seems to be what Vedic literature refers to when it talks about Aryan and non-Aryan people. Gradually, the other tribes adopted Vedic practices (and no doubt Vedic practices adopted their customs) and the Indo-European language family, and the rest is probably familiar to you - the rise of the Mahajanapadas. Cultures in the far south and east of the Indian peninsular were the last to adopt Vedic practices, and like with elsewhere in India, retained their own local gods when these were mixed with the new mythology - this is how religious practices always seem to spread, as shown by how Christianity for example, adopted so many pagan European practices. Whether there was any ethnic component to the Aryans is doubtful, because even if the Aryans had decended from migrants, they had by this time long been naturalised, and furthermore, everyone in the world is a migrant if one goes far back enough, so it shouldnt really matter. Whether the Indus script survived the downfall of the Indus Valley Civilization, or was superceded, is unknown. It is currently believed that the Brahmi script, from which all Indic scripts today derive, was a modification of the ancient Phonecian/Aramatic alphabet, that reached India via Persia. However, recent evidence discovered in Tamil Nadu suggests that either this happened earlier than previously believed, or that it may have originated within India, perhaps even Tamil Nadu itself. On the topic of language, it is unknown what the inhabitants of the Indus Valley Civilization spoke - perhaps a mix of different language families.

Dear Mr. skganji, I am not sure if you are qualified, seen from your writing, to make the above review.:ohno: You need to be an Archeologist or Scientist with knowledge in languages, not just one, to predict or make such literary conclusion or in making any comparison. Also Archeological survey of India and worldwide have already predicted only non-Sanskrit connection, not sure which one though. If it would had been Sanskrit pocket, it wouldnt had been a big surprise with the discovery considering its location and there wont be these many head breaking studies going on until now.

Maduraiselvam, Truth is very important in any part of the investigation. Even though I am not an Archeologist and scientist, I am doing my research based on the important evidence found in the sanskrit puranas and the artificats discovered at these sites. I care about the truth, if the Archeologists or scientists are fabricating lies in the name of Archeology , I reject them. Haven't we seen the dubious way with which ASI has worked sometimes in the recent history ?. Coming to the Indus script, there are about 400 seals roughly discovered uptil now , and almost all these seals were deciphered by Natwar Jha and Rajaram in his book.

T.S. Subramanian, the author of the article 'Bull chasing, an ancient Tamil tradition', is a world famous Archeologist and columnist, and is in the field for more than 20 years. He knows more than 10 Indian languages including Sanskrit. I have seen his research presentations during my PhD time in India. You know where you will stand infront of such a humble and famous professional with your ideas!

In my humble opinion I would say that Sanskrit had greater influence than Tamil in ancient India. You seems to have somehow a biased view towards tamil and some prejuidice towars Sanskrit. This may very well influence your understanding of the truth about the interpretation of the Indus seals.

Maduraiselvam, Truth is very important in any part of the investigation. Even though I am not an Archeologist and scientist, I am doing my research based on the important evidence found in the sanskrit puranas and the artificats discovered at these sites. I care about the truth, if the Archeologists or scientists are fabricating lies in the name of Archeology , I reject them. Haven't we seen the dubious way with which ASI has worked sometimes in the recent history ?. Coming to the Indus script, there are about 400 seals roughly discovered uptil now , and almost all these seals were deciphered by Natwar Jha and Rajaram in his book.

And before research, one must be qualified.

And before research, one must be qualified.

Can you let me know what qualification you need to research the truth ?. I believe one must understand the subject matter to make some comments on the subject. I have a masters degree in computer science and I think I am well educated to make my comments on this subject matter.

I am not researching the truth, im presenting the opinion of the international (mainly Indian) scholary community. You made a very basic error in your first post that made me understand that you do not have much familiarity with the topic, or Indian history in general, beyond what you have read on websites. I suggest that you read an impartial book or two on the subject, like I have. I am not an expert in archeology either, but I have made a point of mentioning this before presenting what I think is the opinion of the majority of scholars. In comparison, you have presented original research as if it is absolute truth. I attribute your lack of sceptical caution to lack of actual familiarity with the topic. Tell me, did you study any scientific subject? I ask this because you should be reading those who apply scepticism and scientific method to their research, not those who make leaps in logic.

Tell me, did you study any scientific subject? I ask this because you should be reading those who apply scepticism and scientific method to their research, not those who make leaps in logic.
I appreciate your clarification. I read lot of ancient material written in Sanskrit. I can read and understand Sanskrit relatively easy compared to others. The problem with some of the western scholars is that they are not interested in giving the credit to Sanskrit for being the language of Indus civilization . I have ready many western scholars who give silly reasons and who scratch the surface and don't deep research to establish the truth. I appreciate the efforts of International community as long as they aren't biased towards western scholars. Unbiased research and truth are very essential in any scientific observation. It looks some western scholars especially from Harvard University have manipulated some Indus seals to reject the claims of Natwar Jha. This is very dissappointing and this is exactly what Max Mueller did to come with his own theory of making Sanskrit an Indo-European language and manipulating certain historal facts about Indian history that suits biblical history .

You have not looked into the topic hard enough. Your views are the same kind that I had several years ago before I knew as much as I do now about the subject. You may think that you know a lot, like I did back then, but believe me, you have not scratched the surface yet. Your words suggest that you havent actually looked in any detail at the evidence you are denying. Until you do, how can you know whether they are 'silly reasons'? No doubt you believe that international scholarship (including the majority of Indian scholars, so please stop using the term western) is still influeced by fundamentalist and racist colonial era bias, but if you had read recent research you would know that scholarship is more rigorous, and often conducted by Indians who criticise the colonial assumptions themselves. In science, one tries to read work that has been published only within the last few years, in order to be update with theories. I suggest that you read the following works, before commenting further, and you will find your words are more convincing:

- 'India: A History' by John Keay (May 10, 2001)
- 'Understanding Harappa' by Shereen Ratnagar (Oct 1, 2002)
- 'Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300' by Romila Thapar (Feb 1, 2004)

^^
Note that the first of those books presents the old, now discredited, Aryan Invasion Theory. However, as you will see, the latter two present the most recent findings possible at their time of writing.

Here is the process of academia:

1). People go to a learning institution to become educated in the practical ways of finding data, such as how to conduct a dig, or look at languages for certain features.

2). These people, now qualified, engage in field research, and based upon their research, and reading of the research of others, they present a theory, in the form of an article within a journal.

3). This theory is tested by the rest of the scholary community, in an unbiased fashion, based on available evidence, and may become accepted.

Now here is how many 'popular' historians, with political or religious bias operate:

1). They form a theory which they like, because it makes their chosen political or religious viewpoint look better.

2). They selectively interpret whatever evidence they can find to fit that theory.

3). They publish it outside academic journals, on websites, or in non-academic books.

The second way of doing things has no standards, evidence is not considered sceptically, anyone can make up fantasy.

So, when Indians who are proud of their civilization want to learn about its fantatic history, they will first go to the internet, or to books that are less academic, to find the theories which make them feel best, rather than the more complicated theories, which are less tidy, but far more realistic. They go on sites that say the Indus Valley Civilization is the same age as Krishna's Dwarka, and that it spoke Sanskrit, or that there is a lost Atlantis off the coast of Tamil Nadu, because these things make Indian history sound better. Indian history is already interesting enough without these artificial exagerations, but people go for these glorified and idealised views of the past, because it is more simple and invigorating.

Here is the process of academia:

1). People go to a learning institution to become educated in the practical ways of finding data, such as how to conduct a dig, or look at languages for certain features.

2). These people, now qualified, engage in field research, and based upon their research, and reading of the research of others, they present a theory, in the form of an article within a journal.

3). This theory is tested by the rest of the scholary community, in an unbiased fashion, based on available evidence, and may become accepted.

Now here is how many 'popular' historians, with political or religious bias operate:

1). They form a theory which they like, because it makes their chosen political or religious viewpoint look better.

2). They selectively interpret whatever evidence they can find to fit that theory.

3). They publish it outside academic journals, on websites, or in non-academic books.

The second way of doing things has no standards.

So, when Indians who are proud of their civilization want to learn about its fantatic history, they will first go to the internet, or to books that are less academic, to find the theories which make them feel best, rather than the more complicated theories, which are less tidy, but far more realistic. They go on sites that say the Indus Valley Civilization is the same thing as Krishna's Dwarka, and that it spoke Sanskrit, or that there is a lost Atlantis off the coast of Tamil Nadu, because these things make Indian history sound better.

I have appreciation for your first 3 points and fully support people who follow these academic standards. Coming to the next set of points, I am not affiliated to any religious/political group while making my comments, nor interested in making Indian history better by fabricating unauthentic and fraudulent claims. Some scholars are brushing aside the vast amount of literary works carried in Sanskrit in ancient times like Vyasa's Mahabharata, puranas, vedas and that of Panini's ashthadhyayi . These literary works can give clues to deciphering Indus script. This is very important in the part of the investigation. Just like while investigating a crime, the forensic team cannot neglect the little clues, similarly while deciphering the script, the script's contempary language and the literary work in that language cannot be neglected.

Sanskrit literature is not neglected at all, and is infact one of the primary sources of data that scholars use.

http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/2361/guntapallywestgodhavarijd4.jpg

This inscription says that the Buddhist Monk MidiKiliyakudu donated this Rock Inscription to the Buddhist monks living near the caves in Guntapally village of West-Godavari District. The Script is Brahmi and the language is Prakrit.These details were disclosed to the news reporters by the ASI directory of A.P, Jitendra Das and the Amaravati Museum supervisor.

The link to this telugu article can be found @

http://www.eenadu.net/archives/archive-5-12-2007/story.asp?qry1=8&reccount=34

It was published on December 7th, 2007 in a major telugu newspaper.

Nice picture depicting the evolution of the pagoda in Asia:

http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/buddarch2.gif

2,500 years ago, a city bigger than Athens in Orissa (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2500-year-old_city_found_in_Orissa/articleshow/2771877.cms)
1 Feb 2008, 0028 hrs ISThttp://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/images/spacer.gif,http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/images/spacer.gifMinati Singhahttp://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/images/spacer.gif,http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/images/spacer.gifTNN
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/images/spacer.gif

http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/5480/photojq7.jpg
Experts say Sishupalgarh is the ‘most visible standing architectural monument’ discovered in India (TOI Photo)


BHUBANESWAR: From under the ruins of an ancient fort on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar, archaeologists have dug out the remains of a 2,500-year-old city which they believe was bigger than classical Athens.

Eighteen pillars were found among the remnants of the grand city at Sishupalgarh, a ruined fortification first discovered 60 years ago. The findings include debris of household pottery and terracotta ornaments, pointing to an advanced lifestyle led by the people who lived there. The polished potteries even have ownership marks on them.

Monica L Smith, head archaeologist from the University of California, who was part of the 12-member team that conducted the excavation, said the site is the "most visible standing architectural monument" discovered in India so far. "It's a huge city that existed about 2,500 years ago."

"The city had four gateways and could have housed up to 25,000 people. Even classical Athens had only 10,000 people," said R K Mohanty from Deccan College, Pune, who was part of the excavation team which also had members from the Archaeological Survey of India and University of California.

"It was a very important city with well-built walls and a big expanse. The pillars we found were part of a gigantic structure, probably used for public gatherings," added Mohanty. Sishupalgarh was once ruled by the Kalinga kings.

Vaastu, nobody likes Nihilists. Just wanted to get that out. ;)

Btw, the news of the city at Sishupalgarh is great news - nice to see Kalinga getting the archaelogical attention it needs. Just look at it this way - Rome and Athens make so much money from tourism, as do other ancient cities. India has dozens of cities as ancient, if not more ancient that are equally great. They just need to be properly excavated which is something that is happening at a good pace!

- India A History: John Keay

A very good read by a distinguished historian. However, upon reading it, I realize that ancient Indian scholars are not respected in any way in comparison to their Hellenic and Mideastern counterparts. If I remember correctly, even Keay was dismissing the claims of many Indian scholars while almost maintaing the reputation of Herodotus despite some very bizarre quotes mentioned in the text by the Hellene.

Some other good reads on Indian history I found:
- Arthur Llewellyn Basham (professor of Oriental Studies at the Australian national University) wrote an interesting (albeit dated) book called The Wonder That Was India
The book only reaches upto the time of the invasion of Sindh before it goes into other areas rather than documented history. In the area of North Indian history before the invasion of Sindh (700s?) this book shows a lot of merit and detail.
The following chapters are also very interesting and include vivid accounts and descriptions of the political process and systems of the Mahajanapadas and empires of India as well as a detailed account of the life of individuals in different varnas in India at different time periods. It also covers religion and cults, metaphysics, science in India, the arts, and language and literature. All in all, it was a very interesting read.
That being said, it's an old book. Theories on the AIT are outdated.

from ifpindia.org and hpi
http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/309/tamilbrahmi21nov07vk9.jpg
QUSEIR-AL-QADIM, EGYPT, February 20, 2008: A broken storage jar with inscriptions in an ancient form of Tamil script, dated to the first century BCE., has been excavated in Egypt.

Dr. Roberta Tomber, a pottery specialist at the British Museum, London, identified the fragmentary vessel as a storage jar made in India. Iravatham Mahadevan, a specialist in Tamil epigraphy, has confirmed that the inscription on the jar is in Tamil written in the Tamil Brahmi script of about the first century.

Earlier excavations at this site about 30 years ago yielded two pottery inscriptions in Tamil Brahmi from the same era. Additionally, a pottery inscription was found in 1995 at Berenike, a Roman settlement of the Red Sea coast of Egypt. These discoveries proved material evidence to corroborate the literary accounts by classical Western authors and the Tamil Sangam poets about the flourishing trade between the India and Rome, via the Red Sea ports, in the early centuries CE.

Mundeshwari Temple in Bihar – Is it the oldest functional Hindu Temple in the World?
(http://www.sarvesamachar.com/click_frameset.php?ref_url=%2Farchive.php%3Ftitle%3Darticles&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2F%7Er%2Fhindublog%2F%7E3%2F221469978%2Fmundeshwari-temple-in-bihar-is-it.html/)
Ma Mundeshwari Temple in Kaimur District of Bihar was recently in news due to the planned renovation and restoration by Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). Newspaper reports suggested that Mundeshwari Temple was built in 108 A D. Since then rituals and worship have been taking place at the temple without a break. Thus making it the oldest functional temple in the world.

http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/3118/mundeshwari2btemple2bkabg3.jpg
^ Ma Mundeshwari Temple

The use of the term ‘oldest’ is a bit risky when talking about temples associated with Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism). Simply because no one has been able to clearly state how old Sanatana Dharma is. Say this temple is the oldest and immediately another person will be come with something much older.

So the safest option is to say that Ma Mundeshwari Temple in Kaimur District of Bihar is one of the oldest Hindu temples in the world.

http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/892/ma2bmundeshwari2bbiharyi2.jpg
^ Ma Mundeshwari

Ma Mundeshwari Temple is situated atop the Kaimur Hill (608ft). The temple is in an octagonal shape. The sanctum sanctorum of the temple has an idol of Devi – Mundeshwari. There is also a ‘Chaturmukha Shivling’ in the sanctum sanctorum. A clear indication that Shiva and Shakti were worshipped here. Also an indication that the temple might be part of the Tantric cult which is quite popular in the Eastern part of India.

http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/2034/idols2bat2bmundeshwari2bj5.jpg
^ Idols at Mundeshwari

Apart from Shiva and Shakti, the temple also has idols of other popular gods in the Hindu pantheon including Ganesha, Surya, Vishnu and Mother Goddess. Temple materials and idols can be found scattered near this very rare octagonal shaped temple.

Experts believe that the temple was built during the Shaka Era.

Interestingly, the present caretaker of the temple is Muslim, yet another example of the religious harmony at the grassroots level in India. The temple attracts devotees during festivals like Ramnavami and Shivratri.

Good topics.

But call me when Archaeologists are allowed to study the Taj Mahal complex without hindrance from the government or the so-called "Waqfs" who claim some kind of ludicrous claim to the site - and who have no place whatsoever in the affairs of buildings or sites within India, whether they be Mohammadan or not.

Ancient weapons dug up in India
By Amitabha Bhattasali
BBC News, Calcutta

Archaeologists in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal have discovered small weapons made of stone which are around 15,000-20,000 years old.
The artefacts - dating to the Stone Age - were found during excavations in Murshidabad district, near Bangladesh.
Archaeologists say the find is potentially significant as it suggests man's presence in the area dates back much earlier than previously believed.
Finds such as this on the floodplains of the River Ganges are very rare.
However, there is ample evidence of stone age activity in India's upland regions.
Stone age weapons are not usually found in such an old soil layer:
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44522000/jpg/_44522477_203remains.jpg

'Raw materials'
The weapons - which include small axes - were discovered at Ekani-Chandpara village near Sagardighi, which is an ancient site.
This is one of a number of pots found at the site:
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44522000/jpg/_44522478_203pot.jpg
Archaeologists say the weapons were found from a soil layer belonging to the mid-Pleistocene period - much below the Holocene layer where present human habitation takes place.
"We have not only discovered the weapons at this site, but raw materials and the scraps were also found," Dr Gautam Sengupta, director of the State Archaeology Department, told the BBC.
"This proves that the weapons were made at this place itself."
Another reason why the find is so significant, archaeologists say, is because Stone Age weapons are not normally found at such an old soil layer in the Gangetic alluvial plains.
However it is well known that raw materials for making weapons are easily found in the plateau region and most Stone Age discoveries are from this area.

Chance
So far, no human fossils or remains other than some charcoal have been found at the site.
Scientists have yet to confirm how old the charcoal is. "The history of civilisation in this region has suddenly gone back by around 20,000 years," one archaeologist said.
After the discovery, two eminent geo-archaeologists - Prof SN Rajguru and Dr Bhaskar Deotare - visited the excavation site and confirmed that the weapons date back to the smaller Stone Age.

The discovery was made by chance, Dr Sengupta said.
"We were digging the site for some archaeological evidence of the Sultanate period. We were expecting some ancient artefacts related to Sultan Hussein Shah," he said - referring to a former ruler from the area.

"We did find those, but our archaeologists kept on digging to unearth some more historical evidence of that period and now we have found these Stone Age weapons," Dr Sengupta said.
After winding up the excavation at Ekani Chandpara in a couple of weeks, archaeologists are planning to launch a search for ancient human habitation in a wider area.

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7315386.stm

Evidence of first Indian settlers found in Tamil Nadu

New Delhi (PTI): A team of Indian scientists have discovered genetic evidence that tribal villagers living in Tamil Nadu were among the first migrants from Africa to settle down in India.
Geneticists led by Prof Ramaswamy Pitchappan of Madurai Kamaraj University have found out that the marker gene in the group of people from a small village Jyothimanickam near Madurai matched those of the first settlers in India. The findings point to the fact that the villagers are among the direct descendants of the first settlers.
Pitchappan who conducted the research in collaboration with Oxford Research University found that DNA of Virumandi Andithevar, a 30-year-old systems administrator from the village, matched M130, the chromosome marker, which gives proof that the first human migration into India took place around 70,000 years ago.
"The M130 is the oldest marker in India and there is no other marker older than that for India. The DNA samples from, Virumandi and others were found to have this marker and we were able to deduce that they were among the first human settlers in India, who obviously spread from Africa," Pitchappan who is Prof Emeritus at the Madurai Kamraj University told PTI.
The findings will be aired on Discovery Television, where historian Michael Wood will narrate the story of the world's most ancient civilization in the six part series 'The Story of India' beginning on April 16.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/001200804151442.htm

self edited

Evidence of first Indian settlers found in Tamil Nadu

New Delhi (PTI): A team of Indian scientists have discovered genetic evidence that tribal villagers living in Tamil Nadu were among the first migrants from Africa to settle down in India.....
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/001200804151442.htm


I wonder how these people looked like and why do they look different from the indigenous inhabitants of Africa?....

I wonder how these people looked like and why do they look different from the indigenous inhabitants of Africa?....

haha they wont look different sir. They are normal people like us, but villagers. Well human evolution has many fantastic adaptations during the course of time. They dont look like africans anymore.

In my humble opinion I would say that Sanskrit had greater influence than Tamil in ancient India. You seems to have somehow a biased view towards tamil and some prejuidice towars Sanskrit. This may very well influence your understanding of the truth about the interpretation of the Indus seals.

You seem to have a similarly biased opinion that IVC script is Sanskrit, which again is questionable. I think as Vaasthu had said we need to recognize that there are different school of thoughts here. I had recently attendted a workshop by Prof. Asko Parpola, a Norwegian professor, who has dedicated his lifetime in the study of IVC. He came out with interesting counter points to some reasercers conclusion that IVC is not a written language script. He is of the thought that IVC script is mostly proto-Dravidian in nature.

I think overall anyone who has spent even little time on this subject would realize that, the amount of discoveries in terms of potshed that carry these script are very less in nature, and many agree that more digs need to be carried out to enlarge the set of literals from which a possible decipherement of the language is possible.

You seem to have a similarly biased opinion that IVC script is Sanskrit, which again is questionable. I think as Vaasthu had said we need to recognize that there are different school of thoughts here. I had recently attendted a workshop by Prof. Asko Parpola, a Norwegian professor, who has dedicated his lifetime in the study of IVC. He came out with interesting counter points to some reasercers conclusion that IVC is not a written language script. He is of the thought that IVC script is mostly proto-Dravidian in nature.

I think overall anyone who has spent even little time on this subject would realize that, the amount of discoveries in terms of potshed that carry these script are very less in nature, and many agree that more digs need to be carried out to enlarge the set of literals from which a possible decipherement of the language is possible.

I haven't naively put forward my opinion regarding the Indus valley Script representing Sanskrit. The city of Dholavira sign board has been deciphered with a reasonable meaning in Sanskrit by Natwar Jha and N.S.Raja Ram. Infact they have translated hundreds of Indus Valley seals into Sanskrit meanings with a reasonable meaning. I would recommend the works of Natwar Jha and N.S Raja Ram who have spent a long time on deciphering these signs. Coming to Asko Parpola's work, I haven't studied them and I cannot comment on them. I think many signs of IVC have symbols associated with Vedic society. Especially, the Unicorn, the swastika, Symbol etc which have a very significant importance during the Vedic civilization. I lost faith in some of the research done by western scholars for their ignorance towards India's past.

I haven't naively put forward my opinion regarding the Indus valley Script representing Sanskrit. The city of Dholavira sign board has been deciphered with a reasonable meaning in Sanskrit by Natwar Jha and N.S.Raja Ram. Infact they have translated hundreds of Indus Valley seals into Sanskrit meanings with a reasonable meaning. I would recommend the works of Natwar Jha and N.S Raja Ram who have spent a long time on deciphering these signs. Coming to Asko Parpola's work, I haven't studied them and I cannot comment on them. I think many signs of IVC have symbols associated with Vedic society. Especially, the Unicorn, the swastika, Symbol etc which have a very significant importance during the Vedic civilization. I lost faith in some of the research done by western scholars for their ignorance towards India's past.

If you have lost faith in western scholars, then I would recommend works of Iravatham Mahadevan, who has written volumes on the IVC scipts and their association with Tamil words. For instance, the fish like symbol, which he associates with the dual meaning in Tamil of the same word "Meen" referring to both fish and the stars. Similarly bull fighting with that of the bull fighting prevalent in TamilNadu even in these years.

I by no means dispute Raja Ram's works for I am no expert, but I would certainly recommend you to be open to the various thoughts and then comeout with your own line of thinking through questioning and research.

If you have lost faith in western scholars, then I would recommend works of Iravatham Mahadevan, who has written volumes on the IVC scipts and their association with Tamil words. For instance, the fish like symbol, which he associates with the dual meaning in Tamil of the same word "Meen" referring to both fish and the stars. Similarly bull fighting with that of the bull fighting prevalent in TamilNadu even in these years.

I by no means dispute Raja Ram's works for I am no expert, but I would certainly recommend you to be open to the various thoughts and then comeout with your own line of thinking through questioning and research.

I don't have full faith in his work either. He looks like is trying to please his western counter parts . I have partially read his interpretations on some of the Indus symbols and got dissappointed with his interpretations. I felt that there is no truth in his interpretation. This is my Point of view . I don't disrespect his work , as he is doing some interesting work in archeology . I believe that just like Latin and greek have enjoyed great status in Rome and greek , I feel that Sanskrit also must have enjoyed a similar status in IVC. If that is not the case, why do we have voluminous work in this language by scholars like Aryabhatta, Panini, Kali Dasa, Kautilya, Adi Sankara Charya. All these authors have composed their literary works just after the IVC dissappeared. Also, literary works like Mahabaratha , the Vedas , puranas, itihasas have been well in use in ancient India. Interestingly all this literary work is composed in Sanskrit. I don't understand why Sanskrit is ruled out of IVC by so many scholars. We also know that Sanskrit was extensively in use during Buddha's time even though he preferred Prakrit language to avoid the dominance of the Brahminism.

If that is not the case, why do we have voluminous work in this language by scholars like Aryabhatta, Panini, Kali Dasa, Kautilya, Adi Sankara Charya. All these authors have composed their literary works just after the IVC dissappeared.


IVC declined around 1900 BC where as the above quoted works/authors lived during or after 4th century BC. There is a gap of 1500 years. Your statement that these authors composed their work just after the IVC 's disappearance seems far fetched. As you appear to have done a lot of research on the topic, I am not sure if the above statement is intentional or out of ignorance.

Of all the quoted texts, Rig Veda should be the closest to IVC in the time scale as it is stated to have been formulated around 1500 BC or later. From Rig Vedic texts, it doesn't make appear that vedic people have been leading an urban life.. On the other hand, it is clear that these people had been leading a pastoral life and if any thing they were celebrating destruction of forts i.e urban civilization.

2,500 years ago, a city bigger than Athens in Orissa (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2500-year-old_city_found_in_Orissa/articleshow/2771877.cms)


Nice find man - by far one of the most important and interesting discoveries ive heard of in years.

Another city to rival Pataliputra, Mathura, Kannauj, Vijaynagara and Delhi.

Ive not been paying attention to Indian archeology recently mainly because of the amount of ignorant partisans that appear every time someone makes a thread.

Serious acacdemic discussion on Indian archeology is hard - every time a topic is made, someone with little or no understanding of history or archeology beyond populist books and websites comes on and posts bullshit.

I lost faith in some of the research done by western scholars for their ignorance towards India's past.

There are western scholars who know far more about India's past than you or me probably ever will.

But because they are white, and present a theory that you do not like, you automatically call them biased.

The world isnt so simple.

In many cases, theories which are dismissed as 'colonial bias' by Indians, are infact far more rigorous and logical than the nationalist alternative.

The only reason that young Indians such as yourself think its 'colonial bias' is because you havent read serious texts, such as Romila Thapar's 'Early India'.

If you saw the methods by which real Indian archeology is conducted, you would have more perspective.

It is not at all shameful to admit that India is made of many distinct cultures with distinct languages and has been successfully invaded many times - because that is how history has happened everywhere - every civilization and state on this planet was made in similar ways.

There is no need to stubbornly claim a single origin and 5000 year continued history. History is interesting enough already - and more realistic.

But alas, Indian nationalists call unbiased scholarship 'Marxist or 'colonial' or 'western' or 'psuedo-secular', because lacking a world perspective on history, they assume that to admit anything less than Indian cultures being an unchanging 5000 year tradition, would place them on a lesser footing vs 'The West' and 'China'.

The reality is, no country on this earth was not made by massive inflow and outflow of migrants, ideas and technologies.

2,500 years ago, a city bigger than Athens in Orissa (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2500-year-old_city_found_in_Orissa/articleshow/2771877.cms)


More on that:

k4S5YWtlDxU

There are western scholars who know far more about India's past than you or me probably ever will.

But because they are white, and present a theory that you do not like, you automatically call them biased.

The world isnt so simple.

In many cases, theories which are dismissed as 'colonial bias' by Indians, are infact far more rigorous and logical than the nationalist alternative.

The only reason that young Indians such as yourself think its 'colonial bias' is because you havent read serious texts, such as Romila Thapar's 'Early India'.

If you saw the methods by which real Indian archeology is conducted, you would have more perspective.

It is not at all shameful to admit that India is made of many distinct cultures with distinct languages and has been successfully invaded many times - because that is how history has happened everywhere - every civilization and state on this planet was made in similar ways.

There is no need to stubbornly claim a single origin and 5000 year continued history. History is interesting enough already - and more realistic.

But alas, Indian nationalists call unbiased scholarship 'Marxist or 'colonial' or 'western' or 'psuedo-secular', because lacking a world perspective on history, they assume that to admit anything less than Indian cultures being an unchanging 5000 year tradition, would place them on a lesser footing vs 'The West' and 'China'.

The reality is, no country on this earth was not made by massive inflow and outflow of migrants, ideas and technologies.


Well said Vastu Shastra! For millenia we have been spreading myths and half truths. Only myths and puranas have been passing around for history. Atleast now, let us find and learn the truth and learn to come to terms with it whatever it may be. Only then this nation of more than a billion can make some impact in the world affairs. If not, other countries are going to leave us far behind while we wallow in darkness. The coming generations will have to go abroad to learn their own history.

IVC declined around 1900 BC where as the above quoted works/authors lived during or after 4th century BC. There is a gap of 1500 years. Your statement that these authors composed their work just after the IVC 's disappearance seems far fetched. As you appear to have done a lot of research on the topic, I am not sure if the above statement is intentional or out of ignorance.

Of all the quoted texts, Rig Veda should be the closest to IVC in the time scale as it is stated to have been formulated around 1500 BC or later. From Rig Vedic texts, it doesn't make appear that vedic people have been leading an urban life.. On the other hand, it is clear that these people had been leading a pastoral life and if any thing they were celebrating destruction of forts i.e urban civilization.

You are true regarding the authors and the time period they lived. Rig Veda and other Vedic texts mentions many times about the Sarawathi River which ran parallel to the Indus river. I believe that both the societies established on the banks of these two rivers shared similar culture . Since, the inhabitants in the banks of Saraswathi river followed the Vedic culture and it is very abvious that IVC also shared this same culture. It is very clear that all the Vedic texts were written in Sanskrit.I don't think Sanskrit just went into oblivion in just a matter of 1500 years. This is why all the authors who belonged to 4th century B.C still continued their works in Sanskrit.

Of all the quoted texts, Rig Veda should be the closest to IVC in the time scale as it is stated to have been formulated around 1500 BC or later. From Rig Vedic texts, it doesn't make appear that vedic people have been leading an urban life.. On the other hand, it is clear that these people had been leading a pastoral life and if any thing they were celebrating destruction of forts i.e urban civilization.

Forgive me if it sounds rude, but I would like to disagree with you on the time period of RigVeda. All the Vedas were existent orally for a long time in the Indian Sub-continent . However they were composed by the Sage Vyasa around 3000 B.C to save them from extinction . I don't accept that RigVeda is formulated just around 1500 B.C.

Forgive me if it sounds rude, but I would like to disagree with you on the time period of RigVeda. All the Vedas were existent orally for a long time in the Indian Sub-continent . However they were composed by the Sage Vyasa around 3000 B.C to save them from extinction . I don't accept that RigVeda is formulated just around 1500 B.C.

You are correct that the Rig Veda has an older oral history.

But this does not mean it is the same as the Indus Valley civilization, as you would see if you read about the period in greater detail.

Current evidence suggests that more than one culture existed in India at this time, and the Vedic religion came from one of the non-IVC cultures.

Like early Chinese city states, the Indus Valley civilization seems to have followed a form of Shamanism or Animism, and only started adopting elements of the Vedic culture toward its downfall.

haha they wont look different sir. They are normal people like us, but villagers. Well human evolution has many fantastic adaptations during the course of time. They dont look like africans anymore.
The show they're referring to is the Story of India by Michael Wood, originally airing on the BBC. It's a brilliant series, probably hands down the best documentary ever filmed about Indian history.

The scene with the villagers is seen in the first episode. They look just like normal Indians. They actually interview the person with the ancient marker. He seems pretty awed with having such an amazing lineage. You can watch the same in parts 1-2 of the 1st episode here:

Part1:
p_cRKF_wUWA

Part2:
58-RMdD9uSM

The rest of the 1st episode:
Part 3 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxfH0F30beQ), Part 4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7wJqupUa44), Part 5 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVQSu2iKk1w), Part 6 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjdEyv66XSc),

Youtube has all six episodes of the series (divided into 6 parts like above.) Just search "Story of India." If you like it, I recommend buying the DVD. It has some of the most beautiful camerawork of ancient temples and sites in widescreen HD. They were the first to be allowed to film inside many of the sites. Totally worth every penny

Well said Vastu Shastra! For millenia we have been spreading myths and half truths. Only myths and puranas have been passing around for history. Atleast now, let us find and learn the truth and learn to come to terms with it whatever it may be. Only then this nation of more than a billion can make some impact in the world affairs. If not, other countries are going to leave us far behind while we wallow in darkness. The coming generations will have to go abroad to learn their own history.

I would recommend a sincere investigation into our puranas and other vedic texts before you outcaste them as myths.

So I take it you have read them cover to cover?

So I take it you have read them cover to cover?

Longtime....no see?

So I take it you have read them cover to cover?

Can smell lots of frustation in this phrase.:ohno:

Can smell lots of frustation in this phrase.:ohno:

Your statement is provocative. This is unncecessary. What are you trying to prove here ?.

http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/1708/2008042560400501so3.jpg

HYDERABAD: Pre-historic paintings using vegetable oils were traced last month on rocks within caves in the forest near Srisailam and interior Warangal district.

They were detected by the technical staff of Archaeology Department following information by a saint and some other local tribals, Archaeology Director P. Chenna Reddy told a news conference here on Thursday.

He said the paintings included animals, fish, some geometrical designs and scenes of hunting and dancing. They were in red ochre and white pigment colours. The paintings in Akkamahadevi caves of Srisailam hill ranges were ascribed to late Mesolithic times of 3,000 BC. The other paintings on rock shelters at Narsapur and Bandal of Tadvai mandal in Warangal district were dated to megalithic times of 1,000 BC. Some of the paintings were superimposed, depicting highly developed anatomical features and curves.

The features were of early historic times. Mr. Reddy said further survey was required in these areas for more information on rock art sites and rock shelters. The department planned to videograph the rock art and preserve it for posterity.

He also said a priceless stone sculpted with Parswanatha, Mahishasuramardani and Brahma with his consort Saraswati seated on a swan was also recovered in Warangal district recently. A Buddhist settlement was found in Peddauppalam village of Rayavaram mandal in Visakhapatnam district.

The director said the ancient temple complex at Mulug Ghanpur in Warangal district would be reconstructed as part of the Kakatiya Heritage Project.

Source (http://www.hindu.com/2008/04/25/stories/2008042560400500.htm)

Your statement is provocative. This is unncecessary. What are you trying to prove here ?.

If you had known Vaastusastra and his reactions in our earlier discussions you will understand his sarcasm.

If you had known Vaastusastra and his reactions in our earlier discussions you will understand his sarcasm.

I found your comment more sarcastic than his. I kept quiet on his comments because I realized there is no point in fighting like kids on this forum. If you want to prove some thing, back it up with facts . I put some facts about Dwaraka sea excavations and they were deleted. I got frustrated and didn't make any further attempts to post any thing here.

Forgive me if it sounds rude, but I would like to disagree with you on the time period of RigVeda. All the Vedas were existent orally for a long time in the Indian Sub-continent . However they were composed by the Sage Vyasa around 3000 B.C to save them from extinction . I don't accept that RigVeda is formulated just around 1500 B.C.

I find a contradiction here. It would require the existence of some script for the copious Vedas to have been committed to text. Since (according to you) IVC and Vedic are the same people, it would mean IVC script would have been used for this purpose (since timeline is contemporaneous). However, what we see is that IVC script is not sufficient enough to handle such volume of texts as we only see small seals with insufficient characters.

Even assuming that the script was sufficient enough for the purpose and the Vedas were committed to text using IVC scripts, and accepting your proposal that the civilization continued in Sarasvati valley, how would you account for the absence of any writings in Sanskrit in IVC script for two and a half millenia (from 3000 BC to 400 BC)? That would be pretty hard to explain. The first attested writing in Sanskrit happens only in 150 AD! - much later than even Tamil around 500 BC in Adichanallur.

I am sure you have some explanation to offer to explain the contradiction here.

..

. The first attested writing in Sanskrit happens only in 150 AD! - much later than even Tamil around 500 BC in Adichanallur.
.

I disagree with you on this point. Sanskrit had been inscribed in lot of stone and Iron additcs during Mauryan Empire.King Asoka's edicts are mostly written in Sanskrit , Magadhi using Brahmi Script. These are atleast dated back to 250 B.C. Here are some famous rock and Iron pillar edicts. Some of these edicts are also in greek and Aramaic.

a) Asoka's first Rock Inscription at Girnar

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashoka's_Major_Rock_Edict

b) Asoka's Stone edict at Lumbini.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars_of_Ashoka

c) Asoka's Pillar at Vaishali in Bihar.

Numerous edicts have been found all across India.


You can find interesting information and translation of these edicts at this URLs.

http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/ashoka.html

http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/exhibit/mauryans/essay.html

King Asoka's edicts were inscribed in various languages like Sanskrit, Pali and Maghadhi and mostly in Brahmi Script. Here are some of these inscriptions found in south Asia.

http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/146/img0294nearbhubhaneshwabm6.jpg

Inscriptions at Kanheri Caves by Buddhist Monks , 1st BCE.

http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/3531/kanheribrahmiku9.jpg

Video on Kanheri Caves in Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Borivali, Mumbai.

http://www.veoh.com/videos/v7071978efhj2aF6

Asoka's edict in Greek and Aramaic at Kandahar.

http://img73.imageshack.us/img73/1899/asokakandaharet5.jpg

I disagree with you on this point. Sanskrit had been inscribed in lot of stone and Iron additcs during Mauryan Empire.King Asoka's edicts are mostly written in Sanskrit , Magadhi using Brahmi Script. These are atleast dated back to 250 B.C. Here are some famous rock and Iron pillar edicts. Some of these edicts are also in greek and Aramaic.

a) Asoka's first Rock Inscription at Girnar

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashoka's_Major_Rock_Edict

b) Asoka's Stone edict at Lumbini.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars_of_Ashoka

c) Asoka's Pillar at Vaishali in Bihar.

Numerous edicts have been found all across India.


You can find interesting information and translation of these edicts at this URLs.

http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/ashoka.html

http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/exhibit/mauryans/essay.html

According to this encyclopedia, the language is Prakrit.

http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761560092/article.html

I am no authority on languages and know very little about the differences between Sanskrit and Prakrits. I would think there is a vast difference between these languages as authoritative works note the language of the edicts as Prakrit and Ashoka chose it to reach the masses. You yourself acknowledged in this column that Buddha chose Prakrit as he wanted to contain Brahminism (vide your notings on April 17th). What was applicable for Buddha should have been true for his follower Ashoka as well.

According to this encyclopedia, the language is Prakrit.

http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761560092/article.html

I am no authority on languages and know very little about the differences between Sanskrit and Prakrits. I would think there is a vast difference between these languages as authoritative works note the language of the edicts as Prakrit and Ashoka chose it to reach the masses. You yourself acknowledged in this column that Buddha chose Prakrit as he wanted to contain Brahminism (vide your notings on April 17th). What was applicable for Buddha should have been true for his follower Ashoka as well.

They have used various langauges in these stone edicts. I mentioned Maghadi, Sanskrit, Prakrit, Aramaic , Greek in which these edicts were inscriped.Sanskrit is one of them. Prakrit is an Apabhramsha of Sanskrit. The term apabhramsa literally means corrupt or non-standard language. There is very little difference between Sanskrit and Prakrit. Prakrita literally means "natural" as opposed to sanskrita, which literally means "constructed" or "refined. Regarding the April 17th post, it is very well acknowledged by Scholars that Buddha rejected Vedas to avoid animal killing. At a later point, Sankaracharya restablished the authority of the Vedas. However, in my recent reading of Asoka's edicts , I noticed, King Asoka also emphasized to respect brahmins too. I would think that Buddha as a peace loving personality would not have any evil intentions on any particular community.

For more understanding of Indian languages, please go through this link.

http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/scripts.html

They have used various langauges in these stone edicts. I mentioned Maghadi, Sanskrit, Prakrit, Aramaic , Greek in which these edicts were inscriped.Sanskrit is one of them. Prakrit is an Apabhramsha of Sanskrit. The term apabhramsa literally means corrupt or non-standard language. There is very little difference between Sanskrit and Prakrit. Prakrita literally means "natural" as opposed to sanskrita, which literally means "constructed" or "refined. Regarding the April 17th post, it is very well acknowledged by Scholars that Buddha rejected Vedas to avoid animal killing. At a later point, Sankaracharya restablished the authority of the Vedas. However, in my recent reading of Asoka's edicts , I noticed, King Asoka also emphasized to respect brahmins too. I would think that Buddha as a peace loving personality would not have any evil intentions on any particular community.

For more understanding of Indian languages, please go through this link.

http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/scripts.html


The below mentioned book published by the Central Institute of Indian Languages clearly specifies that Sanskrit was not one of the languages used by Ashoka.

http://www.ciil-ebooks.net/html/iie/five.htm

Can you provide some supporting evidence to the contrary? I would appreciate that. Thanks. I would be enlightened.

The below mentioned book published by the Central Institute of Indian Languages clearly specifies that Sanskrit was not one of the languages used by Ashoka.

http://www.ciil-ebooks.net/html/iie/five.htm

Can you provide some supporting evidence to the contrary? I would appreciate that. Thanks. I would be enlightened.


http://www.indiaprofile.com/monuments-temples/ashokainscriptions.htm

Ashoka's edicts are found scattered in more than thirty places throughout India, Nepal, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Most of them are written in Brahmi script. The Magadhi language is used in the edicts in the eastern part of the sub-continent, which is probably the official language of Ashoka's court. The language in the edicts found in the western part of India is nearer to Sanskrit. One bilingual edict in Afghanistan is written in Aramaic and Greek. Ashoka's edicts have survived over the period of centuries is because they are written on the rocks and stone pillars.

There is another famour pillar called Heliodorus Pillar, which is dated back to 2nd century B.C is in Prakrit influenced by Sanskrit . This is dated by Dr. J.H.Marshall. This inscription in Brahmi Script and its meaning is given below.

devadevasya vasudevasya garuda dhvajah ayam karitah
heliodorena bhagavatena diyasa putrena taksasilakena

Translation :This Garuda pillar dedicated to Vasudeva, the lord of lords, has been erected by Heliodorus, a devotee of the Vedic culture, the son of Dion and resident of Taxsasila.

yavanadutena agatena maharajasya antalikitasya upantat sakasam rajnah
kasi putrasya bhagabhadrasya tratuh varsena caturdasena rajyena vardhamanasya

Translation
Who had come as an ambassador from the great King Antialkidas to the kingdom of King Bhagabhadra, the son of Kasi, the protector reigning prosperously in the fourteenth year of his kingship.

You can find more about Heliodorus Pillar at this link.

http://www.burningcross.net/crusades/borrowing-theory.html

http://www.indiaprofile.com/monuments-temples/ashokainscriptions.htm

Ashoka's edicts are found scattered in more than thirty places throughout India, Nepal, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Most of them are written in Brahmi script. The Magadhi language is used in the edicts in the eastern part of the sub-continent, which is probably the official language of Ashoka's court. The language in the edicts found in the western part of India is nearer to Sanskrit. One bilingual edict in Afghanistan is written in Aramaic and Greek. Ashoka's edicts have survived over the period of centuries is because they are written on the rocks and stone pillars.

There is another famour pillar called Heliodorus Pillar, which is dated back to 2nd century B.C is in Prakrit influenced by Sanskrit . This is dated by Dr. J.H.Marshall. This inscription in Brahmi Script and its meaning is given below.

devadevasya vasudevasya garuda dhvajah ayam karitah
heliodorena bhagavatena diyasa putrena taksasilakena

Translation :This Garuda pillar dedicated to Vasudeva, the lord of lords, has been erected by Heliodorus, a devotee of the Vedic culture, the son of Dion and resident of Taxsasila.

yavanadutena agatena maharajasya antalikitasya upantat sakasam rajnah
kasi putrasya bhagabhadrasya tratuh varsena caturdasena rajyena vardhamanasya

Translation
Who had come as an ambassador from the great King Antialkidas to the kingdom of King Bhagabhadra, the son of Kasi, the protector reigning prosperously in the fourteenth year of his kingship.

You can find more about Heliodorus Pillar at this link.

http://www.burningcross.net/crusades/borrowing-theory.html

I would have expected a better source than a website that appears to be selling tourism and hotels and another that appears to be religion oriented that talks about 3000 BC records in Sanskrit when we are arguing about 300 BC. Still nothing that says the language is Sanskrit ( only closer to Sanskrit from a tourism website). Many languages in India today would fit this description. Anyway, I will stop here. Thank you for your clarifications.

I would have expected a better source than a website that appears to be selling tourism and hotels and another that appears to be religion oriented that talks about 3000 BC records in Sanskrit when we are arguing about 300 BC. Still nothing that says the language is Sanskrit ( only closer to Sanskrit from a tourism website). Many languages in India today would fit this description. Anyway, I will stop here. Thank you for your clarifications.

Prakrit is the closest Apabhramsa of Sanskrit. The incription on the Heliodorus pillar very closely matches the sanskrit Verses from ancient Vedic texts . Language undergoes changes in time. I don't have a problem accepting that Prakrit closely matches Sanskrit. Lot of Buddhist teachings found in Tibet and Srilanka were written in Sanskrit, Prakrit. I also found that in Europe they found Newton Stone inscription which contained Sanskrit words. This is dated back 400 B.C. I think I have done my job to convince you that Sanskrit was inscriped in ancient times. Your acceptance or rejection of my statements is not in my hands.

An excellent article about the Sanskrit Inscription on Newton Stone dated 500 B.C, similarities between Egyptian and Sanskrit gods, Interesting details about StoneHenge.


http://stonecircles-and-stonehenge.blogspot.com/

Haryana village settles atop Mauryan empire, ASI in a quandary
21 Dec 2008, 2300 hrs IST, Deepender Deswal, TNN
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POLARH (KAITHAL): Unknown to them, 3,500 people have been living in a village in Haryana, which has turned out to be the ruins of the Mauryan
empire, a 2000-year-old civilization the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) now wants to unearth.

The residents of this dusty hamlet on Kaithal-Patiala road in Rohtak district fear dislocation as the ASI has decided to recover the lost heritage. The action follows a Punjab and Haryana high court directive asking ASI to clear all sites of historical importance in the region by September 30 next year.

However, with the villagers resolute on "not leaving their homes at any cost'', the district administration and ASI are in a quandary. Sources in ASI, Haryana, said they have to obey the high court order, issued after a judgment on a petition filed by Munshi Ram of Batala, Punjab.

The ASI had issued notices to about 580 families in the village, located 12 km from Kaithal, to shift in June. The residents strongly protested against the move and refused to listen to the deputy commissioner who accompanied ASI officials to the village. Later the residents set up a sangharsh samiti to chart their strategy.

Balraj Singh, the husband of sarpanch Sukhvinder Kaur, told TOI, "The ASI is eyeing about 20-30 acres upon which we have built our houses. We had received notices to leave the place. Now, we are told the high court has given ASI fresh directions to remove the residential premises. We will not allow this to happen at any cost and counter any move to displace us.''

Deputy commissioner Vikas Gupta admitted to visiting the village, but denied receiving any "directive to remove the encroachments in Polarh village''.

Madav Acharya, a retired archeologist once associated with excavations in the village, said, "There are many protected sites on which residential localities have come up since 1947. The ASI has the ownership of Polarh village land, which is a protected archeological site under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958.''

He added, "The administration and ASI have no option but to remove the encroachments by displacing the residents or face contempt proceedings.''

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Haryana_village_settles_atop_Mauryan_empire_ASI_in_a_quandary/articleshow/3870568.cms

Can any body post the findings of the excavations at Kalibangan, Rajasthan by the ASI ?.

2000-yr-old Shiva shrine found
23 Feb 2009, 0327 hrs IST, Shailvee Sharda, TNN
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LUCKNOW: Believed to be among the oldest brick shrines in India, Lucknow University’s department of ancient Indian history and archaeology has
2000-yr-old Shiva shrine found
Shiva temple unearthed by a team from Lucknow University's ancient Indian history and archaeology department (TOI)
More Pictures
unearthed a 2,000-year-old Shiva temple as part of its excavation project recently in Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao district.

‘‘It’s actually a complex comprising five temples,’’ Prof D P Tewari of the Lucknow University said. ‘‘While four temples belong to the Kushana period (1st-3rd century AD or 2,000 years ago), it appears that the primary temple was constructed during the Sunga period (2nd century BC to 1st century AD or 2,200 years ago).’’

The temple site is a mound in Sanchankot in Unnao. The excavations have been going on since 2004, when UGC cleared the project for funding. ‘‘A lot of things have come to fore since we began, but the temple complex has suddenly given impetus to our research,’’ said Prof Tewari.

Spread across an area of 600 acres, the temple is made of baked bricks. In India, most of the brick temples were built in the Gupta period which existed in the fourth century AD. The temple’s architecture is ‘apsidal’ (semi-circular or u-shaped) in nature.

The LU has many artifacts to conclude that Lord Shiva was worshipped in this temple. Prof Tewari said, ‘‘A terracotta seal bearing the legend of ‘Kaalanjar peeth’ in Brahmi script was found from the site in Dec 2008.’’

A shivling, trishul, nandi bull, and a river are inscribed over the seal. The legend of ‘Kaalanjar peeth’ is inscribed just below the river.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/2000-yr-old-Shiva-shrine-found-in-UP/articleshow/4172761.cms

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articlelist/-2128936835.cms

Harappan-era cemetery found
4 Mar 2009, 0239 hrs IST, Deepender Deswal, TNN

FARMANA(Rohtak): In an extraordinary archaeological finding, a big housing complex

that matured during the Harappan era has been discovered
in this little known village
about 40 km from Rohtak.

A cemetery belonging to the same civilization which existed about 3500-3000 BC has also been found at an adjacent site, where nearly 70 skeletons have been unearthed so far.

The team of archaeologists from Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto Japan, Deccan College, Pune and Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak, discovered the habitation site spread over 18.5 hectare. It has four big complexes and a cemetery spread over about three hectare.

"This is easily among the largest habitation locality of the Harappan era. We have so far excavated one complex which has 26 rooms, 3 to 4 kitchens, an equal number of bathrooms and a courtyard in the centre. The size of the rooms vary from 6x6 to 16x20," said Prof Manmohan Singh of MD University.

The excavations indicate that this region was part of the 5,000 years old Indus Valley culture, considered one of the most advanced urban civilizations in ancient times.

The digging of the burial ground has revealed many facts which would help in studying the lives of the Harappan people. Vivek Dangi, a research scholar associated with graveyard excavation, categorized the burials into three types.

In the Indus Valley tradition, people used to bury the dead with things that belonged to them. In secondary burial, they were interred with a few bones and other articles. In the third type of burials, only stuff like pots, goblets, bakers, studs, miniature pots, plates, bowls were found that indicates they used to perform symbolic burial of the missing people.

He says the skeleton of a middle-aged woman had three shell bangles, two copper bangles, copper earrings, beads and ornaments on the feet, indicating her wealthy status. Nilesh, a research scholar from Deccan College, Pune, says they had been working on the site for last three years. "We work for about three months in a year and our present phase is likely to end next month."

Source: Hindu (http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/008200906230340.htm)


Dindigul (PTI): A glass bead-making unit and an Iron Age graveyard, both about 2,500 years old, have been unearthed during the ongoing excavation in and around Porunthal, 12-km from here, an archaeology expert said.

The excavation made at Paasi Medu (bead mound) venue, a site spread over 5.5 hectares on the ancient East-West Trade route linking Tamil Nadu and Kerala, revealed presence of a glass bead manufacturing unit, Prof K Rajan, Archaeology Department, University of Pondicherry, told reporters at Palani near here on Sunday.

They also recovered thousands of beads in various colours including red, white, black, yellow, maroon and green from the site along with 30 identical redware bowls, triangular terracotta pieces and two furnaces.

This could have been the place where glass beads had been manufactured in ancient Tamil Nadu, he said.

"We feel that this place might have been a glass bead manufacturing factory. It should be around 2,500 years old," said former archaeology professor Shanmugam.

The 'Indo-Pacific' beads could have been exported through Musiripattinam in Thrissur district of Kerala. The glass unit was the first such found in India, Mr. Rajan said.

"We recovered only slightly damaged beads," he said. The study of the site revealed Porunthal had been a trade centre.

A statue of a bull was yet another finding. A first Century AD Terracotta figurine of a male had also been unearthed besides ivory dice, earrings and copper coin.

The team doing research at the site included students and professors from Puducherry University, Tamil University, Mangalore University and Srivenkateswara University.

They found several iron age burials at the foothills of the Westerghats near Chinna Gandhipuram. The graves found at the site had been fenced by boulders.

Archaeology officials said these cist burials were of simple nature. A burial with 12.5-metre-diametre revealed the rich culture of the people of the area. There were two decks and two port holes in the bicameral cist. About 3,000 beads of semi-precious stones were also recovered around the skeletal remains.

The findings suggest that people could have performed some ritual for the dead, they said.

From near the burials, mud pots of red, black and shining black were also found.

350-year-old temple chariot to be preserved by State Archaeology Department (http://mangalorean.com/news.php?newstype=local&newsid=144329)

HASSAN,Sept 7: A 350-year old chariot of Soumyakeshava temple at Ambuga village under Shantigrama hobli in Hassan taluk that is in a dilapidated state will be preserved by the Archaeology Department. The 15-feet-high chariot will now become the property of State Archaeology Department.

Three years ago, a new chariot was built, and the 350-year old chariot, which the Mysore Maharaja got built, was partially dilapidated.

This chariot was left idle and uncared for.

Residents, who came in a delegation, met the Deputy Commissioner and appealed to him to shift the chariot so that it could be preserved. Deputy Commissioner Naveen Raj Singh wrote to the State Archaeology Department to take possession of the chariot.

Historian Shivakumar Kanasogi told The Hindu that the temple in Ambuga was built in 12th century by Hoysala kings. When the earlier chariot became dilapidated, the Mysore Maharaja got a new one built about 350 years ago and also donated 500 acres of land to the temple besides constructing a tank in Ambuga village. The land given to the temple has been encroached upon by residents for cultivation.

Radha, curator working in the Archaeology Department, told The Hindu on Sunday that there were such old chariots that are more than 300 years old in Ramanathapura, Arkalgud and Gorur (in Arkalgud taluk) and in Rajendrapura in Sakleshpur taluk of the district and these chariot would be preserved by the State Arahaelogy Department.

Sixth century stone sculpture of Hindu goddess discovered in Kashmir (http://blog.taragana.com/n/sixth-century-stone-sculpture-of-hindu-goddess-discovered-in-kashmir-159438/)

September 4th, 2009

SRINAGAR - An ancient sculpture of Hindu Goddess of wealth Gajalakshmi has recently been discovered at Nagbal Lesser village in Jammu and Kashmir.

The sculpture, carved out of brownish limestone, is now kept for further examination at the office of Archives Archaeology and Museum in Srinagar. It will be shifted to Sri Pratap Singh Museum for public display later.

“As far as the object (sculpture) is concerned it is very important. According to our earlier examination, the statue dates back to the 6th or 7th century. It’s of brownish colour and from the perspective of craftsmanship, it is finely chiselled out,” said Khurshid Ahmad Qadri, Director, Archives Archaeology and Museums of Jammu and Kashmir.

The statue, measuring nine inches in height and five inches in width, is seated on the lotus throne placed between two lions. The main sculpture is enclosed in a stone frame, the top of which projects the shape of elephant motifs towards the head of the deity.

The idol holds a lotus in her right hand and cornucopia in her left hand. The other end of the drapery covering the lower body of the sculpture does not go behind its shoulder but is wrapped around in pleats beneath the chest of the deity.

The carving and costumes of the sculpture speak volumes about skilled craftsmanship of the ancient Kashmiri art.

“As far as its art is concerned, this art form connects it to the Gandhara School of Art. The Gandhara School of Art was founded in the first century BC. The theme cultivated by Gandhara artists later reached Kashmir. The costume we get to see in this sculpture shows a confluence of Greek and Indian art forms,” said Iqbal Ahmad, a historian.

This is the only sculpture found from the Lesser Kokernag area of Kashmir so far. However, the presence of pottery in an around the Lesser village reveals presence of some ancient settlements. By Afzal Bhat (ANI)

Third century Buddhist relics, caves found at Taranga Hills (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/city/ahmedabad/Third-century-Buddhist-relics-caves-found-at-Taranga-Hills/articleshow/4973867.cms)

TNN 5 September 2009, 01:36am IST

AHMEDABAD: A team consisting of three archaeologists of state archaeology department could not believe their eyes in early February when they
spotted two terracotta figurines at the foothills of Taranga Hills, 20 km from Vadnagar town. These figurines were of Lord Buddha in 'Padmasana' pose and were as old as third century BC.

The excitement did not end there. Further investigations of Taranga Hills- Jogida hill in particular, revealed several Buddhist cave shelters with proper terraces - pointing towards the late Hinyan period. Discovery of Buddhist idols is significant as the region is believed to be hub of medieval and early medieval Jain temples. The revered Ajitnath temple for instance, built during the period of Solanki ruler Kumarpal is a popular shrine in the region.

It was in 1936 that chief archeologists of Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad, AS Gadre examined idols of Dharanmata and Taranmata temples that are worshipped by locals. Gadre had pointed out that they belonged to ninth century AD. Dharanmata was identified as Tara Devi, goddess of tantric Buddhism. The Buddhist settlement flourished between third century BC to ninth century AD in Gujarat, Gadre had noted.

But, this bustling Buddhist settlement was located right outside the now believed Anarthapura fort walls and symbolized the epitome of Buddhism in Gujarat. The Gurjar king Parsarti king Mihir Bhoja (836 AD-885 AD) says his predecessor Nagabhatta-II had conquered Giri fort of Anarthapura. Most people had migrated out of the fort city and moved to Vadnagar after ninth century AD, believe scholars.

"It is not an easy task to negotiate the narrow spaces in the caves. There are several secret entries and exits. These caves are a marvel and reflect the intelligentsia of that era. We found remains of pottery used by monks and statutes of Lord Buddha. One of the caves at the apex of Jogida hills seems to have belonged to the head monk of the Buddhist settlement," says director of state archaeology department, YS Rawat.

Also, the lower part of Jogida hills revealed an embankment for a reservoir and damming of a local perennial stream. Interestingly, some Buddhist idols in the hills are praised as local tribal gods and in one case has been positioned as 'Roothi Rani'. "It's interesting how these settlements have been interpreted by locals. We will be carrying further investigation in the area," says Rawat.

TN Govt documenting 25,000 Tamil inscriptions for posterity (http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/report_caves-tell-a-tale-of-an-ancient-trade-route_1282704)
Chennai, Aug 27, PTI:

Tamil Nadu Government is in the process of documenting about 25,000 Tamil inscriptions found in different temples across the state under an ambitious programme to preserve and protect heritage sites and documents.


"There are about 25,000 inscriptions across various temples in the state. We have already documented about 23,000 inscriptions and the remaining would be done by next year", State Archaeological Commissioner T S Sridhar said.
The Tamil inscriptions found in various temples across the state are highest in numbers after Sanskrit, Sridhar said.

A total of 38,465 temples and 85 monuments, including some pre-historic paintings and rock-cut caves, were being monitored by the department of Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments for documentation work, he added.
Sridhar also called for strict enforcement of Heritage Act and adequate funds through Finance Commission for the upkeep of these structures.

Meanwhile, Chennai circle of Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has also embarked upon a programme to protect all heritage monuments and sites across the state.
The new measures include setting up of comprehensive signage near all the 247 monuments and 162 sites coming under its control, Superintending Archaeologist, ASI, Tamil Nadu Circle, Sathyabama Badrinath told.

The ASI also plans to give a face-lift to the famous St George Fort, the seat of the state government, constructed in 1639 by Francis day, an English trader and representative of the East India Company.
The fort, which laid the foundation for the birth of the Madras city -- present day Chennai, covers a vast area housing the state Legislature, Secretariat and offices of Archaeology and Military units.

During the first phase, the vegetation surrounding the north-east area of the fort would be cleared and the ramps would be decorated, Sathyabhama said adding "in the next phase, the south-east portion would be renovated."
The conservation work at the forts situated in Thanjavur, Pudukottai and Vellore, was also on, she said adding, "original features, style and construction would be retained during the process."

The Centre had also allocated Rs 4.5 crore for 2008-09 for carrying out conservation work at the sites, she added.

The ASI plans to organise an exhibition on conservation of monuments through out the state with an aim to create awareness among the masses.
"We also plan to involve NSS school students to take-up cleaning works at world heritage sites such as Mamallapuram and heritage sites in Thanjavur," Sathyabhama said.
Owing to exponential growth in tourism, the monuments attract a large crowd which result in wear and tear of sensitive surfaces including marble flooring. Besides, the visitors also indulge in graffiti, the Superintending Archaeologist said.

Caves tell a tale of an ancient trade route (http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/report_caves-tell-a-tale-of-an-ancient-trade-route_1282704)
Neeta Kolhatkar / DNA
Sunday, August 16, 2009 3:35 IST

Mumbai: Few would know that the Elephanta, Kanheri, Mahakali, Jogeshwari and Mandapeshwar caves are all connected by a trade route that existed in and around Mumbai nearly 2,000 years ago.

"These caves were used by traders and Buddhist monks who traversed down these stretches while on their way to Konkan or Sopara. In fact the Dahisar river running adjacent to the Mandapeshwar caves was earlier used for navigation. They would go from here towards Gorai and onward to their further journey," says Anita Rane-Kothare, professor, ancient Indian culture, St Xavier's College.

Each cave has a distinct feature which sets it apart from others. One important factor being -- the Kanheri and Mahakali caves are Buddhist caves while the Mandapeshwar is a Shaiva cave.

Kanheri and Mahakali date back to 2nd and 3rd century AD while Mandapeshwar dates back to 6th and 7th century AD.

"The Challya hall in Mahakali is similar to the plan of the Sudam caves built by king Ashoka for the Ajivaka monks. It is a rectangular hall with a circular cell and a hemispherical roof," says Rane-Kothare.

She adds, "Kanheri was the biggest educational centre in western India. There are 125 caves here and there is also a big cemetery. There are ancient paintings in these caves too. However, if you see the Mandapeshwar, it is a small cave because of the rock structure and its entrance shows equality of gender in the form of sculptures of donor couples."

The interesting fact is that every cave has a distinct form of architecture and art that also depicts the life that existed in that era.

There are also water resources that indicate rainwater harvesting was prevalent, as can be seen in the Kanheri caves. Nowadays locals come to feed the fish and turtles in these waters.

"I come here every day to pray to Shiva and feed the fish. I follow my mother in this. There are catfish and turtles here," says 19-year-old Mitesh Bhuptani.

"We should study the rainwater harvesting system used by the monks so many thousands of years ago. In fact during the rains, one can follow the stream paths at Kanheri and Mandapeshwar caves. These cooled the area and were also natural habitat," says Rane-Kothare.

There are facts that can actually fascinate locals if it is made popular. Right now the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) has declared the Mandapeshwar, Kanheri and Jogeshwari caves as national heritage monuments. The repair works have begun since last month at the Mandapeshwar caves.

"Right now we are clearing the path and making the steps. We will build a compound and enclose this area. We have some of the most beautiful caves here but not many know of them. These are ancient ones dating back to the 2nd century AD," says GS Narasimha, superintendent archaeologist, ASI.

The caretaker informs that on major Shiva festivals like Mahashivratri, Navratri and Diwali the caves are lit with lamps. Devotees come here, or, many wouldn't even know of these caves

Signs of ancient port in Kerala (http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090803/jsp/frontpage/story_11313800.jsp)
- Pattanam mentioned in Indian & Greek texts
G.S. MUDUR


New Delhi, Aug. 2: A village in Kerala’s Periyar delta may be the site of a port that has remained untraced for centuries although ancient Indian and Greek texts had described it as an Indian Ocean trade hub, researchers have said.

Archaeological excavations at Pattanam, about 25km north of Kochi, have yielded an abundance of artefacts — a 2,000-year-old brick-layered wharf, a wooden canoe and hundreds of fragments of Roman and West Asian pottery, including wine jars.

The findings of three years of excavations suggest that the Pattanam site may have been part of Muziris, a port city mentioned in an ancient Tamil text, Akanunuru, as well as in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a navigational guide from ancient Greece describing ports along the Red Sea and in India. Historians have dated both texts to the first century AD.

“Pattanam may be the oldest port with a large amount of evidence of Roman contacts outside the traditional boundaries of the Roman empire,” said Parayil John Cherian, the director of the Kerala Council of Historical Research and research team leader.

Cherian and his colleagues have published their findings in the latest issue of Current Science, a peer-reviewed journal published by the Indian Academy of Sciences. “The artefacts suggest this was a major trading port,” Cherian told The Telegraph.

The excavations revealed a six-metre-long wooden canoe, a wharf with wooden bollards to hold boats and fragments of Roman pottery that appear to contain material from southern Italy as well as shards of Egyptian and Mesopotamian pottery. Scattered alongside in a waterlogged area near the wharf were grains of black pepper, cardamom and rice.

The researchers said the findings provide strong circumstantial evidence that Pattanam was part of the port of Muziris because they match descriptions of the ancient port in Tamil literature from about the first century AD.

“The text mentions a port named Muchiri where ships arrived with gold and jars of wine and returned with pepper,” said Veerasamy Selvakumar, a team member from the department of epigraphy and archaeology at Tamil University, Thanjavur.

“We now have evidence for spice trade from this site, and the Roman Amphora fragments point to wine jars,” Selvakumar said.

Scientists at the Institute of Physics in Bhubaneswar who helped the archaeologists date some of the materials discovered at the site found that wood from the wharf was about 2,000 years old — between the first century BC and the first century AD.

The researchers believe ships would sail from a port on Egypt’s Red Sea coast into the northern Indian Ocean and into Muziris. “We’ve estimated that the voyage would have taken about 70 days,” Cherian said.

He said the discovery of jars from Mesopotamia and turquoise-glazed pottery from a layer at the archaeological site where no Roman amphora was found suggests that some West Asians may have predated contacts with the Romans.

The excavations suggest the site was first occupied about 1,000 BC and remained active until about the 10th century AD. During that period, it engaged in extensive trade with cultures from the Mediterranean, West Asia and even Southeast Asia.

The two cities under the bay of cambay has their been any progress on them any new surveys?

ASI is pathetic when it comes to doing real work on the ground. They have absolutely failed miserably to discover any thing substanial near Bhirranna or
Rakhigarhi . A rich site like Rakhigarhi can't be excavated because of serious legal issues in the court faced by ASI related to corruption. Even at other places their excavation is sloppy and shady when compared to their western counterparts who have done a tremendously excellent job at Harrappa and Mohenjadaro. The quality of their work is very inferior compared to the work carried by their western counterparts.

4,500-year-old Harappan settlement excavated in Kutch (http://www.deccanherald.com/content/56757/4500-year-old-harappan-settlement.html)
Ahmedabad, Mar 7 (PTI)

A vast settlement surrounded by a fortified structure believed to be about 4,500 years old and belonging to the Harappan civilisation has been excavated at Shikarpur village in Kutch district.

The team which has been excavating the site in Bhachau taluka of Kutch since last three years, is headed by Kuldeep Bhan and P Ajithprasad of the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History of the Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara.

"A huge fortified structure made out of unbaked mud bricks has been excavated by our team. The ratio of height, width and length of the bricks is 1:2:4 which is what we call Harappan ratio," Ajithprasad told PTI.

"The fortification is spread over nearly one hectare area, with 10 m thick walls," he said.

"Though the exact period when this structure could have been constructed is yet to be ascertained, primarily it appears to be roughly 4500-years-old, built between 2500 BC and 2200 BC and is part of the Harappan civilisation," Ajithprasad said.

"The purpose of building such thick walls could be protection from natural calamities, external enemy or to impress upon other settlements," he added.
According to the professor, the fortification has an open space in the centre with small structures surrounding it.

"The site is one quarter the size of the biggest Harappan site in the state located in Dholavira, Kutch and four times the size of another site of the same era in Bagasra," Ajithprasad said. Situated on a mound locally known as Valmio Timbo (mound) measuring about 3.4 hectares, it is located 4.5 km south of Shikarpur village at the edge of the narrow creek extending eastward from the Gulf of Kutch. It is close to National Highway-15 connecting Kutch district with other parts of the state.

"The site was earlier excavated from 1987 to 1989 by the Gujarat State Archaeology Department but details about it were not published and whatever little was published was inconclusive," Ajithprasad said.

Therefore, the site was taken up for re-excavation due to its strategic location and establish the cultural sequence as well as the settlement features in terms of economic activities, he added.

During the three years of excavation, the site has revealed Harappan artifacts, especially ceramics and triangular terracotta cakes, spread rather evenly on the surface. In addition to the classical Harappan pottery, the surface assemblage included small amounts of regional pottery. Other sites of Harappan civilisation excavated in Gujarat include Kanmer in Kutch, Gola Dhoro (Bagasara), Nageshwar, Nagwada, Kuntasi in northern Saurashtra and Juni Kuran in northern Kutch.

More evidence unearthed at ancient port of Muziris (http://beta.thehindu.com/arts/history-and-culture/article244338.ece?homepage=true)

http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/455/th14muziris265761f.jpg

Pattanam, a small village located 25 km north of Kochi, is the new pilgrimage spot on the international archaeological map. This quiet place, archaeologists now confirm, was once the flourishing port known to the Romans as Muziris and sung in praise by the Tamil Sangam poets as Muciri.

Every year since 2005, excavations have yielded artefacts, structures and even a canoe in one instance to confirm this conclusion. This year has also been productive for archaeologists.

A figure of a pouncing lion carved in great detail on a semi precious stone and a bright micro metal object with intricate designs are two of the special objects found during the ongoing excavations that began in February. Copper antimony rods, usually associated with cosmetic use, were also found.

The semi precious stone with the lion figure measures about 2 cm and is rounded at the edge. It appears to be part of a pendant or a ring.

The object is yet to be dated in a scientific manner, but going by the depth at which it was found, it is tentatively placed in the early historic period — 1st century BCE to 4th century CE. It was during this time that trade with the West Asian and Roman ports was extensive.

P.J. Cherian, director, Pattanam Excavation, thinks these ornamental metal objects and work on semi- precious stones reflect the fine artisanship that was prevalent at that time.

Dr. Cherian's team has found a multitude of pottery shards, including that of a Roman amphora, early Chera coins, turquoise glazed pottery and cameo blanks (cameos were popular jewellery in ancient Rome). These attest to the existence of an active habitation and trading activities.

Despite abundant references in Roman and Tamil texts, Muziris, the famous western trade post, remained elusive to archaeologists for long.

Places such as Thiruvanchikulam and Kodungallur were initially thought to be Muziris, but excavations at these places did not yield any evidence. The trail excavations at Pattanam began in 2005, and the evidence obtained since has finally helped archaeologists locate the ancient port.

In 2006, the Kerala government launched the Muziris Heritage Project to “scientifically retrieve and preserve the legacy of Muziris.”

The Kerala Council for Historical Research has undertaken inter-disciplinary archaeological research, and the fourth season of excavations is on.

http://www.tamilpakkam.com/html/cini_news/Tamil%20History%20Vandalized.htm

History vandalized Granite quarrying and vandalism threaten to destroy Tamil-Brahmi sites in Tamil Nadu.



Tamil-Brahmi inscription on the brow of a cavern in a hill at Tiruvadavur near Madurai. In the background, granite quarrying goes on unhindered within the prohibited/regulated limit of the historical site.
SANGAM age Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions on the brows of caves, hundreds of beds known as Jaina beds sculpted on their floors, beautiful bas-reliefs of Jaina tirthankaras and exquisite paintings by prehistoric artists are facing destruction in the hills in the vicinity of Madurai in Tamil Nadu owing to large-scale granite quarrying and vandalism. Real estate sharks have destroyed Iron Age burial sites near these hills. The sites, datable from 2nd century B.C to 3rd century A.D., constitute an invaluable cultural treasure. The inscriptions offer evidence to Tamil’s classical language status and throw light on the advent and spread of Jainism in the Tamil Sangam age and the later period in the region. The sites hold a wealth of information on how kings, chieftains, traders, village chiefs and even ordinary people patronized Jainism and made donations for the sculpting of Jaina beds. They also provide interesting information on the trade guilds that existed during the period because many of these hills lie on the trade routes of that period.

Quarrying has been going on at these sites in total violation of the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958, and the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1966. The first one, a piece of federal legislation, applies to protected monuments under the control of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which functions under the Government of India. The second one is a State law and applies to the protected monuments that come under the Tamil Nadu Archaeology Department. No construction or mining activity is allowed up to 100 metres of the prohibited area beyond the protected limits of the site. Beyond the 100 m, up to a distance of another 200 m, is the regulated area, where, under the terms and conditions of a licence granted by the Director-General of the ASI, mining or construction can be done if it does not affect the site. All these provisions apply to monuments coming under the State Archaeology Department, too. As per the procedure, the Assistant Director (Mines and Geology) of the district concerned, on behalf of the Collector, would auction the hill. The Collector would give the contractor who wins the bid a licence for quarrying.

A letter dated September 23, 1996, went out from the Department of Tamil Development and Culture that “in future… the District Collectors should consult the Archaeology Department and only with its permission they should give the licence to private parties for quarrying the hills which have heritage monuments.” For, it said, “Tamil inscriptions, which are about 2,300 years old, are found only in the caves of hills. They provided the best evidence for learning about the Tamil Sangam age and the Tamil society that existed prior to the Sangam age.” However, the letter said, quarrying was under way not only to export granite but also to sell it locally.



Two quarries mar an otherwise beautiful view from the Mankulam hill, which has the most ancient Tamil-Brahmi inscription.
There are 31 Tamil-Brahmi sites in the State, with 90 inscriptions. Of them, 11 are protected monuments under the State Archaeology Department and seven are under the ASI. Quarry contractors appear to have violated the provisions of both laws with regard to the protected monuments. Take for instance the Tamil-Brahmi site at Tiruvadavur, 20 km from Madurai, with two Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions and prehistoric paintings of concentric circles. This is a protected site coming under the State Archaeology Department. The inscriptions, belonging to the 2nd century B.C., talk about how Aridhan of Pangadu village and Upasan had sculpted the beds on the cave floor. Iravatham Mahadevan, a renowned scholar on Tamil-Brahmi and Indus scripts, deciphered the two inscriptions in 1996. Tiruvadavur is now the most disturbed Tamil-Brahmi site in the State, with a huge quarry situated right at the foot of the hill. Quarrying has progressed so deep that the site looks like an open-cast mine. All round the quarry, for several kilometres, granite blocks as big as a truck or a car, are stacked on either side of the village roads. There is a surreal scene too: a nearby hill has been sliced in half, as if it were a cake. An official of the State Archaeology Department admitted that quarrying was under way within the prohibited/regulated area, that is, within 300 m of the protected limits of the monument. T.S. Sridhar, Principal Secretary and Commissioner, State Archaeology Department, said that on paper nothing would be illegal. But after obtaining the licence, quarrying would take place right inside the prohibited/regulated areas.



Graffiti on the Jaina beds at Mankulam.
At the entrance to the historical site at Keezhavalavu village, 38 km from Madurai, an ASI board announces that the monument is of national importance. The hill treasures a long Tamil-Brahmi inscription chiselled boldly from right to left and some letters written upside down on the brow of a cavern; three sculptures of Jaina tirthankaras above the inscription; Jaina beds; and a little away, a line of six sculptures of tirthankaras. On an adjoining hillock, there is a series of Jaina beds; and two circular hollows, excavated from rock floors, with Tamil and Grantha inscriptions. Sathyabhama Badhreenath, Superintending Archaeologist, ASI (Chennai circle), admitted: “The entire hill is protected at Keezhavalavu. Quarrying went on within the protected area.” The Society for Community Organisation (SOCO) Trust, Madurai, objected to quarrying within the protected limits. A. Mahaboob Batcha, managing trustee, and S. Bhuvaneswari and G. Pandi, both Keezhavalavu residents, went to court. The ASI, TAMIN (Tamil Nadu Minerals Limited, a State government undertaking) and others were the respondents. T. Lajapathi Roy, counsel for SOCO Trust, one of the petitioners, argued that quarrying went on within the nucleus of the protected area. The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court appointed M. Ajmal Khan and K. Srinivasan as advocate commissioners. They found “quarrying operation being carried on in an area of 8.60.5 ha [hectares] within the said notified area of 20.95.5 ha.”



At Keezhavalavu, THE ASI erected two pillars to support an awning above the sculptures of three tirthankaras. The awning is gone and the pillars now block the view of the sculptures.
The High Court granted an injunction and stayed the quarrying within the protected limits. A final order is yet to be passed. Vandalism, too, is rampant at Keezhavalavu. If the sculptures of the group of six tirthankaras remained unharmed when this writer visited the site in December 2008, the noses of two tirthankaras appeared smashed up during a visit in March 2009. There is graffiti everywhere. The ASI had erected two pillars to support an awning above the sculptures of three tirthankaras. The awning is gone and only the hideous-looking pillars remain, obscuring the view of the tirthankaras. The hillock at Melakkuyilkudi, on the outskirts of Madurai, is another protected monument of the ASI. Here, there were 10 Jaina beds, which commanded a beautiful view of the paddyfields below and the Nagamalai hill at a distance. But illegal quarrying has led to the collapse of the hillock. Falling boulders have splintered the beds. Today, only two beds remain intact.



After a hill was completely excavated.




At Muthupatti, near Karadipatti on the Perumalmalai hill, there are three Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions, all belonging to the first century B.C. They talk about the donations made by Anthai of Nagaperur and Ilamagan Kodan of Musiri, and Saialan of Vindhaiyur for excavating the Jaina beds. This is an ASI-protected monument. Quarrying went on here within the prohibited/regulated limits but stopped a few years ago. It revived in recent months. However, after a vigilant Tamil press highlighted the fact, the District Collector stopped the illegal quarrying. Kongar Puliyankulam has three Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions on the brow of a cavern, more than 50 Jaina beds, which have been defaced with symbols of political parties and names of people painted or engraved on them, and a sculpture of a tirthankara. This is a protected monument under the State Archaeology Department. Two hillocks in this area have disappeared, with every boulder having been removed. Quarrying went on at the spot and created artificial lakes. Varichiyur on the Madurai-Sivaganga road, has on an amorphously formed hillock three Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions and some Jaina beds. Quarrying on the edges of the hillock has made the rock-cut Nilakantesvara shrine sit perilously.



The noses of the bas-reliefs of two Jaina tirthankaras at Keezhavalavu have been smashed by vandals.
The six Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions of the 2nd century B.C. on the brow of five caverns on the Kazhugumalai hill near Mankulam, 38 km from Madurai, are the most ancient ones in Tamil Nadu and establish the historical facts that the Pandyan king Nedunchezhiyan ruled in the 2nd century B.C. and that Sangam literature dates back to the same period. The inscriptions also have mention about the trade guilds of the period and about a group of Jaina monks headed by Kani Nandan who stayed in the five caverns. While the vandals have spared the inscriptions, they have defaced the Jaina beds and pulled down the fencing around them. If this is the plight of protected sites, the situation at unprotected sites such as Tirumalai in Sivaganga district and Arittapatti near Madurai is worse. Since Madurai was the Pandyan capital and an important trading centre, Jaina monks chose the ancient town for the propagation of their religion. It was only in 7th century A.D. that bas-reliefs of tirthankaras began to come up near the Tamil-Brahmi sites and elsewhere.



Jaina beds vandalised at Kongarpuliyankulam.
K.T. Gandhirajan, specialist in art history who recently documented the Tamil-Brahmi sites in Tamil Nadu, said, “It is at Mankulam, Arittapatti, Tiruvadavur, Mannarkovil, and so on that we get the evidence that Tamil is a classical language.” He is pained that the ambience of these sites are marred by the activities of quarry contractors, vandals and others. Sridhar said the State Archaeology Department was “totally helpless” in the matter. “We can only protect the monument by fencing it,” he said. Whenever the department discovered any violation it reported the matter to the district administration. When use of explosives in the Keezhvalai hill posed a threat to pre-historic paintings there and a temple at Perumukkal, the department took up the matter with the Collector and quarrying was stopped there, Sridhar said. The department had no punitive powers to bring the vandals to book. He suggested that involvement of the local community was the only way to prevent vandalism of the monuments.



Beds damaged by crashing boulders at Melakkuyilkudi.
Sathyabhama Badhreenath is unhappy that the district administration does not consult the ASI when the rights for quarrying around a protected monument are granted. “We continuously write to the Collector or the Assistant Director. We give them a copy of our rules. I have written to all the Collectors with a list of protected monuments in their districts so that they are at least aware that there are archaeological sites of importance in their districts,” she said. She said she wrote to the Madurai Collector and was able to prevent quarrying at Keezhaiyur. A heritage enthusiast suggested that the ASI or the State Archaeology Department be empowered to grant licences for quarrying near protected monuments.

Courtesy: The Hindu

What happened to all the posts after April 9th ?. What happned to all the postings related to IVC ?.
Why do they have to delete some of the posts which contain some latest developments in the decipherment of IVC ?.

Those posts were moved here->

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1111343

Using the other thread for IVC discussion.

^Please use the other thread for IVC related discussions.


South Indians in Roman Egypt? (http://www.flonnet.com/stories/20100423270806400.htm)

http://www.flonnet.com/images/20100423270806401.jpg


One way to understand the implications of the archaeological discoveries at Pattanam is to delve into the amazing wealth of data from the excavations at the lost Ptolemic-Roman port city of Berenike, on Egypt’s Red Sea coast. During the Ptolemic-Roman period (third century B.C. to sixth century A.D), Berenike served as a key transit port between ancient Egypt and Rome on one side and the Red Sea-Indian Ocean regions, including South Arabia, East Africa, India and Sri Lanka, on the other.

This ancient port city was well-connected by roads from the Nile that passed through the Eastern Desert of Egypt and also by sea routes from the Indian Ocean regions. Cargoes unloaded at Berenike and other Egyptian Red Sea ports (such as Myos Hormos, now lost) used to be taken along the desert roads to the Nile and from there through the river to the Mediterranean Sea and across, to the Roman trade centres.

Exotic goods from Rome and Egypt flowed into Berenike along the same desert road before being loaded into large ships bound for the Indian Ocean.

By the end of the second century B.C., the Egyptians and the Romans finally learnt the skill of sailing with the monsoon winds across the Indian Ocean (“from the Arabs and other Easterners”). Voyages from Berenike for the riches of the Malabar coast therefore became “faster, cheaper, but not less dangerous”.

According to most accounts, one of the major centres in India that ships from Berenike travelled to, along with the monsoon winds, was the emporium of Muziris, on the Malabar coast.
http://www.flonnet.com/images/20100423270806402.jpg

However, as the silting of the harbour, among other uncertain reasons, caused Berenike’s eventual abandonment before the middle of the sixth century A.D., Muziris, too, disappeared mysteriously from the itinerary of the later voyagers to the Malabar coast. For a long time since then, both these centres remained forgotten.

But while archaeological evidence about Muziris or the Indian Ocean trade remained elusive in the Malabar coast, it was Berenike that eventually offered invaluable proof of its links with the Yavanas.
http://www.flonnet.com/images/20100423270806403.jpg

In wide-ranging and ongoing excavations at Berenike launched from 1994 (and at many other places on the Eastern Desert), a team of dedicated archaeologists from the University of Delaware (United States) led by Prof. Steven E. Sidebotham, along with partners from several other institutions, has documented evidence of the cargo from the Malabar coast and people from South India being at the last outpost of the Roman Empire and of Indians on the Berenike-Nile road.

Among the unexpected discoveries at Berenike were a range of ancient Indian goods, including the largest single concentration (7.55 kg) of black peppercorns ever recovered in the classical Mediterranean world (“imported from southern India” and found inside a large vessel made of Nile silt in a temple courtyard); substantial quantities of Indian-made fine ware and kitchen cooking ware and Indian style pottery; Indian-made sail cloth, basketry, matting, etc. from trash dumps; a large quantity of teak wood, black pepper, coconuts, beads made of precious and semi-precious stones, cameo blanks; “a Tamil Brahmi graffito mentioning Korra, a South Indian chieftain”; evidence that “inhabitants from Tamil South India (which then included most of Kerala) were living in Berenike, at least in the early Roman period”; evidence that the Tamil population implied the probable presence of Buddhist worshippers; evidence of Indians at another Roman port 300 km north of Berenike; Indian-made ceramics on the Nile road; a rock inscription mentioning an Indian passing through en route; “abundant evidence for the use of ships built and rigged in India”; and proof “that teak wood (endemic to South India), found in buildings in Berenike, had clearly been reused”(from dismantled ships).

R. Krishnakumar

3,000-year-old history unearthed, archaeologists believe Jajmau mound could be holding more (http://www.indianexpress.com/news/3-000yearold-history-unearthed-archaeologists-believe-jajmau-mound-could-be-holding-more/593390/0)


Rich historical artifacts dating back to 3,000 years have been unearthed from the Jajmau mound on the bank of the Ganga in Kanpur where archaeologists belonging to Uttar Pradesh State Archaeology Department (UPSAD) have been doing excavation work for the last two and half years.

Evidences of ancient and medieval India, including Pre-Mauryan, Mauryan and Kushana periods, have been found and the archaeologists are confident that further excavation at the site can help in collecting the remains of a 4,000 year-old civilization.

The UPSAD team is presently working on a 1,700 sq metres area of the mounds, which extend up to 4,500 sq metres. For the construction of a parallel river bridge at Jajmau on National Highway route number 25 (Lucknow-Jhansi), a part of the famous mound is also being demolished.

The team of archaeologists has found well planned town structures that include drains, streets, granaries, house complexes comprising kitchens and bathrooms that are made of mud and burnt bricks.

The excavation of copper coins, seals, terracotta beads, pieces of pottery and utensils, bone arrow head, Northern Black polished ware, semi precious stones and glaze ware pottery along with the findings of a well-planned town structure point to a major change in the living and planning standards of people during the Kushana period which dates between 130 BC and 185 AD, experts said.

“The findings at Jajmau Tila reveal that people during Kushana period became more organised,” an official of the UPSAD said and illustrated it with the presence of a huge storage jar having the capacity to store one tonne of grains.

The articles found from the excavation site are being taken to Birbal Sahani Institute of Palaeobotany in Lucknow for the radio-carbon dating process.

“We are making efforts to contact coin and seed experts to know details of the findings,” said Rakesh Tiwari, Director, UPSAD.

“The findings at Jajmau will have an important role in following the country’s history,” an UPSAD official said. Most of the articles bear the trademark of Mauryan period (322 BC to 185 BC).

“Semi precious stones indicate that ornaments became an important part in the dressing of a male or females during the Mauryan period,” the official said. Lakhauri bricks used for construction of house complexes and glaze ware pottery are the two important evidences of medieval period recovered from Jajmau mound.

South Indians in Roman Egypt? (http://www.flonnet.com/stories/20100423270806400.htm)

There are thought to have been Theravada Buddhists in Roman Egypt.

The Greeks called them 'Theraputae' and they may have been an Ashokan era mission.

Some scholars speculate their presence may have influenced early Christianity.

Megalith menhir with rock engravings found
(http://www.thehindu.com/2010/05/09/stories/2010050956802400.htm)
P. Samuel Jonathan


http://img532.imageshack.us/img532/7905/2010050956802401.jpg

Throwing new light:Freelance archaeologist K. Venkateswara Rao stands beside the menhir which he discovered at Karampudi mandal in Guntur district.


GUNTUR: A megalith menhir with rock engravings, called petroglyphs, carved on it has been discovered on an open field on the left bank of Nagaleuru, a tributary of the Krishna at Karampudi, 100 km from Guntur.

The menhir is a significant remnant of the pre-historic megalithic civilisation, when humans used signs to communicate, and dates back to 1000 B.C-300 B.C. Menhirs throw light on socio-ritualistic and ancestral beliefs. Archaeological evidence indicates they were also used as places of worship.

A freelance archaeologist, K. Venkateshwara Rao, based at Tenali, discovered the menhir on a vast stretch of open field, which is believed to be a necropolis (cemetery), adjacent to the Karampudi-Dachepalli Road.

The necropolis was first discovered during 1870-71 by J.S. Boswell, Collector, Krishna, himself a keen archaeologist.

The lone and imposing Menhir, a standing stone erected in memory of the dead ones, measures 19.2 inches in height, 4.2 inches in width and is 7 inches thick.

‘Rare discovery'

Mr. Rao, who traced the Menhir after years of research, calls it a “rare and unusual discovery and probably the first-of-its kind in the country.”

While menhirs have been found in parts of Khammam, Warangal, Madhumala in Mahaboobnagar and Medak districts in Andhra Pradesh and at Boorj Home in Jammu and Kashmir, it is the first time a menhir with petroglyphs was found.

The rock engravings are at a height of 8-9 feet from the ground. The upper row has four concentric circles with four small lines and a small pointed base. Archaeological reports point that the figures resemble the Muslim religious symbols ‘peer.' Below these circular figures, shapes of a crawling animal with an elongated head, probably that of a mongoose, a humped bull with V-shaped antlers and a peacock are found. In the last row, two men are seen carrying a pole on their shoulders and moving east (sun).

A close observation of the menhir shows that it is erected facing north-east, pointing to the fact that it could have been erected during ‘uttarayana punya kalam' considered an auspicious period.

While the circular figures in the shape of a human head on the upper row depict the ancestral and ritualistic worship of the pre-historic human race, the row below it has figures of domestic animals and show that pre-historic man co-existed with animals and also domesticated them. The engravings of a tiger show that man hunted for livelihood.

“The rare discovery is of great historical importance and could lead to further study on pre-historic civilisations in the country,'' Mr. Rao said.

Stone inscription with Indus signs found in Gujarat
(http://www.hindu.com/2010/05/06/stories/2010050655222000.htm)


T.S. Subramanian

http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/1026/2010050655222001.jpg
— PHOTO: V.V.Krishnan

SIGNIFICANT DISCOVERY:R.S. Bisht, former Joint Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India, pointing to the Indus inscription found engraved on a sandstone at Dholavira in Gujarat.


CHENNAI: An inscription on stone, with three big Indus signs and possibly a fourth, has been found on the Harappan site of Dholavira in Gujarat.

The discovery is significant because this is the first time that the Indus script has been found engraved on a natural stone in the Indus Valley. The Indus script has so far been found on seals made of steatite, terracotta tablets, ceramics and so on. Dholavira also enjoys the distinction of yielding a spectacularly large Indus script with 10 big signs on wood. This inscription was three-metre long.

Both the discoveries were made by a team led by R.S. Bisht, who retired as Joint Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India in 2004. While the stone inscription was discovered in 1999, the script with 10 large signs was found in 1991.

“The inscription on stone is unique because it is the first of its kind [in the Indus civilisation area]. It is the first inscription on a stone slab. But only part of it was found,” said Dr. Bisht, who led 14 field excavation seasons at Dholavira from 1989 to 2001. “It was a natural limy sandstone cut into shape and then engraved with an inscription,” he said.

The signs are seven cm tall and 6-10 cm wide.

The script has three large Indus signs, running from right to left, and there appears to be a fourth sign too. Dr. Bisht said: “The inscription must have run longer, but the stone was broken into pieces. The stone was used as ordinary building material for making an underground chamber in the bailey area of the citadel during stage five of the seven stages documenting the rise and fall of the Indus civilisation at Dholavira. It was placed in such a manner that it was facing us when we found it.”

He was sure that there must be more stone pieces with the Indus script there. He surmised that the stone with the script must have been used as a lintel of the doorway of the underground chamber so that people could notice it. The inscription could have stood for the name of the house, its owner or an incantation. “It is a closed book,” he said. (The Indus script has not been deciphered yet).

Michel Danino, independent researcher in the Harappan civilisation, called it “an unprecedented discovery because there is no stone inscription in the Indus civilisation.” Stone was a rare material on the Indus plains. “This is the first time we have come across a stone inscription, but it has not attracted the attention it deserves,” Mr. Danino said.

Dholavira in Kachch district is a major Indus site. It attracted wide attention in the 1990s for yielding what Dr. Bisht calls “a spectacularly large inscription made of 10 unusually big Indus signs” which were inlaid on a wooden board which had, however, decayed. The signs were made of thoroughly baked gypsum. It must have been sported right above the north gate of the castle, and “it must have been visible from afar with its white brilliance,” Dr. Bisht said.

Highly literate society

He argued that it was a highly literate Harappan society that must have existed at Dholavira because seals, tablets, pottery, bangles and even copper tools with Indus signs were found everywhere in the citadel, the middle town, the lower town and the annexe of the site.

Besides, the same seals, beads, pottery and ornaments were found everywhere as if the entire population had wealth. “It appears to have been an egalitarian society. On the basis of material culture, you cannot draw a distinction among the city's inhabitants,” he said.

Another ancient centre of learning discovered
(http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/patna/Another-ancient-centre-of-learning-discovered/Article1-533095.aspx)
Reena Sopam, Hindustan Times
Email Author
Patna, April 19, 2010


Another ancient centre of learning was discovered at Telhara village in Nalanda district in Bihar during excavations.
The state is already known worldwide for its Buddhist study centres- the famous Nalanda University, Udwantpuri near Biharsharif and Vikramshila University near Bhagalpur.
The excavation work at nearly 40-feet high Bulandi mound at Telhara by a team of archaeologists has unearthed evidence of a three-storied concrete structure, mentioned by Hieun Tsang in his travel account.
Evidence of prayer halls and residential cells for monks in the monastery, have now has been found in course of the recent diggings.
The Chinese traveller, who had visited the site in the 7th Century AD, has mentioned about a three-storied monastic building at 'Teliadhaka', which is identified with the present day Telhara. In his account, the writer provided clear references to four big prayer halls at the monastery that was home to nearly 1,000 monks at the time. Hieun Tsang also provided details on the existence of seven monasteries of the Mahayana cult in this region.
Telhara, a monastic site of Theravada tradition, was first discovered in 1872 by A M Broadley, the then District Magistrate of Nalanda, which was commented on in some detail later during 1875-78 by Alexander Cunningham, who excavated the site for a brief period. It was never excavated after Cunningham's effort.
The recent excavation work at the site began on December 26, 2009, after Chief Minister Nitish Kumar inaugurated it at the Bulandi mound.
"Important evidences of the ancient monastic structure have been discovered at the site within a short period of excavation. Further diggings may reveal more important facts about the past," said Culture Secretary Vivek K Singh.
"The preliminary surface exploration at the site has revealed pottery and images, belonging to the Kushana age to the Gupta age. But the diggings have also revealed a 34-metre long floor lined by a number of cells. The vast floor is dotted with a number of platforms with images of Buddha installed on them. A 4-ft high basalt image of Buddha in Abhay Mudra and another in Dharma Chakra Pravartana Mudra have also been found in horizontal position on the floor. It appears to have been a prayer hall, mentioned by the Chinese traveller, said Atul Verma, Director of the excavation team.
A stone plaque with 8-line inscriptions in proto-Nagri and a black-coloured terracotta seal have also been found on this floor. "This plaque and the terracotta seal may reveal the time and other details of the structure. It appears to be the official seal of the monastery and if the inscriptions are deciphered, details mentioned by Hieun Tsang could very well be confirmed. A similar kind of terracotta seal was discovered at the Nalanda University site earlier," Verma said.
Verma said that yet another brick-paved floor has been discovered more than 15 feet below this prayer hall floor. "This confirms the existence of the three-storeyed monastery at Telhara. The size of the brick suggests it to be of the Kushana age (1st Century AD)," he said.

oH2_2ZmySto

Fragments of Parthian ‘fish plate’ glazed pottery recovered from Pattanam.

http://beta.thehindu.com/multimedia/dynamic/00116/TH16_PATTANAM_116482f.jpg

Quite revealing, by a Brit, who finds India was trading with other cultures, whilst the Brits were living in cave like dwellings during these times...

Pattanam digs rewriting history, says British archaeologist (http://beta.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/article431201.ece)

Chronology of West Asian sherds indicates the place's commercial significance.

The information regarding the ongoing excavations at Pattanam (Vadakkekara panchayat, Ernakulam district) suggests that Asiatics managed to achieve impressive things, Derek Kennet, archaeologist and an expert on West Asian ceramics, has said.

Dr. Kennet, faculty of Durham University in the UK, who is currently collaborating in the Pattanam archaeological research by the Kerala Council for Historical Research (KCHR), said the chronology of the West Asian sherds indicates the commercial significance of Pattanam during the pre-and-post- Roman periods. His tentative projection is that overseas contacts might range from 3rd century BC as indicated by ‘fish plates' of the Parthian period, through the Sasanian period to 9th century AD.

Pointing out that Pattanam seems to be re-writing the history of Indian Ocean trade, Dr. Kennet said Keralites should be proud of the creative contributions of their ancestors to the development of the world economy so many hundreds of years ago.

He praised the work being carried out by KCHR at the site as the most modern scientific methods and techniques were being used.

Explaining that the chronological inference of the West Asian sherds corroborates the stratigraphic distribution and therefore the site's cultural sequence, P.J. Cherian, Director of the Pattanam excavations, said 650 sherds of glazed table wares and over 850 sherds of torpedo jars from Iraq and western Iran region (ancient Mesopotamia) have come out of the Pattanam trenches along with the Mediterranean pottery sherds. Dr. Kennet recalled that the vessels probably contained sesame oil, date syrup and other products specific to the region.

Stating that the scientific analysis of the organic residues on the ceramics can give more interesting insights into the extensive Indian Ocean trading network, Dr. Cherian said these residues allow experts to obtain information on the original content of the materials, their function and use.

More information could be gained on the diet and customs of the people who used them, he said.

\
Quite revealing, by a Brit, who finds India was trading with other cultures, whilst the Brits were living in cave like dwellings during these times...


. The British isles have had trading links with the rest of Europe and other parts of the world for millennia.

. The British isles have had trading links with the rest of Europe and other parts of the world for millennia.

Evidence? Grand statements from a failed Indologist does not cut it!

Take it to the discussion thread. Or else, pick up a high-school history book from the UK :)

Prof. P. Chenna Reddy , Director of the Andhra Pradesh Archaeology and Museums, displays the gold hand bands of the 13th century Kakatiya period, found at the Anurag Engineering College construction site Aushapuram in Ranga Reddy District.

http://beta.thehindu.com/multimedia/dynamic/00116/GOLD_4_116554g.jpg

The Andhra Pradesh Archaeology and Museums unwrapped 13th century gold ear studs, rings, armbands and silverware from an engineering college construction site at Ghatkesar in Ranga Reddy District on the outskirts of Hyderabad.

India's Village of the Dead (http://www.archaeology.org/1005/etc/india.html)

An exclusive look at a little-known Iron Age cemetery

There's no clear path to Hire Benakal in the hills north of the Tungabhadra River in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. If you have to double back only two or three times on the way, you've done well. University of Chicago anthropology graduate student Andrew Bauer leads me through the thorns and boulders until we emerge on a high plain surrounded by ridges. He points out knee-high aligned stones and propped-up slabs that mark the edges of the site. As we navigate through it, we walk around a pile of house-sized boulders, and the massive scale of Hire Benakal, like a city skyline in the distance, becomes apparent.
On a gentle slope are scores of dolmens (megalithic tombs) resembling houses of cards—if playing cards were slabs of granite 10 feet tall and weighed 10 tons or more. The monuments were built over more than 1,000 years spanning the southern Indian Iron Age (1200-500 B.C.) and Early Historic (500 B.C.-A.D. 500) periods, and there are more than 1,000 of them across nearly 50 acres, from modest rock enclosures to mausoleum-like tombs.

Historical sources are vague, but Hire Benakal's existence may have been documented as early as the 1850s, and the site was first examined in detail by historian A. Sundara of Karnatak University in the 1960s. In 2007, Bauer conducted the first systematic survey of the site and its environs. It was long thought that the Iron Age people of India were nomadic, making a megalithic site such as Hire Benakal difficult to explain. But recent surveys, including Bauer's, have turned up many settlements, including two within a mile of Hire Benakal, that show the people lived in villages and practiced agriculture and pastoralism. “The site appears to be a principal center of culture in the region,” says Sundara.

Though visiting the site today is an eerie experience—akin to walking through a ghost town of stone—Bauer has concluded that Hire Benakal was more than just an isolated cemetery; it was also a part of an active landscape, and a place where social status and inequality first began to develop. “We really understand the site much more in context now, because I surveyed all around it,” he says. It was important socially and is absolutely overwhelming to the eye. If it were not so remote, Hire Benakal might be a national treasure.

Photos (http://www.archaeology.org/1005/etc/india2.html)

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/Maratha-links-to-Chennai-temple/articleshow/6141204.cms

CHENNAI: It was the collapse of the temple tower at Srikalahasti in Andhra Pradesh that spurred experts to inspect the ‘rajagopurams’ (towers) characteristic of Chennai’s temples. What they discovered were not cracks or fissures but rare sculptures including one of the Maratha king Shivaji, which embellish the intricate carvings on these structures.

“While climbing up the tiers of different temple towers across the city, we stumbled upon rare idols whose existence was unknown,” said an expert. :cheers::cheers:

After the Srikalahasti temple tower collapsed in late May, it was reported that the 236-feet-tall ‘rajagopuram’ in Srirangam, Tiruchi too had a crack. A team from Chennai, consisting of officers from the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowment (HR&CE) department, IIT professors, highway department officials and sthapathis (sculptors), then rushed to Srirangam to conduct an inspection. Soon afterwards, the team also visited other temples across Chennai and its suburbs to check the strength of these towers, which usually grace the entrance to the shrines.

“We noticed a sculpture of Tamil poet Tiruvalluvar sitting cross-legged, with some palm leaves in his hand, at the Kalikambal temple in Broadway. Another sculpture depicting the marriage of Shiva and Parvathi was found at the Karneeswarar temple in Saidapet,” said an official. “The Kalikambal temple also has a rare painting and a sculpture showing Goddess Kali blessing Chhatrapati Shivaji.” It is said that Shivaji visited the temple in the year 1677 and offered prayers to the deity.

...

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2010/07/08/stories/2010070852901900.htm

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2010/07/08/images/2010070852901901.jpg

On display: A rare close-up of the punch-marked gold coin of the 6th century BC on display at the Archaeological Museum Library as part of the 500th year coronation celebrations of Sri Krishnadeva Raya.

The oldest coin itself belongs to 6th century BC. The first gold coins in India were made by Kushanas around 100 AD.

With that background information, I wonder how come these coins are portrayed as belonging to 6th century BC?

The oldest coin itself belongs to 6th century BC. The first gold coins in India were made by Kushanas around 100 AD.

With that background information, I wonder how come these coins are portrayed as belonging to 6th century BC?

This could be from the coin hoard they found in the Karimnagar district in A.P belonging to the pre-Satavahana period . See this link for more. Some analysts have pointed out that there are some Telugu words on these coins ( like Mahatalavarsa ). It is important to understand that the popular opinion that Brahmi script is introduced by Mauryans is wrong. These pre-Mauryan inscriptions clearly point that Brahmi script is in use before Mauryans ( Mahajanapadas ).

http://www.coinlink.com/News/world-coins/coins-boost-telugu%E2%80%99s-ancient-status/

http://www.hindu.com/2009/01/17/stories/2009011750700200.htm

Buddha contemparary Inscriptions.

Inscription - Bhallika Lena

http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/1322/kesa3.jpg

Kesa Thupa Inscription.
http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/5445/kesa2.jpg

Archaeology - Mahajanapadas ( 600 B.C - 400 B.C).

http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/6949/20080319front1.jpg

http://www.thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=28431

http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=84953

http://www.deccanchronicle.com/chennai/asi-team-finds-500-burial-sites-658

July 19: How technologically enhanced were the people belonging to ancient Tamil culture who erected imposing megalithic burials? This is one of the questions that a seven-member team of Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) is trying to find answers to since the beginning of their excavation process at Sengalur in Pudukkottai.

Two months after they started the work, the team has discovered more than 500 megalithic burial sites in and around Sengalur. Dr D. Dayalan, superintending archaeologist of the temple survey project (southern region), ASI, under the directorship of whom the excavations are being done, told Deccan Chronicle that the burials which are 1,200 to 1,500 years old are of different types and are of immense importance, since they are one of the oldest existing architectural monuments in South India.

“The excavations yielded results in the form of discovering stone circles, cairn circles and cist burial of different types. Since there are more than 500 burials, we focused on studying one from each type instead of unearthing all,” Mr Dayalan said.

According to him the team is trying hard to find the technology that enabled these people to transport stones weighing half-a-tonne to the burial sites and about the manpower and art required in shaping and erecting them.

...

Buddhist structures found in Simhachalam hill range (http://www.hindu.com/2010/07/11/stories/2010071163040600.htm)
http://a.imageshack.us/img205/6982/2010071163040601.jpg
Ramesh Susarla

VISAKHAPATNAM: Buddhist settlements are found on almost all hill-tops but little known fact that there were Buddhist settlements on Simhachalam hill-range has come to light during a recent renovation and restoration works taken up by the Endowments Department.

Restoration works

Sand blasting and restoration works on Chalukyan period Madhava Swamy Temple at Madhavadhara was taken up recently, which not only exposed the intrinsic fine sculpting legacy of 14 {+t} {+h} Century A.D., but also some other interesting facts about the construction of the original temple.

Assistant Director in Department of Archaeology K. Chitti Babu told The Hindu that the architecture of the Chalukyan period had come out transparently after the lime wash cover was removed on the khondalite rocks used for building the temple. “These stones are available in the Eastern Ghats, but the interesting part of the structure got revealed when large earthen bricks were found in the mast region,” he added.

These bricks measured 52 cm X 28 cm X 8 cm, with structural characteristics of the bricks used in Buddhist sites in and around Visakhapatnam coastal region. A researcher in Buddhist sites of north Andhra Pradesh, he said there were foundation walls of a Buddhist vihara in the close vicinity.

Chamber for monks to stay was found between the Mallikarjuna Swamy and Madhava Swamy temples that even today remain unexposed to the world due to several reasons like paucity of manpower and lack of will power among local administrators to permit the work.

Bricks estimated to be from 3 {+r} {+d} Century B.C. are now lying in a heap alongside the temple, as the mast is being rebuilt with cement concrete.

http://www.deccanchronicle.com/chennai/rock-cut-%E2%80%98pallaanguzhi%E2%80%99unearthed-164

Aug. 2: Pallaanguzhi, the traditional board game of Tamil women, might have been the favourite of traders and travellers in ancient times. Proving the game’s antiquity, an archeologist has unearthed a rock-cut pallaanguzhi in a cave inside a slippery hill at Karadikoottam near Palani in Dindigul district.
The game has a mention in Sangam literature. Classical Tamil poetry Kalivenpaattu lists out a large number of games and pastimes, one among which is Pallaanguzhi. V.Narayanaoorthy, a banker-cum-archeologist who is also the Cuddalore district secretary of Tamil Nadu Archeological Research Institute, has brought to light the board game that had been carved out in the hilly rock, perhaps by the traders or the travellers who would have played it for time pass during their journey. He has found the rock-cut pallaanguzhi, with two columns containing six pits on each row, in four places inside a tent-like cave in the hill.
“An ancient highway, called Kolumam peruvazhi paathai, the existence of which has been recorded in Palani rocks, had run adjacent to the Karadikoottam hills. This highway had begun from Madurai and ran via Palani and Kolumam, situated on the banks of river Amaravathi, to Kozhikode from where traders took the sea route to trade with foreign countries. Kolumam, as referred to in Ahanaanooru (a classical Tamil poetic work) boasted of a gem market. This strongly indicates that traders and foreign travellers who used the highway could have played the game using cowry shells or pebbles,” says Mr Narayanamurthy.
Though a similar type of traditional game is found in Egyptian pyramids, the game which the ancient Tamil women were fond of, might have had its origin in Tamil Nadu, he says.

...

http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/tamil-nadu/article550109.ece

http://www.thehindu.com/multimedia/dynamic/00156/04THSITE_156111f.jpg

Over 14 bronze icons, primarily from the Chola period, were excavated at a construction site here in Velankanni on Tuesday.

Several bronze worship artefacts along with a few chipped-off weapons from icons were also found at a depth of about 4.5 feet to 6 feet at the site on the way to the Velankanni shrine.

The icons of Somasskandar, Chandrashekhar, Appar, Manikavasagar, Thirugnyanasambandhar, Nirdhanavinayagar, two Pradhoshanayagars, Shivakami Amman, Kalinganardhanar, Murugan, and two other Ammans presumed to be consorts were among the find.

...

^^ Will bronze become green in color if buried under the soil for a long time? :|

^^
I think so. Even if you leave it outside, it would turn green I think. I remember my grand mother had bronze vessels which if unpolished would change colours.

Wow. Amazing find! I wish I could get my hands on those bronzes :D Dancing ganeshji looks so cute!

^^ Will bronze become green in color if buried under the soil for a long time? :|

It is bronze or panchaloha (Brass, Bronze, Copper, Gold and Silver])?

Tamil papers claim it as Panchaloha!

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bangalore/Bangalores-1200-year-old-secret/articleshow/6270586.cms

Karnataka's capital is excited about the spate of excavations that have dug up a clutch of ancient ponds

Not long ago, this ancient kalyani (pond) at Ulsoor was just an encroached patch of congested land in the city. Even the steps around it were hidden many feet below. The 1,200 year-old temple pond was finally uncovered after a month-long excavation that started in April this year. The presence of a kalyani right in the middle of a congested lane in Bangalore is still a surprise to many. Even old-timers like Yuvraj, who lives next to the site, had no idea about the pond. "For generations now, we have believed that there is a kalyani in this area, but none of us ever knew where," he says. There are no records, but legend has it that this pond belonged to the ancient Someshwara temple in the city. Now that the pond's got everybody excited, Rs 4.5 crore is being spent on its rejuvenation . There is, however, no count of kalyanis in Bangalore. Had it not been for the sudden spurt in excavations, many would have remained buried forever.

...

http://www.deccanchronicle.com/chennai/stone-inscriptions-pandyas-found-745

Aug. 7: At least five stone inscriptions of Pandyas, dated back to 14th century, have now been discovered from the Kailasanatha temple located at Nedungudi village in Thirumayam taluk in Pudukkottai district.
A team, led by Pudukkottai history and cultural centre president and retired assistant director of museums Dr J Raja Mohamed, stumbled upon these inscriptions at the temple during a field study recently. Mr Rajedran, secretary of the centre, and Mr Govindaraj, curator of Pudukottai museum. were also part of the team.
According to the stone inscriptions, the temple was built by local chieftains of Soorakudi under the rule of Pandyas in the 14th century. The names of Pandya king Sadayavarman Sri Vallaban Sundarapandyan and some local chieftains have also been mentioned in the stone inscriptions, Dr Raja Mohamed said.
One can learn from the stone inscriptions that the Lord of the temple was known as Thenpirai Nayanar while the deity was called as Thenpirai Nayaki. Nowhere in the stone inscriptions was the word ‘Kailasanatha’ found. One can also learn from the inscriptions about the generous donations and endowments made by the chieftains of Sooraikudi for the upkeep of the temple. The temple lands had been exempted from various taxes normally collected by the then rulers.

...

Cross-posting. Courtesy: Mad 4 Madras

Source (http://hindu.com/2006/05/01/stories/2006050101992000.htm)
Links between Harappa and Neolithic Tamil Nadu

http://hindu.com/2006/05/01/images/2006050101992001.jpg

RARE FIND: The Neolithic polished stone celt (hand-held axe) with the Indus valley script found at Sembian-Kandiyur village, near Mayiladuthurai in Tamil Nadu. — Photo: Vino John

CHENNAI: The discovery of a Neolithic stone celt, a hand-held axe, with the Indus script on it at Sembian-Kandiyur in Tamil Nadu is, according to Iravatham Mahadevan, "a major discovery because for the first time a text in the Indus script has been found in the State on a datable artefact, which is a polished neolithic celt." He added: "This confirms that the Neolithic people of Tamil Nadu shared the same language family of the Harappan group, which can only be Dravidian. The discovery provides the first evidence that the Neolithic people of the Tamil country spoke a Dravidian language." Mr. Mahadevan, an eminent expert on the subject, estimated the date of the artefact with the Indus script between 2000 B.C. and 1500 B.C.
It was in February 2006, when V. Shanmuganathan, a school teacher living in Sembian-Kandiyur, near Mayiladuthurai in Nagapattinam district, dug a pit in the backyard of his house to plant banana and coconut saplings, that he encountered two stone celts. The teacher, who is interested in archaeology, rang up his friend G. Muthusamy, Curator of the Danish Fort Museum at Tranquebar, which belongs to the Tamil Nadu Department of Archaeology. Mr. Muthusamy, who also belongs to the same village, took charge of the two celts from his friend and handed them over to T.S. Sridhar, Special Commissioner, State Department of Archaeology.
When Mr. Sridhar examined one of the two stones, he found some engravings on it. So he asked the epigraphists of his Department to study the particular celt. To their absolute delight, they found fours signs on it - and all four of them corresponded with the characters in the Indus script. When the celt with the Indus script was shown to Mr. Mahadevan, he confirmed that they were in the Indus script. The celt with the script measures 6.5 cm by 2.5 cm by 3.6 cm by 4 cm. It weighs 125 grams. The other celt has no engravings on it.
Mr. Mahadevan, one of the world's foremost scholars on the Indus and the Tamil-Brahmi scripts, is the author of the seminal work, The Indus Script: Texts, Concordance and Tables. It was published by the Archaeological Survey of India, New Delhi in 1977.
First Indus sign

The first Indus sign on the celt showed a skeletal body with ribs, seated on his haunches, body bent, lower limbs folded and knees drawn up. The second sign shows a jar with a handle. The first sign stood for "muruku" and the second for "an." Together, they read as "Murukan." They formed a very frequent combination on the Indus seals and sealings, especially from Harappa. The first "muruku" sign corresponded with the sign number 48, the second with the number 342, the third, which looks like a trident, corresponded with the sign number 367, and the fourth with 301.
These numbers are found in the sign list published by Mr. Mahadevan.
He said: "`Muruku' and 'an' are shown hundreds of times in the Indus script found at Harappa. This is the importance of the find at Sembiyan-Kandiyur. Not only do the Neolithic people of Tamil Nadu and the Harappans share the same script but the same language." In Tamil Nadu, the muruku symbol was first identified from a pottery graffiti at Sanur, near Tindivanam. B.B. Lal, former Director-General of ASI, correctly identified this symbol with sign 47 of the Indus script. In recent years, the muruku symbol turned up among the pottery graffiti found at Mangudi, near Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu, and at Muciri, Kerala. But this was the first time that a complete, classical Indus script had been found on a polished Neolithic stone celt, Mr. Mahadevan pointed out. He emphasised that the importance of the discovery was independent of the tentative decipherment of the two signs proposed by him.

In a significant discovery, artefacts dating back to pre-Mauryan times have been excavated at an archaeological site at Jajmau, nearly 80 kms from here.

A coin-hoard comprising hundreds of silver punch marked coins in a vase with a lustrous polish and dated back to over 2,300 years, a baked terracotta dabber bearing Brahmi inscription of circa 3rd -2nd centry BC and structures made of mud and baked bricks of Mauryan and pre Mauryan times have been found during excavation, officials said.

The archaeological excavation is being carried out at a portion of an ancient mound of Jajmau by the Directorate of UP State Archaeology (SAD) for the last four years.

The mound is located on the right bank of the Ganga in the eastern part of Kanpur city which connects it with Lucknow.

The site is dated back to 600-700 BC. "The new evidence revealed during the present excavations have pushed back this date to circa 1200-1300 BC," they said.

The ancient site of Jajmau has been associated with the city 'Yayati Nagari' founded by legendary king 'Yayati'.

During the construction of the national highway and Jajamu-bridge in 1956, remains of an ancient settlement were discovered here.

Subsequently, it was subjected to archaeological excavations to assess its historical significance by the Archaeological Survey of India and UP State Archaeology Department in 1956-58 and 1973-78.

A Brahmi inscrption found on a seal here during 1977-78 was deciphered as VASALAS.

An expert from the directorate of archaeology, Girish Chandra Singh, has identified it with an epithet of King Chandragupta Maurya.

Copper hoard artefacts and Painted Grey Ware (PGW) sherds were also found from the surface of this mound, after which the Uttar Pradesh government declared it as a state protected ancient site.

During widening of the national national highway, a salvage operation was launched in 2006 to document and study the arehaeological remains embedded within a portion of the mound by a team of archaeologists lead by Ram Vinay under the direction of SAD director Rakesh Tewari.

Presence of PGW, and Black and Red Ware (below the PGW) in this deposit is very significant from archaeological point of view, the officials said.

Radiocarbon dates by Birbal Sahni Insitute of Palaeobotany for the charcoal samples collected from this deposit, cultural material and stratigraphy suggest that this part of the mound was settled from about 1200-1300 BC.

The hoard of silver punch marked coins in a beautiful NBPW vase was also embadded in the portion edging the Ganga.

The coins bear punched symbols of sun, crescent (half moon), tree with in a vedika and hill.

An inscribed terracotta dabber has also been discovered from the exacavation site.

"The name inscribed on it in Brahmi characters has been deciphered as "bha' 'di''ke' (Bhadrike). Below that is inscribed a single letter 'ma' in dots. Presence of a name on the dabber apparently shows that it belonged to the kumbhakara bhadraka and that even the common people knew reading and writing during those days," the officials said.

The structures built at ancient Jajmau and associated finds indicate towards a major administrative centre and city at this place during the Mauryan times.

The remains found in the layers deposited above these structures attest that the glory of this settlement remained during the Sunga and Kushan periods (circa 200 BC to 300 AD).

Some of the terracotta seals bear the depiction of stupa, snake and lotus flower along with inscribed Buddhist creed "ya dharme prabhavah hetu".

Pointed bone arrow-heads, beads of terracotta and semiprecious stones, bangles made of glass and terracotta, seals and sealings, toys metal objects, different types of pottery, vessels and lids made of soap stone, terracotta discs, gamesmen and other artifacts of different periods have been recovered during the excavations.

Source : http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report_artefacts-of-pre-muaryan-times-discovered-at-jajmau_1361609

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/Ancient-swords-unearthed-near-Vedaranyam/articleshow/6488705.cms

NAGAPATTINAM: Five swords and a dagger, believed to be centuries old, were unearthed by labourers from an agricultural field in a village near Vedaranyam in Nagapattinam district on Friday.

The villagers stumbled upon the weapons when they were tilling the land owned by Kalitheerthan at Aayakkaranpulam village. They were found at a depth of two feet in the field. Though revenue officials are not sure of the age of the weaponry, they said that it could be centuries old.

The age of the weapons and the material with which they were made crafted are not known, said tahsildar S Karunankaran. He said the weapons were taken to the taluk office in Vedaranyam where experts from the state archaeology department are likely to visit to ascertain their origin.

...

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/Largest-stone-age-settlement-found-near-Chennai/articleshow/6622838.cms

SINGADIVAKKAM (KANCHEEPURAM): In what could be a major find, a large number of stone tools and weapons said dating back to more than 80,000 years ago were unearthed from a dry lake bed in Singadivakkam, a remote hamlet some 65 km south of Chennai, a couple of days ago.

The discovery, by Professor S Rama Krishna Pisipaty and his student S Shanmugavelu of the department of Sanskrit and culture at Sri Chandrasekaharendra Saraswathi Viswa Mahavidyalaya in Enathur, Kancheepuram, was part of an ongoing excavation work partly funded by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).

They have so far found hand-axes, choppers, scrappers and borers as well as microlithic tools (small stone implements) and pointed tools of different sizes and shapes. Most could have been used for hunting and fishing, they said.

The huge number of tools found, said to be over 200, at the one-hectare-site indicates that it could have hosted a large human settlement, Prof Pisipaty said. Most of the settlers may have migrated from the northern parts of the country, he added. "The settlement, as can be guaged from the tools found, shows transition from early to middle Paleolithic age, also known as the Stone Age," Prof Pisipaty noted.

...

Cross-posting from TN history thread...

http://www.deccanchronicle.com/chennai/asi-identifies-10-sites-monuments-992

Chennai, Oct. 8: The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has identified over 10 megalithic sites in Chennai and its suburbs for preserving as monuments. As per the ancient monuments and archaeological sites and remains Act, no construction is allowed 100 metres from the monuments.
Delivering her speech at a seminar organised by Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) on Friday, Ms Sathyabhama Badhreenath, superintending archaeologist, ASI, said the Union government recently amended the ancient monuments and archaeological sites and remains Act, prescribing a minimum of 100 metres as prohibited area around Centrally-protected monuments.
ASI has identified some lands in Nandambakkam, Tiruneermalai, Kadaperi, Sembakkam, Nanmangalam, Pallavaram, Chitlapakkam and Tirusulam as megalithic sites.

...

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/ASI-embarks-on-documentation-of-rock-cut-temples/articleshow/6750830.cms

TIRUCHI: The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has embarked on an exhaustive documentation of the rock-cut temples in Tamil Nadu for the first time which has helped uncover a treasure trove of ancient inscriptions and frescos.

D Dayalan, superintending archaeologist, Temple Survey Project, ASI, said while the documentation of 80 of the 110 rock-cut temples has been completed, the remaining would be over by March-end next year and submitted to the ASI. "The documentation of these temples, discovered during various periods, would help future researchers and heritage enthusiasts as well as the public to learn about the temples," he said.

The documentation involves GPS (global positioning system) mapping and drawings of all the structures in these temples with detailed measurements. "Each structure, including the pillars, icons and drawings have been extensively studied for the documentation. Five to six drawings with minute details of the features in the structures have been made. Besides, we have also photographed these structures," Dayalan said.

...

Wow ... took them long enough eh? What have they been doing for last 60 years? The bloody British did a far better job than that.

http://www.hindu.com/2010/10/22/stories/2010102255970500.htm

A megalithic urn burial presumably two thousand years old was found here at an excavation site at Thirumangalam, Kuthalam, in Nagapattinam recently.

The 4.5-tall urn with a circumference of 3 feet and a mouth width of 1.5 ft was found at a depth of 6 ft. Several shards of bones, a shred of a skull and pottery that included water jars (kalayams) and bowls of varying sizes were recovered from the urn. Further, two swords or long daggers, broken into two halves, were found on either side of the urn. This perhaps signified that the urn burial was for a chieftain or a warrior, says G.Muthusamy, Curator, Tranquebar Fort, which is slated to host the find shortly.

This view is echoed by Bala Padhmanabhan, Researcher, Dr.Rajamanickanar Historical Research Centre.

While megalithic graves, signifying megalithic cult of peninsular India were being spotted off and on in this region, the sword on either side of the urn adds a peculiarity to the find. According to Mr. Padhmanabhan, around 25 such megalithic graves were found in and around Nagapattinam primarily around Mayiladuthurai. The largest being Thiruvidaimarudhur, about 25 km from Mayiladuthurai, where a valley of around 30 urn burials were found few years ago, says Mr.Padhmanabhan.

^^ A width of 1.5 ft at the mouth be sufficiently wide enough to accommodate a person who I suppose should be well built being a chieftain (going by the opinion of the researchers)?

http://news.oneindia.in/2010/10/26/1000yr-old-tamil-inscription-found-in-trincomaleeindia.html

A 1000 year old stone slab containing a Tamil inscription, clearly in the alphabet of the Chola times, was found in Trincomalee while digging for cricket stadium construction work recently.

The inscription was found on land on the right side of the Koa'neasvaram Road leading to the Siva temple inside Fort Frederick. The location is adjacent to the bay where the temple's Theerththam (water cutting) ritual is held.

The inscribed slab, which has a large perforation at the centre reminiscent of anchors and sluice gates, was taken into possession by the Trincomalee police and was sent to the Department of Archaeology in Colombo, reports Tamilnet.com.

The construction work in the land has been suspended by the Department of Archaeology.

Estampages of the inscription will be sent to relevant scholars as early as possible by the Department of Archaeology of Sri Lanka, for a quicker and detailed analysis. (ANI)

http://www.hindu.com/2010/11/25/stories/2010112556780500.htm

A massive megalithic urn with black and red ware, dating back to the early Iron Age, was unearthed here at Thillayadi in Nagapattinam on Wednesday.

The five-foot tall urn with a mid-circumference of 10 ft and a mouth width of 85 cm was found at a depth of 8 ft at a private construction site here. The urn contained red and black pottery that included kalayams (water bowls) — a total of nine bowls of which five were still stuck to its study interiors, and a clay-ware lamp.

A fossilised jaw with teeth intact, six pieces of bone – one resembling a knee cap and another that of a spine were part of the find.

Here, shards of broken clay perforated with tiny holes signify the burial of a living person. Speaking to TheHindu, Muthusamy, curator, Danish Fort Museum, Tharangambadi, said the urn burial here indicates euthanasia. “People lived longer lives then and when they almost vegetated due to old age and when they reached a state of inability to intake food, they would have them buried this way.” However, megalithic burials were essentially a cult practice with rituals writ large, and occasionally marked by mercy killings.

Earlier, a megalithic burial of twin-urns were found at Thirumangalam village in Kuthalam a month ago. Like in the earlier find, the presence of the sword by the urn here signifies that the burial was made for a Chieftain.

The black and red ware culture points to the antiquity of the find. According to Mr.Muthusamy, it is thought to be over 2,500 years old. Two such megalithic burials were found in Thillayadi before. The curator indicated a possible carbon dating by the Department of Archaeology to find the exact date. “We shall write to officials regarding this,” Mr.Muthusamy said. The find would be taken to the Danish Fort Museum.

--------------------------

Wonder if there is an effort to catalog these different megalithic sites and their discoveries.

Prehistoric man drew maps
(http://www.bangaloremirror.com/article/10/201012282010122800143099935a21882/Prehistoric-man-drew-maps.html)
Archaeologists from Bangalore discover maps near Hampi; unlike modern maps that rely on technology, ancient man banked on his eyesight and memory

Niranjan Kaggere & Suchith Kidiyoor

Posted On Tuesday, December 28, 2010 at 12:14:31 AM

Satellite technologies have made the task of locating places easily, thanks to GPS or global positioning systems.


However, a team of researchers from Bangalore have unearthed maps in Karnataka that date back to 1500-2000 BC.

A team from the Archaeological Survey of India has found the proto-historic man, who had inhabited the region around Tungabhadra river near Hampi, had drawn maps similar to those found on the internet.

The map was depicted on the roof of their cave dwellings. What was once thought to be a megalithic burial site with just paintings of animals and humans, is proof of the proto-historic man’s cartographic skills.

The discovery by deputy superintending archaeologist T M Keshava and his colleagues a few months ago in the caves of Chikramapura village on the Tungabhadra river’s left bank (Koppal district) has drawn the attention of many researchers across the country.

Keshava’s finding is believed to be the first-ever aerial map of a region drawn by a pre-historic man.

While the present-day maps rely heavily on satellite images and other optical instruments for precision, the proto-historic man had only his eyes and memory to bank on.

While paintings of animals such as cows, hunting scenes and human figurines are common across pre-historic settlements, only the Chikramapura village caves, also called Kadebagilu rock shelters, feature maps.

“We were stunned by the discovery,” said Keshava. “A previous study in 1984 at these caves by scholars like Dr R Sundara had concluded they were just megalithic burials, but we can now say that they are maps,” he said.

According to Keshava, the pre-historic man obtained a bird’s eye view of an area by climbing a hillock and standing at a vantage point. He would then observe his settlement — houses, pathways, waterbodies, etc. With these images in mind, he would paint them in his cave. “We compared them with the present maps and we were dumbstruck with the findings,” he said

DECIPHERING MAP

Deciphering the exact meaning of the paintings was not easy for the experts. Reaching the site itself was an arduous task as it was surrounded by a hillock overlooking a valley and accessible only through a narrow passage.

Researchers found many similarities with the modern-day maps. The triangular marks used to represent hillocks on these maps are similar to the symbols used by surveyors.

Further, the narrow passage has been compared to the figure of a human being, while the ladder-like symbol indicates a pathway. It took Keshava and his team almost a year to confirm the findings.

The paintings have been depicted on granite and done with red laterite clay. The circular-shaped settlement is 35 metres in radius. “However, due to the exposure to elements, some parts of the paintings have got spoilt,” said an archaeologist.

LOCAL TIP-OFF

The experts say credit for the discovery goes to some shepherds of Anegundi village. “We were camping at Hampi late in 2008 when some youngsters led by Veeresh and his friends told us about these paintings,” said Keshava.

“Later, along with colleagues G S Narasimhan, M V Visveswara, C S Sheshadri and others, we visited the spot and undertook a detailed study around the site for more than three months. Though many rock paintings were reported from Bhimbetka in Madhya Pradesh. There were no sketches that could be identified as maps of proto-historic settlements.
This is the first such painting,” he said.

The paintings, however, are in danger of being lost forever, unless measures are taken quickly to safeguard them. Areas surrounding rock shelters have become quarrying centres and this could destroy the paintings.

Archaeologists believe the area could be turned into a tourist site as it is close to Hampi, a world heritage centre. It will also ensure the paintings are well preserved.

"How Deep are the Roots of Indian Civilization ?
An Archeological and Historical Perspective".

http://www.vifindia.org/sites/default/files/Abstract_22_11_10.pdf.

The Battle for Ancient India

Dilip K Chakrabarti, Emeritus professor of South Asian Archaeology, Cambridge University

For more than two decades, the politics of the past has been an important part of the theoretical literature of archaeology and ancient studies, although, apart from two books by the present author and some papers both by him and others, India does not figure in this literature. The purpose of the present paper is to outline how and why the study of ancient India including its archaeology has come to be related to different power structures and ideologies which have dominated the Indian scene from the beginning of the British rule to the present period.

On the most basic level, the controversy is about the position of India in the scheme of world civilizations. Has it ever been an original and innovative centre of technology and other material traits of life outside the domain of religion and philosophy ? In the middle of the nineteenth century Max Muller provided the image of an inwardly turned India, and in the more modern times, A.L.Basham tried to perpetuate this image through his The Wonder that was India. This image of the other worldliness of India persists strongly even in the contemporary world. If anything related to India is a reasonably popular field of study in the Western universities, that is Indian religion and philosophy. The recent emphasis of a section of expatriate or non-Resident Indians on the hidden or unexplored depths of Indian wisdom in the Vedas, etc. is a part of this tradition. Similarly, the preoccupation of a large number of people with the various imagined mysteries of the Sarasvati river is a part of this tradition too.

But there are also people to whom the idea of a spiritually rich India is redolent of an unacceptably Hindu India. From this point of view , the Sarasvati has to be argued as a mythical river and Hinduism has to be interpreted as a phenomenon which developed only after the Aryans came to India. From this perspective, Hinduism is as much native to the Indian soil as Islam and Christianity are. All of them came with the influx of new people, the Aryans in the case of the Hindus, the Muslims in the case of Islam and the Europeans in the case of Christianity. The idea of continuity of the Indian civilization does not suit the beliefs of this group of people.

Within this primary frame, there are various shades of opinions regarding various fields. The first is the unqualified acceptance of the idea of correlation between race, language and culture, of which the Aryans, Dravidians, etc. are logical offshoots. This led to the concept of the Aryan rule of India on the one hand and the genesis and persistence of the Dravidian movement on the other. These concepts have many ramifications and deserve detailed discussions exposing their hollowness. If the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu has assumed a form in which scholars extolling the virtues of Tamil civilization are handsomely rewarded, the Aryanists in Tamil Nadu refuse to dissociate the origins of the Tamil civilization from the perceived migrations from the north. When a scholar of the stature of I.Mahadevan refuses to take the date of the earliest Brahmi inscriptions in Tamil Nadu earlier than the third century BC, even though in the neighbouring Sri Lanka they date from the mid-5 century BC and the archaeological sequence at sites like Kodumanal takes the Brahmi-inscribed sherds to c.500 BC, the most charitable explanation I can offer is that to Tamilians of higher castes, the idea of an early literate Tamil antiquity is not particularly acceptable.

The terms like the Aryans, Dravidians, etc. are still freely used in Indian archaeology with unhappy implications. B.B.Lal, for instance, puts the 'Aryan homeland' in India whereas to those familiar with the concerned literature behind the Aryan idea, this Aryan idea is nothing but a racist myth and should be discarded forthwith. On the other hand, there is no lack of attempts in recent times to seek the Aryans in such places as Bactria or the southern part of Siberia.

The second sub-area of dispute is the extent to which the different technological elements like food-production, metallurgy, etc. are the results of diffusionary spreads or indigenous developments. At almost every stage of the Indus civilization we have encountered such disputes, including those about its chronology, and in a later context, still there are people unwilling to accept an early date for the beginning of iron in India.

A detailed item by item discussion on these and other issues is beyond the scope of the present paper, but it may be useful if we remember the contexts which have given rise to them. Finally, it is worth remembering that the study of ancient India still suffers from certain basic infra-structural problems such as the absence of a national level laboratory devoted to various kinds of dating and other scientific and technical analyses of archaeological objects. It would also be nice if the concerned archaeologists could publish their findings without waiting for their retirements.

The collapse of the Aryan Invasion Theory

N. Kazanas, August 2010

The AIT started in late 18th and early 19th centuries as an explanation of the caste system. Thus various European scholars postulated an invasion from non-Indic people (Egyptian or Mesopotamian) who conquered the natives: the invaders (with a strong priestly class) became the two upper castes and the natives the two lower ones (vaishyas and shûdras). This was refined and turned into a linguistic matter after Jones made his speech about the relation between Sanskrit, Greek, Latin etc. The invaders became IE and so was formed a general theory of Aryan or IE invasions to account for the Greek, Italic, Germanic people and so on, in their historical habitats.In mid-nineteenth cent. Max Müller turned the Theory into an entirely linguistic affair. He postulated certain dates for the composition of Indic literature and these became fixed in the minds of indologists. Thereafter, all linguistic refinements for the IE tongues (Hittite, Greek, Baltic, Slavic etc) were worked out on this model, namely that there was a PIE language which mainly through migrations and invasions spread from an unspecified centre (but not India) and developed into the present different IE language including Old Indic (=Vedic Sanskrit) and Iranian (=Avestan and Old Persian).

At the turn of the 19th to the 20th centuries this view was turned by Europeans (later the Nazis) into a thoroughly racial affair ascribing to themselves superiority. This racial doctrine has now been abandoned and we have only the linguistic one.

In the 1920s were made the first important discoveries of the ancient Indus Valley or Harappan civilisation. This should have alerted indologists to the possibility that a large part of the Vedic literature was composed by this civilisation which I shall call hereafter the Indus-Sarasvati Civilisation or ISC in short, since most settlements were unearthed on or along the old Sarasvati river. This did not happen. Instead, indologists (mainly sanskritists) found in the ruins of this civilisation evidence that Indo-Aryans invaded and destroyed these cities just as the Rgveda says, according to their own interpretation, that Indra, the chief god of the conquerors destroyed the enemy purs ‘towns, forts’. So a big paradox remained: on the one hand, there was Vedic Literature (a vast corpus) without any other cultural (=archaeological) remains to support it; on the other, a large culture unearthed by archaeologists but without literature despite its knowledge of writing!

However, in the 1960’s it was established by archaeologists that there had been no invasion , no wars, no violence, and that those towns had fallen into ruination because of natural causes, such as earthquakes which diverted the waters of some rivers and thus caused desiccation on a large scale. But the linguists persisted in their doctrine and the invasion became now “immigration”. But this produced now a second big paradox, i.e. the aryanisation of this vast area where toponymics (=names of rivers, mountains etc) are Aryan (=Sanskritic), not Dravidian or names from another language: small waves of immigrants, according to linguists, produced the SJ & IA C 2 aryanisation of a country which only invasion, conquest and coercion could have effected!

Any impartial study of the facts, archaeological and linguistic, shows that there is no evidence of any kind to support the so called “waves of immigrations”.

On their side, all archaeologists, Western and Indian, say emphatically that there is unbroken continuity in the development of the ISC from the seventh millennium to the sixth cent. BCE when the Persian incursions occur. There is no trace at all of any other culture intruding into the ISC.

(a) Anthropological evidence (cranial and skeletal) shows that there was no demographic disruption down to c 600, except perhaps for the period 6000-4500.
(b) Genetical studies now show that there was no inflow of genes into the Indian subcontinent prior to c 600. On the contrary there was flow of genes out of India and into the north-western regions.

Max Müller’s dating of the Vedic Literature is based on fictions and has no basis whatever in reality.

The so-called linguistic evidence (i.e. isoglosses, loan-words etc) can be, and have been, shown to require no immigration. One eminent linguist at least demonstrated that the original homeland is Bactria which is adjacent to Saptasindhu, the Land of the Seven Rivers (=N-W India and Pakistan).

Positing Saptasindhu as the original homeland not only does not create problems but, on the contrary, dissolves all difficulties. For instance: (a) Vedic alone has dhâtus and on the whole invariable principles in generating verbs and their conjugations and nouns and their declensions etc. (b) Vedic has both augmented Aorist (=past tense) like á-dhât and an augmented dhât from √dhâ put’. Germanic has only anaugmented and Greek only augmented. (c) Vedic poetry has both strict metre and alliteration whereas Greek and Latin have only metrical verses and Germanic poetry has alliterative lines only without strict metre. (d) No two IE cultures ( e.g. Baltic, Celtic, Germanic etc) have any IE theonyms (=names of deities) to the exclusion of Vedic. On the other hand, Vedic has 20 theonyms of which Greek has , Germanic 8, Italic (=Latin) and Celtic 6 and the others even less.

It is agreed by all, including Western invasionists like Witzel, that the ? gveda hymns were composed around the Sarasvati area. But while they give a date of composition c 1200-1000, the available literary, anthropological and archaeological evidences indicate a date before 3500. Here I summarise broadly the most important points.

1. The Brhadâranyaka Upanisad has a list of 60 teachers. If we allow 15 years for each one, we obtain a period of 900 years. If the BU is of 600 BC, as the AIT scenario wants, the list takes as back to 1500. But none of the 60 teachers nor the doctrine ‘Atman is Brahman’ or ‘I am Brahman’ appear in the RV; the doctrine appears in the Atharva Veda in an approximate form. Given that the RV is linguistically many centuries earlier than the BU, the RVmust be put at least 500-600 earlier, i.e. before 2000!

2. Linguistically the RV is many centuries older than the Brâhmanas and the Mahâbhârata. Palaeoastronomy (astrophysicist N. Achar) has shown that astronomical references in the Shatapatha Brâhmana are true for the date 3000-2950. Several astronomical references in the epic are true for 3100-3000! Thus the RVmust be from about 3500 and before.

3. The Rgveda does not have many features that characterise the ISC and appear only later in post-rigvedic texts. Thus there are NOT–
(a) istakâ the brick, mostly of raw mud, sometimes baked. This was one of the main construction materials in the Early ISC starting at about 3500. Prior to this houses were fashioned of wood with wattle-and-daub, as described in the RV;
(b) larger urban settlements in the RVas we find them in the ISC;
(c) fixed altars or hearths as described in the Yajur Veda and the Brâhmanas;
(d) ruins or ruined towns;
(e) cotton karpâsa;
(f)silver rajata;(g) rice vrîhi;
(h) literacy ‘lipi, lekha(-na)’;
(i) artistic iconography (sculpture, relief, seals).
Bricks are mentioned first in Yajur Veda and extensively in the Brâhmanas. Silver appears as rajata-hiranya in the Yajur Veda; rice vrîhi in the Atharva Veda; cotton karpâsa, first in Baudhâyana’s Sûtras; and so on.

4. The river Sarasvatî is praised as a mighty and all nourishing river in all the Books or the RV except the fourth. Even in late hymns such as 8.21 or 10.64 and 10.177 Sarasvatî is said to give wealth and nourishment and the poets invoke her as «great». In 6.52 Sarasvatî is «swollen by other (three or more) rivers»; in 6.61 she is endless, swift-moving, most dear among her sisters and nourishing the five tribes of the Vedic people; in 2.41.16 Sarasvatî is «best river, best mother, best goddess»; in 7.95.2 this mighty river «flows pure from the mountains to the ocean».

The river dried up around 1900 BCE. So the RV is referring to a condition long before the end of the river. Archaeologists and palaeohydrologists say that Sarasvatî flowed from the Himalayas to the ocean (in the Rann of Kutch) before 3800 BCE. Satellite photos and other analyses confirm now the route of the river from the mountain to the ocean. After this period some of the rivers feeding the Sarasvatî were, due to tectonic shifts, captured by other rivers (eg the Indus and the Ganges) and so this once mighty river weakened and began to dry up reaching its final desiccation c 1900 BCE.

Consequently the RV, or at least all those hymns that praise Sarasvatî were composed before 3600 possibly before 4000. This date agrees with the building materials and techniques (the pre-brick phase) of the very early Harappan culture, as established by archaeologists and as described in RV.

Conclusion: If the bulk of several hymns of the RV were composed c 4000-3600 the Indoaryans using the Vedic language were settled in Saptasindhu at that period.Whatever else might have happened before that period, the Indoaryans were by 1700 BCE thoroughly indigenous.

Ornaments of Harappan era found in Kutch (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/rajkot/Ornaments-of-Harappan-era-found-in-Kutch/articleshow/7225071.cms)

BHUJ: In a remarkable finding, officials of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) have recovered a number of artifacts belonging to Harappan era from Khirsara (Netra-Gadhwali) in Nakhatrana taluka of Kutch district during an ongoing excavation.

Jitendra Das, superintending archaeologist, excavation branch ASI Baroda, said: "At least two necklaces, resembling present-day gold ornaments, have been recovered beside other artifacts like stone toys, utensils, weighing stones etc. The ornaments are similar to those recovered from a Harappan site in Lothal, near Ahmedabad. The artifacts will be sent to laboratory for determining their age."

A fifteen-member team of ASI has been camping at the site for past 18 months with over sixty labourers deployed at the site. The excavation is being carried out on a ten-acre plot of land.

4 Jain idols, 29 pillars unearthed in Patan (http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-02-26/rajkot/28636769_1_jain-idols-pillars-jain-sect)
TNN,Feb 26, 2011, 10.42pm IST

PALANPUR: Four ancient Jain idols and 29 pillars of a temple belonging to 12th or 13th century were recovered in Jangral village, about 25 km from Patan during an ongoing digging work for the construction of a primary health centre building. The digging work has been stopped.

"As many as 29 carved pillars and four Jain idols, two of which are badly damaged and believed to belong to 12th or 13th century were unearthed and we conducting examination on the same," said director of state archeological department RS Rawat.

"The pillars carved out from marble are supposed to be the parts of the temple," said mamlatdar. The recovered articles are kept in a room of the PHS under police custody. We are awaiting reply from archeological survey department," added mamalatdar.

Talking to TOI Rawat said, "Ancient treasure is buried in Patan and nearby region. Earlier also, monuments belonging to 12 to 13th century era when Jainism was the dominating religion have been discovered."

"Several temples built right from Mount Abu to Mehsana Patan and Suredranagar district belong to the Jain sect, he added.

Recently in January, seven damaged idols, nine crunches and a temple bell were recovered from Rah village in Tharad taluka of adjacent Banaskantha from the field of a farmer.

Maurya dynasty wall dug out (http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=175698)

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/9703/20110227f05.jpg

Archaeologists of a French excavation team recently unearthed an ancient brick wall of Maurya dynasty during a Bangladesh-France joint excavation at Mahasthangarh.

The team also found a huge number of Northern Black Polished Ware (NBPW) and Barind soil layer along with other objects, said team members.

Besides, a Bangladeshi excavation team dug out brick-built structures of Muslim dynasties.

The joint team started archaeological digs on January 21 in the south-east corner of Mahasthangarh, once a fortified city.

“The defence wall was constructed at least 2200 years ago to protect the city,” said French archaeologist Barbara Faticoni.

A brick structure has been found almost in the same layer along with other archaeological objects, including terracotta ball and oil lamp, she added.

Barbara noted that the French team extracted another ancient brick wall and three punch mark copper coins digging seven-metres in the ground in the same area last year.

The five-metre wide and seven-metre high wall was erected using different sizes of bricks. The coins were used in between late Maurya and Sunga dynasties.

According to archaeologist Ernelle Berlient, the team explored a huge number of NBPW and Barind soil in another eight-metre multi-layer chasm near the Maurya wall.

Iron Age rock-cut tomb discovered in Kerala (http://www.stonepages.com/news/archives/004265.html)

A rock-cut tomb dating back to the Indian Megalithic period (Early Iron Age) has been found at Kodiyeri, Kerala, India. The tomb, cut in laterite - a local argillaceous red sandstone - has a dome ceiling and was unearthed accidentally at a private plot of land while soil was being removed, Kannur University Anthropology Department head S. Gregory said. The tomb was discovered at one-metre depth, Dr. Gregory added. A polished 75-centimetre-tall laterite pillar was at the centre of the semi-spherical-shaped dome with two stone benches on either side, he said.
People from the megalithic period were the earliest builders of laterite tombs with dome ceiling, which were used as secondary burials of certain bones of the dead, Dr. Gregory said. Some bone fragments, iron knives and lamp posts were found inside the tomb, he said. The finds unearthed include three-legged red earthen pots and black earthen pots and lids.
Dr. Gregory and N.K. Ramesh, a former student of the Anthropology Department, collected the remains from the site. The Document Officer from the Department of Archaeology Bala Mohanan reached the site and authenticated the finds.
Mr. Ramesh said local people recalled the finding of a similar tomb in a nearby area nearly 40 years ago. Dr. Gregory said the finds from the site would be transferred to the museum of the Department of Anthropology on the Kannur University's Thalassery campus at Palayad with the permission of the State Archaeology Department.

Edited from The Hindu (21 February 2011)

Discovery of remains throw light on Vedic religion (http://www.hindu.com/2011/02/28/stories/2011022863950600.htm)
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/7683/2011022863950601.jpg
Breakthrough: The remains of a huge urn excavated at Kondapur.

KONDAPUR (MEDAK Dt.): Does Kondapur, one of the well-known, early, historic Satavahana sites in Medak district, also represent the Brahmanic culture in addition to Buddhist culture? This is what recent excavations at the site, approximately spread over 81 acres, suggest.

The excavations have been continuing here for the past one year, headed by G. Maheswari, Superintending Archaeologist, Archaeological Survey of India, with a team of about 15 members. Some 45 labourers have been hired to excavate the ancient remains with utmost care at the site. The work is being supervised by senior archaeology officials, three students from JNU, Delhi, and Central University, Hyderabad.

The main discovery at the excavation site in 2009-2010 includes some brick structures found in the western extreme of the main mound, which yielded authentic evidence of a non-Buddhist sect. It's a vast complex having a circular shrine facing south with one entrance and surrounded by rectangular chambers and fire altars – three metres in depth having 37 courses of burnt bricks of different shapes -- triangular and damaru-shaped -- behind the chambers.

Brick structures

These supposedly fire altars yielded significant evidence of fire activities in them along with full pots - five in number (may be kalasa) with stamped impressions of a trident, purnakalasa.

Apart from this, the whole temple complex yielded plenty of animal bone pieces, perhaps for sacrificial purposes and related pottery articles such as bowls, sprinklers, spouted vessels and iron implements like spear heads and knives.

In the same complex in the vicinity of the circular structure, Lajja gouri (Goddess of fertility) made of kaolin and a few cult objects made of iron were found.

According to Ms. Maheswari, it was believed that Kondapur was purely a Buddhist site. However, the present excavation shows that Kondapur was not a Buddhist site alone, but also represents the Vedic religion with evidence of the performance of Vedic rites. Till date, some 2,000 antiquities were found in the excavations. .

Nalanda: To know more, experts want to dig more (http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Nalanda--To-know-more--experts-want-to-dig-more/755551/)

As a new university is being established in Nalanda to revive the glory of ancient India’s most famous centre of learning, experts have asked the government to carry out more excavations at the site of the original university to dig out those parts of the institution that still remain undiscovered.

Some members of the governing board of the new Nalanda University, including chairperson Amartya Sen, last week held a meeting with top officials of the Culture Ministry to explore the possibility of further excavation at the site where the ruins of the world-famous ancient Nalanda University stand.

“There has been a long-felt demand that there should be much more excavation at the ancient Nalanda site. There is so much that we have read about Nalanda and there is a lot of indication that there was much more to the ancient university than what is reflected in the ruins today,” said Gopa Sabharwal, vice-chancellor of the new Nalanda University that is supposed to open by 2013.

Culture Secretary Jawhar Sircar told The Indian Express the ministry had already initiated the process by referring the matter to a technical committee of the Archeological Survey of India to carry out ‘assessment and exploration’ at the site which would establish whether there was need for excavation or not.

The government had last year passed a legislation to set up a new university, very near to where the original one was situated with the aim of reviving the past glory of Nalanda. The new university will start with seven schools and expand later. The Bihar government has already allocated 446 acres of land for it.

Sen wanted the ASI to carry out a thorough check at the site acquired for the new university to prevent damage to any archeological artefacts that might be present there. A satellite survey of the site is being planned.

चाकसू में 600 साल पुरानी मूर्तियां मिलीं

जयपुर. चाकसू में कुम्हारों के मोहल्ले में मकान की नींव खुदाई के दौरान 7 प्राचीन मूर्तियां निकली हैं। पुरातत्व विभाग के अनुसार ये सभी 15वीं शताब्दी के आसपास की हैं। ये मूर्तियां 24 फरवरी को निकलीं। विभाग के जयपुर संभाग के अधीक्षक पंकज धरेंद्र ने शुक्रवार को इनका परीक्षण किया।

धरेंद्र ने बताया कि मूर्तियां पारेवा पाषाण से विनिर्मित हैं और इनसे संबंधित 15 खंडित भाग कृष्ण संप्रदाय का प्रतिनिधित्व कर रहे हैं। मूर्तिशिल्प शैली के आधार पर इनका समय 15वीं शती आंका जा सकता है। इन मूर्तियों में कृष्ण के शिरो भाग पर जटा मुकुट अपने आप में एक अलग शैली का प्रतिनिधित्व करता है।

ऐसी शैली अन्य स्थानों पर देखने को नहीं मिलती। धरेंद्र के अनुसार चाकसू बड़े टीले पर स्थित है। इसमें आद्य ऐतिहासिक (प्रोटो हिस्ट्री) पुरातात्विक अवशेष विद्यमान हैं। इससे पहले भी इस क्षेत्र से ताम्र सामग्री के उपकरण प्राप्त हुए हैं जो ताम्र पाषाण कालीन संस्कृति के समकालीन हैं। उनका समय 2500 ईसा पूर्व का आंका गया था

http://images.indiainfo.com/web2images/www.bhaskar.com/2011/03/06/images/statue1_f.jpg

7 old statues have been found in Chaksoo when foundations of a house were being dug up in the Potters Neighbourhood. Archeological department says that the statues date from 15th century and were found on 24th february.

The broken statues seem to represent Krishna and the style of scuplting is not found anywhere else. Previously copper utensils from the copper age were found in Chaksoo.

SOURCE: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/Rare-Chola-era-inscriptions-found-in-suburbs/articleshow/7643236.cms

Maduravoyal residents played amateur archaeologists on Saturday when they discovered two rare inscriptions of the Telugu Cholas dating back to the 13th century while renovating an ancient Maha Shiva temple. The residents found these inscriptions when they were removing thick lime wash on the temple walls, as part of the renovation. The temple had been lime washed to yellow a few decades back, hiding the inscriptions.

The inscriptions were on two rows of granite slabs a few metres above the foundation of the main temple. "We were delighted when we saw these inscriptions. This is the first time we found such inscriptions in the temple," said R Mahesh Kumar, a resident of Maduravoyal. The renovation work in the Shiva temple in Maduravoyal, some 20 kms west of Chennai in Tiruvallur on the Chennai-Bangalore National Highway (NH:04), is being sponsored by Siva Sai Charitable Trust, a charitable organization dedicated to refurbishing ancient temples.

The residents immediately alerted officials of the state archeology department. A team of archeologists led by T S Sridhar, principal secretary and commissioner of museums, visited the temple and decoded the inscriptions. "It is a rare finding of the Telugu Chola period," said Sridhar.


Written in Tamil, the inscriptions have been dated to the period 1246 AD - 1249 AD during the reign of Vijayakandangopalan of Telugu Cholas. Vijayakandangoplan, who ruled for 25 years from 1242 AD, was a famous feudatory ruler of the Cholas, and had marriage relations with them. The Telugu Cholas reigned between the seventh and thirteenth centuries and adopted the title of Chola to show the feudatory status they had under the Chola-Chalukya rulers. The Chinese traveler Yuan Chwang referred to the Telugu Cholas as "Chuliyas."


Inscriptions found at the temple refer to two contributions made by the ruler on two different occasions for the purpose of temple maintenance. In the first instance, Vijayakandangoplan donated four cows and a huge lamp for illuminating the temple in 1246 AD. Three years later, he again contributed large acres of farmland in Sembakkam, a village in Singalur of Tiruvallur district. In the inscription, he rules that revenue generated in the form of taxes from these lands should be spent for the maintainence of the temple. "In ancient times, temples acted not only as places of worship but, also as registration offices, schools, and assemblies of elders," said state archeology department's epigraphist, R Sivanathan, who decoded the inscriptions at the temple.

Classified as an ancient temple and maintained by the Department of Hindu Religious and Chairitable Endowments (HR&CE), around 500 devotees from Koyambedu, Nerkundram, Adayalampattu, Tiruverkadu, Valasaravakkam, Alapakkam and Porur visit the temple every day. At present, around 25,000 inscriptions in Tamilnadu have been recorded by the state archaeology department. Of these, over a thousand inscriptions belong to Chennai and its suburbs. "The new findings, including the inscriptions, would be published in our quarterly journal, Kalvettu' (inscriptions)," Sivanathan noted.

---------------------------------

Very critical to preserve these inscriptions - not to be lost in the growing city, religious fervor or total ignorance.

Archaeologists discover ancient rain water harvesting site in Maharashtra (http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_archaeologists-discover-ancient-rain-water-harvesting-site-in-maharashtra_1516236)
Published: Sunday, Mar 6, 2011, 12:14 IST
Place: Aurangabad | Agency: PTI

In a significant discovery, archaeologists have stumbled upon an ancient rain water harvesting site having 13 rock-cut reservoirs, in central Maharashtra, which they say is the largest one in the country.

The site is unique as the harvesting area, a hill in this case, has been carved in circular and pyramidal shape, with steep natural ridges retouched to maintain security and isolation.

Located at Lohgarh-Nandra village, in Phulambri tehsil of this district, the site is 38 km north-west of the city, on the old trade route between Aurangabad and Ajanta caves, which are famous all over the world for paintings and architecture.

It was discovered in one of the four hillocks on the Lohgarh hills, which have rich archaeological evidence, in the form of rock-cut structures.

The dome-shaped top portion of the hill has been levelled to acquire the desired slope, followed by a flat even surface, so that rain water spills in this direction to enter the rock-cut reservoirs, Rahul Bhosle, assistant director, department of archaeology, Aurangabad division, said.

These reservoirs, of unequal size and shape, and sub-divided into many more, have been excavated over the hill in a circular fashion, Bhosle said.

The reservoirs were the first to be built along with the caves on the other hills and are tentatively bracketed to the period around 7th century AD, Bhosle said.

Nizam era coins found

Source (http://www.hindu.com/2011/03/10/stories/2011031064000900.htm)
382 silver coins found while taking up works to lay foundation for house in Munugodu mandal

As many as 382 silver coins pertaining to the Nizam's era, with markings of the historic Charminar, were found on Wednesday morning in Koratikal, 25 km from here, in Munugodu mandal. As the news spread, residents of the adjoining areas came in hordes, even as police and revenue officials got busy overseeing the digging.

The coins, stored in earthen pots, were unearthed as Pelam Lakshamamma commenced work to lay the foundation stone for a dwelling under the Indira Housing Scheme. Initially 74 coins were found. As a poclain operator began work more coins were found. Soon Munugodu police SI Srinivas and Tahsildar A. Pramodini, accompanied by the other revenue staff, came to the spot.

The coins are said to have been buried several decades ago for safety by wealthy persons of the area. Revenue Inspector Javed told The Hindu that the coins were being handed over to district Collector S A.M. Rizvi.

They would be passed on the Department of Archaeology for assessment. They are likely to be kept on display in the department museum.

Roman gold coin unearthed at Buddhist site

Source (http://www.hindu.com/2011/03/19/stories/2011031965201100.htm)
7.3 gm gold coin was issued by seventh Roman emperor

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Major find: Department of Archaeology and Museums Director P. Chenna Reddy inspecting the excavation site at Phanigiri, a Buddhist site, in Nalgonda district on Wednesday, where a Roman gold coin was found.

A Roman gold coin weighing 7.3 grams issued by the 7th Roman emperor Nerve Ceaser (96-98 AD) was unearthed at a Buddhist site in Phanigiri in Nalgonda district during the course of archaeological excavations recently.

Prof. P. Chenna Reddy, Director, Department of Archaeology and Museums, who inspected the site on Wednesday said so far 60 lead coins of the Satavahana and Ikshvaku dynasties have been recovered. The latest find of a gold coin was interesting as it indicated the fact that there was a brisk trade between the erstwhile Telugu country and Rome. It is also for the first time that a Roman gold coin is recovered from a Buddhist site in the State.

Along with it, handful of terracotta figurines, stucco images, beads made of conches and some precious stones, black polished ware, black and red ware were also found.

The latest find was in addition to Maha stupa, Votive Stupas, Chaityas, Viharas and Congregation hall besides a good number of antiquities during the last two years of excavations.

The antiquities include silver and lead coins of the Satavahanas, Western Kshatrapas, Ikshvakus and Mahatalavaras. Phanigiri site had also yielded sculptural panels depicting the symbols of Theravada Buddhism and the Jataka tales, life events of Siddhartha Gouthama, Buddhapadas and Buddha images representing the Mahayana phase similar to those found at Amaravathi and Nagarjunakonda.

Located on an ancient highway connecting the North India to the South India, the excavations at the Phanigir site also yielded a few Brahmini inscriptions of the Satavahana and Ikshvaku times.

One inscription issued by Ehuvala Chaunta Mula of the Ikshvaku dynasty who ruled from Sriparvata –Vijayapuri (Nagarjunakonda) records the 18 year reign of the king, revising the earlier evidence that he ruled for 11 years only. It also refers to the cult of Krishna for the first time as far as Andhra Pradesh was concerned.

He said Phanigiri was an important Buddhist site in Telangana and slated for development with Rs. 72 lakh being allocated from the 12th Finance Commission Grants. It had potential of attracting domestic and South East Asian tourists.

http://www.thehindu.com/multimedia/dynamic/00511/TH24_EXCAVATION__511271e.jpg

Acheulian stone tools, dating back to about 1.51 million years ago, have been discovered at Attirampakkam in the Kortallayar River Basin, about 60 km northwest of Chennai.

Researchers from the Chennai-based Sharma Centre for Heritage Education made the discovery, which is being published on Friday in the journal, Science.

The discovery indicates that early humans (hominins), using the tools, lived in India much earlier than previously estimated (0.6 million-0.5 million years). The tools are much older than those found in Europe.

The discovery clearly overturns the earlier assumption that the technology to produce bifacial tools appeared in South Asia at almost the same time as they did in Europe.

Acheulian tools, having their origin in Africa about 1.51 million years ago, are found in several countries in South Asia, including India, Nepal, and Pakistan.

“We need more evidence from more sites in India to know more about early human migration and dispersal [outside Africa],” said Shanti Pappu, director of the project and secretary of the Sharma Centre for Heritage Education.

Ms. Pappu is the lead author of the paper published in Science. “The tools are found in many parts of north Chennai and other places in India,” she said.

More than hundreds of different artefacts have been discovered from the Attirampakkam site. The most common ones are hand-axes, cleavers and small flakes. The stone axes are elongated teardrop or ovate-shaped with bifacial symmetry.

Unlike the hand-axes, the cleavers have broad cutting edges.

“The tools must have been used for butchering and skinning of animals and [probably] for exploiting plant resources like roots and tubers. But we are not sure about it,” Ms. Pappu said.

Ms. Pappu and her colleague and co-author of the paper, Kumar Akhilesh, have been working on the project for nearly 10 years to understand the site in terms of its archaeology and geomorphology.

“It is only after understanding the archaeology [of the site] did we start dating the tools,” she said. The dating was carried out in France by French co-authors.

The Acheulian artefacts were found at 1-9 metres depth in thick layers of clay that were deposited by a low-energy fluvial system.

“The tools are fresh [with little abrasion] and hence in situ in nature,” Ms. Pappu said.

Two different kinds of measurements were undertaken to determine the age of the artefacts.

src: http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/article1568651.ece

आमेर-जयगढ़ के बीच सुरंग

शहर के सबसे अहम पर्यटन स्थल आमेर महल में अब पर्यटन का एक नया अध्याय और जुडऩे जा रहा है। पुरातत्व विभाग की ओर से कराए जा रहे जीर्णोद्धार में एक नई सुरंग सामने आई है। यह सुरंग आमेर महल से जयगढ़ किले को जोड़ती है। आमेर महल में वर्ष 2006 से लगातार जीर्णोद्धार और खुदाई आदि का काम रुक-रुक कर चल रहा है। इसी कार्य के बीच तीन माह पहले महल से जयगढ़ तक जाने वाली सुरंग को खोज निकालने का काम शुरू हुआ था। यदि सबकुछ अनुकूल रहा तो आमेर महल से जयगढ़ का सफर केवल डेढ़ किलोमीटर की दूरी में बदल जाएगा। सुरंग निकाले जाने का काम तीन माह पूर्व शुरू हो गया था, जो जयगढ़ की दीवार तक पहुंच गया है।

325 मीटर लंबी है सुरंग

आमेर महल के रंगमहल से जयगढ़ की दीवार तक निकाली गई खुली सुरंग 325 मीटर लंबी है। महल के बाहरी हिस्से से सड़क मार्ग से जयगढ़ तक जाने की दूरी करीब 8 किलोमीटर है। यदि सुरंग को जयगढ़ की सुरंग से जोड़ दिया गया तो किले तक पहुंचने में केवल 1 से डेढ़ किलोमीटर की दूरी ही तय करनी पड़ेगी। प्राचीन समय से मलबे में दबी सुरंग के लिए 25 नवंबर से खुदाई का काम शुरू किया गया था।

सौंदर्य को चार चांद

आमेर महल के दक्षिण भाग में जयगढ़ को जाने वाली सुरंग के ऊपर रंगमहल के मेहराबदार बरामदे व गोलाकार गुलदाननुमा स्तंभ स्थापत्य कला के बेजोड़ नमूने हैं। सुरंग से गुजरने पर आमेर, जयगढ़ और नाहरगढ़ की सुरम्य पहाडिय़ों का खूबसूरत सौंदर्य देखा जा सकता है।

पर्यटन उद्योग की दृष्टि से सुरंग एक नया अध्याय जोड़ सकती है। खूबसूरती मुख्य रूप से विदेशी पर्यटकों को आकर्षित करेगी।

री-कॉल

आमेर महल में रंगमहल के नीचे सुरंग निकल चुकी। इसका काम वर्ष 2006 से शुरू हुआ। आगे का हिस्सा वर्ष 2008 में शुरू हुए कार्य के दौरान निकाला गया। नई सुरंग भी रंगमहल पर पुरानी सुरंग से जुड़ती है।[/SIZE]

A tunnel between Amer and Jaigarh fort Found!

A new phase is entering into the city's most important tourist place: Amer Fort. The restoration being done by the Archeological department have found a tunnel which joins Amer to Jaigarh fort. The restoration work at Amer has been going on since 2006. If everything stays right then it will take only 1 and a half km to reach Jaigarh from Amer. The tunnel was full of rubbish hence a clean up task was taken up on the 25th november which when finished reached the walls of Jaigarh.

The tunnel is 325 meters long. The current distance from Amer to Jaigarh is 8km if this tunnel is used then the distance will be just 1 and a half kilometers.

From a tourist point of view this tunnel can prove to be very attractive as right above it are the beautiful domes and corridors of the Rangmahal and While travelling in the tunnel one can also get beautiful views of the mountains.

This is not the first time a tunnel has been found in Amer. Back when the restoration began in 2006 a tunnel was found underneath Rangmahal and further digging of it was done in 2008. Now these tunnels join the tunnel which has been found.

http://epaper.bhaskar.com/EpaperImages/02042011/lpr111968926-large.jpg

The tunnel will open in 6 months as there is still some work left. After this it could be open for tourists. To conserve the tunnel it would take 40-45 lakhs.

Amazing :cheers:

Water Tank found in the 227 years old Aanand Krishna Bihari Temple, Jaipur

http://epaper.bhaskar.com/EpaperImages/16042011/lpr112003059-large.jpg

http://epaper.bhaskar.com/epaperimages/16042011/lpr112003048-large.jpghttp://epaper.bhaskar.com/epaperimages/16042011/lpr112003047-large.jpg

Translation:

Past Taught:

Saving Water: The temple had a water tank on its roof which. The water from the drains on the roof use to be diverted towards the well in the square (chowk) Then from this well the water tank on the roof used to be filled up. In this way the water needs of the whole temple used to be fullfilled. Until 1963, around 100 people used to live in the temple who never had a problem relating to water.

In the garden 20 feet long and 20 feet wide waterways were built. The space around it was kept open. These drains were joined with the tank on the roof and water released from the tank irrigated the garden thus the water got back to the water table.

The history of the temple: The Temple was established 227 years ago in the reign of Maharaja Sawai Pratap Singh by his wife Maa Aanandi Bai Patyani. The idols were brought from Vrindavan and later on the Maharaja had established Aanandeshwar Mahdev temple inside this temple's premises as well.

The Temple now comes under the buffer zone of new world heritage site: Jantar Mantar. Hence is being renovated by the Archeological department for the last 4 months. Around 26 lakhs are to be spent on this project.

Stone Age rock painting site discovered in Rajasthan

A grocery shop owner, with a hobby of exploring archaeological treasures, has claimed to have discovered a rock painting site dating back over 10,000 years on the hilltop of Vindhyachal hill terrain in Rajasthan's Bhilwara district.

Over 1,000 images drawn in sharp ochre, dark red and brown colours were discovered on June 1 on the banks of Chambal river in six shelters in 'Gendi Ka Chajja' area, said amateur archaeologist Om Prakash Sharma 'Kukki', who had earlier also discovered a rock painting stretching up to 35km of pre-historic age in Garadha area of Bundi district.

The images include human figures with long and slim physical constitution and long hair and figures of wild animals.

Kukki, who has had no academic connection with archaeology but immense passion for exploring the past, claims that these rock paintings may date back over 10,000 years in the Stone Age.

"A few of the striking features of these rock paintings are the use of sharp and dark colours and overlapping figures that denote the constant use of rock surface for drawing and developing paintings from time to time," he said.

Kukki, who has been awarded by the government for his contribution to discovering rock painting sites in Rajasthan, has so far discovered over 79 sites of rock paintings in the state.

He said that the new rock painting site is unique as it is situated on the hill top where about 15-20 foot high rock shelters are erected. Most of the rock paintings sites in the world are generally found in the lower shelters on the river banks.:cheers:

Images from excavation at Malhar. These images are scanned from the latest Puratattva for the interest of the readers.

Location : Malhar is situated about 33 km from its district headquarter Bilaspur in the state of Chhattisgarh ( erstwhile Madhya Pradesh) and is roughly 13 kim from the taluk town of Masturi. It is identified with Malharpattan of the Kalachuri inscription ( Bhargav 1997 : 13-36).

http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/7056/malhar1.jpghttp://img10.imageshack.us/img10/9552/malhar2.jpg

The terracotta sealing's bearing the legend "yuvaraajasya vaasshisthiputrasya gutalalaashiya in typical Satavahana Brahmi characters ( Plate 6). The legend is arranged around the central letter 'ma', which perhaps denoting the as the synonym for Malhar/Malharpattan. There are many more terracotta sealing carrying Brahmi legend has been excavated at Malhar in the Satavahana horizon and they are all under study. Characteristically majority of these sealings were once attached to be in transaction/transition consignments ( packages/bales), as each of these sealing's carry split bamboo fiber impression along with traces of knot at its back. This clearly shows the importance of Malhar being the recognized and flourishing trade centre during the Satavahana rule, which is also recorded by Hieun-Tsang in his accounts.

बारहवीं शताब्दी के शिलालेख मिले

जोधपुर & मारवाड़ से संबंधित प्राचीन व अप्रकाशित शिलालेखों की खोज में लगे शोधार्थियों को जोधपुर जिले के गांवों के आसपास बारहवीं शताब्दी के दो दर्जन से अधिक शिलालेख मिले हैं। इन शिलालेख पर मारवाड़ की प्राचीन राजधानी मंडोर के पडि़हार (प्रतिहार) शासकों से संबंधित सामग्री उकेरी हुई है। महाराजा मानसिंह पुस्तक प्रकाश शोध केंद्र के महानिदेशक डॉ. महेंद्रसिंह नगर ने बताया कि केंद्र की ओर से शिलालेख विशेषज्ञ डॉ. विक्रमसिंह भाटी की अगुवाई में आयोजित शोध यात्रा के दौरान बाड़ी, राजवा एवं लोरडी देजगरां गांव की कांकड़ में वि.सं. 1221 का सलखड़ का शिलालेख (राजवा गांव), वि.सं. 1663 का सारंग मुनि का शिलालेख (लोरडी देजगरां गांव) तथा वि.सं. 1230 की कार्तिक सुदी प्रतिपदा का शिलालेख मिले, जो कि पडि़हार शासक नाहड़ से संबंधित है। मंडोर के अधिपति नाहड़सूर प्रतापी व महाबली थे। डॉ. नगर ने कहा है कि जिस स्थान पर ये शिलालेख मिले हैं, वह स्थान असुरक्षित है। उसे सरकारी व संस्थागत प्रयासों से सुरक्षा व संरक्षण की जरूरत है।

http://epaper.bhaskar.com/EpaperImages/08062011/pr11391588-large.jpg

12th century stone inscriptions found

Around 2 dozen stone inscriptions were found in villages around Jodhpur tellign the past of Marwar. They are from the 12th century and have writings about the Padihar ( Pratihar) rulers of Marwar before Jodhpur was found. The place where these inscriptions have been found is not secure hence arrangements have to be made to secure them.

^They look like the "hero stones" found in other parts of the country.

http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/797/khet.jpg

Old sculptures found in a Farm


Udaipur| Old statues were found in a farm while the police was searching for a stolen statue. Though these statues are not what they were looking for but they came across them while searching. They appear to be a panel from a temple. It has two "matrakai" one "yogi" and one "sur sundari" which is broken.

The police has taken the findings into custody.

From Excavation at Kampil, Farukkabad dist, Uttar Pradesh. Click the image to see the Image in Original size.

http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/1818/img0412eu.th.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/23/img0412eu.jpg/)

http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/2740/img0431uj.th.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/15/img0431uj.jpg/)

crossposting

Palani excavation triggers fresh debate

Did the Tamil-Brahmi script originate in the post-Asokan period, that is, after the 3rd century BCE, or is it pre-Asokan?

Did the Tamil-Brahmi script originate in the post-Asokan period, that is, after the 3rd century BCE, or is it pre-Asokan? A cist-burial excavated in 2009 at Porunthal village, on the foothills of the Western Ghats, 12 km from Palani in Tamil Nadu, has reignited this debate because of the spectacular variety of grave goods it contained.

One of the two underground chambers of the grave was remarkable for the richness of its goods: a skull and skeletal bones, a four-legged jar with two kg of paddy inside, two ring-stands inscribed with the same Tamil-Brahmi script reading “va-y-ra” (meaning diamond) and a symbol of a gem with a thread passing through it, 7,500 beads made of carnelian, steatite, quartz and agate, three pairs of iron stirrups, iron swords, knives, four-legged jars of heights ranging from few centimetres to one metre, urns, vases, plates and bowls. It was obviously a grave that belonged to a chieftain ( The Hindu , June 28, 2009 and Frontline , October 8, 2010).

When K. Rajan, Professor, Department of History, Pondicherry University, excavated this megalithic grave, little did he realise that the paddy found in the four-legged jar would be instrumental in reviving the debate on the origin of the Tamil-Brahmi script. Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating of the paddy done by Beta Analysis Inc., Miami, U.S.A, assigned the paddy to 490 BCE. “Since all the goods kept in the grave including the paddy and the ring-stands with the Tamil-Brahmi script are single-time deposits, the date given to the paddy is applicable to the Tamil-Brahmi script also,” said Dr. Rajan. So the date of evolution of Tamil-Brahmi could be pushed 200 years before Asoka, he argued.

This dating, done on the Porunthal paddy sent to the U.S. laboratory by Dr. Rajan, took the antiquity of the grave belonging to the early historic age to 490 BCE, he said. It held great significance for Tamil Nadu's history, he added. This was the first time an AMS dating was done for a grave in Tamil Nadu.

There are two major divergent views on the date of Tamil-Brahmi.

While scholars such as Iravatham Mahadevan and Y. Subbarayalu hold the view that Tamil-Brahmi was introduced in Tamil Nadu after 3rd century BCE and it is, therefore, post-Asokan, some others including K.V. Ramesh, retired Director of Epigraphy, Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), consider it pre-Asokan.

According to Dr. Rajan, the AMS dating of the Porunthal paddy grains has the following implications: the context of the Tamil-Brahmi goes back to 490 BCE and it is, therefore, pre-Asokan; Tamil Nadu's ancient history can be pushed back to 5th century BCE and it was contemporary to mahajanapadas (kingdoms) such as Avanti, Kosala, Magadha and so on; paddy cultivation goes back to 5th century BCE; and it establishes that the megalithic graves introduced in the Iron Age continued into the early historic times.

When contacted, Mr. Mahadevan, a leading authority on the Tamil-Brahmi and Indus scripts, and Dr. Subbarayalu, Head, Department of Indology, French Institute of Pondicherry, said it was difficult to reach a conclusion on the basis of one single scientific dating.

Mr. Mahadevan described the dating as “interesting” but said “multiple carbon-dates are needed” for confirmation. “If there are several such cases, history has to be re-written because up to now, the scientifically proved earliest date is from Tissamaharama in southern Sri Lanka, where a Tamil-Brahmi script is dated to 200 BCE.” If there is scientific evidence that the paddy is dated to 490 BCE, “we have to sit up and take notice, and wait for confirmation,” Mr. Mahadevan said.

The Asokan-Brahmi is dated to 250 BCE. Megasthenes, the Greek Ambassador to the court of Chandragupta Maurya, Emperor Asoka's grandfather, had stated that the people of Chandragupta Maurya's kingdom did not know how to write and that they depended on memory. Besides, there is no inscription of the pre-Asoka period available. Mr. Mahadevan said: “Supposing a large number of carbon-datings are available from various sites, which will take us to the period of the Mauryas and even the Nandas, we can consider. But to push [the date of the origin of the Tamil-Brahmi script] a couple of centuries earlier with a single carbon-dating is not acceptable because chances of contamination and error are there.”

Dr. Subbarayalu also argued that on the basis of one single scientific dating, it was difficult to reach the conclusion that Tamil-Brahmi was pre-Asokan. There should be more evidence to prove that Tamil-Brahmi was earlier to the time of Asoka, in whose time was available the earliest Brahmi script in north India.

Mr. Mahadevan's conclusion that Tamil-Brahmi is post-Asokan and it had its advent from about the middle of the third century BCE is based on “concrete archaeological as well as palaeographical grounds” and this date is as yet the most reasonable one, in spite of minor points of difference on his dating of individual inscriptions, said Dr. Subbarayalu.

The date of the Tamil-Brahmi script found at Porunthal, on palaeographic basis, could be put only in the first century BCE/CE and “cannot be pushed back to such an early date [490 BCE].” The three letters “va-y-ra” found on the ring-stands were developed and belonged to the second stage of Mr. Mahadevan's dating of Tamil-Brahmi. “It is premature to revise the Tamil-Brahmi dating on the basis of a single carbon date, which is governed by complicated statistical probabilities,” Dr. Subbarayalu said. The word “vayra” is an adapted name from the Prakrit or Sanskrit “vajra” and it is difficult to explain convincingly the generally dominant Prakrit element in Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions found on rock and pot-sherds if Tamil-Brahmi is indigenous and pre-Asokan and transported from south India to north India, he says.

On the other hand, Dilip K. Chakrabarti, Emeritus Professor, Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, called the Porunthal Tamil-Brahmi script “an epoch-making discovery in the archaeology of Tamil Nadu” and said there “is no doubt” that Tamil-Brahmi belonged to the pre-Asokan period. In two of his books — “An Oxford Companion to Indian Archaeology” and “India, an Archaeological History” — he had written that the evolution of Tamil-Brahmi should go back to circa 500 BCE.

He refuted the theory that Tamil-Brahmi was post-Asokan.

Dr. Ramesh, who retired as the ASI's Joint Director-General in 1993, said the Porunthal scientific dating strengthened the argument that Tamil-Brahmi was pre-Asokan. He dismissed the assessment that Tamil-Brahmi was post-Asokan as “the argument of people who say that there cannot be pre-Asokan inscriptions.” “How can you question the scientific dating given by an American laboratory?” Dr. Ramesh said the Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions found at Mankulam, near Madurai, were pre-Asokan. [The Mankulam inscriptions are the earliest Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions and they are dated to second century BCE]. “The consonants in the Mankulam inscriptions do not have vowel value attached to them. They are pre-Asokan and the script is more rudimentary than the Asokan-Brahmi,” he claimed.

The date given by the American laboratory was “a wonderful result,” said M.R. Raghava Varier, former Professor, Department of History, Calicut University, “because the earliest date given so far to a south Indian site was 300 BCE.” The archaeological sites of Uraiyur in Tamil Nadu and Arikkamedu in Puducherry fell within the time-limit of 300 BCE and Arikkamedu belonged to a later period than Uraiyur. While the [pre-Asokan] date given to a Tamil-Brahmi inscription found at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka “has not been proved convincingly,” there was “a convincing date” at Porunthal and it was based on a scientific dating system, said Professor Varier, who was the honorary Editor of Kerala Archaeological Series. Its importance lay in the fact that while the Asokan-Brahmi began in the 3rd century BCE, the Porunthal script could be dated to 5th century BCE, he says. “But we cannot argue that Brahmi was invented by the southern people. That is a different issue.”



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

•AMS dating fixes excavated paddy's date at 490 BCE
•It's difficult to reach conclusion on basis of single scientific dating: Iravatham Mahadevan

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article2407358.ece

The earliest Brahmi inscription in south Asia comes from the excavation at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka.
This is dated to 6th century B.C. Brahmi script by all means seems to have been Introduced in South Asia by 6th century B.C.

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Buddhist stupa discovered in Andhra Pradesh's Krishna district

Source: The Hindu (http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2465454.ece)
http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/1543/19thayakapillar785423f.jpg
CULTURAL REMAINS:A hexagonal Ayaka pillar with a square pedestal found on a mound in Munjuluru village of Krishna District in Andhra Pradesh. Photo: V. Raju

Belongs to the Vajrayana period of Buddhism, dating back to 6th and 7th Century A.D.

A hemispherical Buddhist stupa belonging to the Vajrayana period of Buddhism dating back to 6th and 7th Century A.D. was by chance unearthed by the Department of Archaeology of Andhra Pradesh last week following sighting of a large brick in the vicinity of a large mound in this village.

The 10-metre (diametre) main stupa is now in a dilapidated state, but is yet another Buddhist site to get added to the four major ones in the district. Due to tilling activity some of the outer structures like aramas and ayakas have vanished. Some of the sculptures, bearing a distinct resemblance to the Amaravathi School of sculpting designs, now adorn some common places of the villages as Hindu deities such as Jambala (Kubera).

Vintage temple

The villagers considered it a vintage temple of Lord Shiva in a barren land of about 1 acre on the village outskirts. The stupa with Ayaka pillars in a hemispherical shape was found adjacent to the Zilla Parishad High School. The village derives its name from Buddhist bikshus, whom the locals used to call ‘Munulu' (sages) and thus the name Munuluru which over the years turned into Munjuluru.

Additional Director of Archaeology and Museums K. Chitti Babu, who visited the site along with The Hindu team, said that the stupa belonged to the last phase of the Buddhism (Vajrayana Buddhism practised in Tibet and Mongolia).

He said the barren area, covering many acres close to the stupa, was littered with Buddhist cultural remains.

Conch shells

The archaeologist also collected a number of red and black pottery, including rims in different shapes and sizes. The black, red and scarlet buffed ware, along with conical shaped bowls with heaps of lime conch shells used for plastering during the construction of the stupa, were collected and recorded by Mr. Babu.

The stupa is built with bricks made of husk measuring 23 cm width, 7 cm height and 28 cm length — a typical Buddhist construction material of that period. One of the ayaka pillars, which is in octagonal shape, was perched on a square base. However, for the locals it is a dilapidated Shiva temple. The government will soon issue a notice seeking objections from the public to declaring the stupa a protected national monument.

Barhut Stupa and Inscriptions. An excellent book by Alexandar Cunningham . Readers with google account can easily access this book. Will try to post more pictures from this book soon if possible.

Try this link
http://books.google.com/books?id=EigOAAAAQAAJ&dq=bharhut%20stupa&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q=bharhut%20stupa&f=false

Readers with google account can alternatively access this book at the following link.

http://books.google.com/ebooks/reader?id=EigOAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader

The Images and the stories from Barhut Stupa

Barhut Idasalaguha Scene. Source : British Library.

http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/7522/barhutidasalaguhascene.jpg

Barhut Pillar With Jetavana Scene.

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Barhut Pillars from South West Quadrant.

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Barhut Eastern Gateway or Torana Restored. Source : A. Cunningham.

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/1350/barhuttoranoreasterngat.jpg.


Inscriptions on the Pillars of the Eatern Gateway or Torana ( See the above image).
Line 1 : Suganam raje rajno Gagi-putasa VISA-DEVASA.
Line 2 : Pautena, Gotiputasa AGA-RAJASA putena
Line 3: Vachhi-putena DHANA-BHUTINA karitam toranam
Line 4 :Sila Kammata cha upanna

Translation : "In the Kingdom of Sugana(Srughna) this Toran, with its ornamented stonework and plinth, was caused to be made by king Dhana-Bhuti, son of Vachhi and Aga Raja son of Goti, and grandson of Visa Deva son of Gagi."

Translation by A.Cunningham : This ornamental gateway has been erected by the king of Shrugna,Dhanabuti,born of [the Queen of] the Vatsa family, [and] son of Aga Raja , born of [the queen of] the Gota family, [and] grandson of king [Visa-Deva], born of the [ the queen of] the Gaga race , and the spiritual has been gained [ thereby]".

Silver Coinage of the Kunindas ( ca.2nd - 1st Century BC).. It contains a Brahmi-Kharoshti Inscription
Prakrit Inscription : "Rajnah Kunindasya Amoghabhutisya maharajasya".
English Meaning : Great King Amoghabhuti, of the Kunindas.

http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/1088/kunindacoin.jpg

Source :
http://www.ancientcoins.ca/kuninda/kuninda.htm

Excavated ancient shiva shrine at Ahichhatra , belonging to 4th century A.D( courtesy ASI).

http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/7425/ahichhatratemple.jpg

^^Source for the image ? That looks like a stupa. Also there wasn't much of shrine-building back the 4th cent. AD.

^^Source for the image ? That looks like a stupa. Also there wasn't much of shrine-building back the 4th cent. AD.

It is not Stupa. It has a huge 10-15 feet shiva lingam on the top of this ancient structure( told to me by the chief archaeologist). I got this image from an archaeologist who has been excavating at Ahichhatra since 2007. It is definitely not a buddisht structure. This structure has other icons like Ganga ( Makara vahana ) standing on crocodile , Yamuna ( Kurma vahana) standing on Turtle depicted on the entrance panel on Terracato carvings. See below in this image. It looks like the Gupta dynasty has built it as from the archaeologist who excavated this site told me and they used baked bricks and Terracota objects to build this temple ( there is no stone much used in this construction) . However, the shiva Lingam itself I am not sure of what kind of material did they use to carve it. It may be a stone and it is the reason why nobody had stolen it because of the heavy size ( when other shiva lingams) from this temple were already stolen in the absence of a guard.

http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/2877/theahicchatraforsb.jpg

Quite revealing, by a Brit, who finds India was trading with other cultures, whilst the Brits were living in cave like dwellings during these times...

. The British isles have had trading links with the rest of Europe and other parts of the world for millennia.

Evidence? Grand statements from a failed Indologist does not cut it!



You need to learn more about world history.



Knap of Howar, Scotland (3700 BC) - third oldest surviving building in the world according to an unconfirmed Wikipedia list:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/Knapofhowarinsun.jpg/800px-Knapofhowarinsun.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c2/Knapp_of_Howar_2.jpg/800px-Knapp_of_Howar_2.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/12/Knapp_of_Howar.jpg/450px-Knapp_of_Howar.jpg



West Kennet Long Barrow, England (3600 BC):

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/WKLB_Mittelgang_DB.jpg

http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/3374/16preview.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Westkennet.jpg



Skara Brae, Scotland (3180 BC) - fourth oldest surviving building in the world according to an unconfirmed Wikipedia list:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b0/Skara_Brae_12.jpg/800px-Skara_Brae_12.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d2/Skara_Brae_house_1_5.jpg/800px-Skara_Brae_house_1_5.jpg

http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/9894/skarabraedrawing.jpg



Newgrange, Ireland (3100 BC) - fifth oldest surviving building in the world according to an unconfirmed Wikipedia list:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bc/Newgrange.JPG/799px-Newgrange.JPG

http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/999/kzucd00z.jpg

http://diaryofacountrywife.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/newgrange-light.jpg



Stonehenge Phase III, England (2600 BC):

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3c/Stonehenge2007_07_30.jpg/800px-Stonehenge2007_07_30.jpg

http://adeaconswife.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/druids_stonehenge.jpg

http://89.206.186.140/stonehengemap/sites/stonehenge/pics/stonehenge_phase3c.jpg



Avebury, England (2600 BC):

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/23/Avebury_Stone_Circles.jpg/800px-Avebury_Stone_Circles.jpg

http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/4044/aveburyreconstructionby.jpg

http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/8521/imag002kl.jpg



Silbury Hill, England (2400 BC):

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ac/SilburyHill_gobeirne.jpg/800px-SilburyHill_gobeirne.jpg

http://www.wessexarch.co.uk/system/files/images/7_0.preview.jpg

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00635/news-graphics-2007-_635363a.jpg



Tin Mining/Trading, England (1600 BC):

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_8hmFRxrMNNE/TNwFz7aV6eI/AAAAAAAAAcM/BW7Qy13Z4qk/s1600/Ewart%2BPark%2Bsword.jpg

http://www.cartographyunchained.com/documents/diagrams/jpg/medium/ms2d03_medium.jpg

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01577/bronze2_1577687c.jpg



Crannog Lake Dwellings, Ireland & Scotland (1200 BC):

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Crannog_-_geograph.org.uk_-_35551.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/Crannog_Loch_Tay.jpg/399px-Crannog_Loch_Tay.jpg



Iron Age Hill Forts, England (750 BC):

http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/1221/illustration01.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/British_camp_central_mound_2005.jpg/800px-British_camp_central_mound_2005.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Somerset_cadbury_castle_modified.jpg




The aritcle you posted, by comparison, talked about trade in 300 BC.

You need to learn more about world history.


Dude, what is your point in posting these pictures. I see Nothing! Yes there are pile of pretty stones strewn about and they resemble cave dwelling. You need modern civilization structures like those of the pyramids or inca temples or the ancient relics like those in the Indus Valley civilization.

Face the facts: the Brits were the retards of the world during a time when there was excellence in civilization in many other places around the world.

You don't seem to understand much about early European history, so I would recommend reading a well-established book on the subject of British pre-history before commenting on the topic any further. Your claim was inaccurate, and when Marathaman pointed out the academically-acknolwedged facts, you insulted him. When I pointed the mistake out, you made a racist comment toward the British.

Your original post said nothing about the Indus Valley Civilization. What you infact claimed, was that Brythons were living in "cave like dwellings" in an era when they were infact not. They infact lived quite similarily to the majority of Indians at the time, in small thatched-roof houses, although Maurya Dynasty India was indeed more advanced as a civilization. The Brythons had infact been living in houses for upward of 2000 years before the time you indicated they were living in cave-like surroundings. You also implied that they did not trade with other cultures, when they infact did via well-attested sea routes. Their main export was tin.

You don't seem to understand much about early European history, blah, blah...

Dude, first and foremost this the Indian Archaeology Thread, so don't pollute it with fairy tales from Britain and your selective bias. Remove all those pictures because it is OT.

Whatever civilization, the brits had (during ancient times) were due to the Romans who conquered them 2000 years ago and the fact remains that the ancient brits were retards of the world when the rest were blazing ahead.

You can not compare pre 1000 AD India with the UK. India for 4000 years was way ahead of the UK. Just like from 1600 upto the present day the UK is way ahead of India, despite recent progress.

It is not Stupa...

It may have been later converted to a shaivite shrine, but that's a different matter. The stepped structure is unmistakably a buddhist stupa.

Anyways, it seems that Ahichhatra was infact a major buddhist and trading centre ( the two tended to go together ) on the silk route.

Thank you for existing, Marathaman. Also for all the awesome links.

I wish Indian Archaeology buffs would be more humble. Its not a contest!

It may have been later converted to a shaivite shrine, but that's a different matter. The stepped structure is unmistakably a buddhist stupa.

Anyways, it seems that Ahichhatra was infact a major buddhist and trading centre ( the two tended to go together ) on the silk route.

I don't want to create a big scene here with my disagreement. However, none of the pictures the chief archaeologist showed me from Ahichhatra contained any traces of Buddihst relics like railings or toranas ( like in Barhut) . All the pictures he showed me showed contained the entrance flanked by deitified ganga-yamuna standing on their vehicles , numerous shiva-lingas which are either broken or stolen. In the words of the chief archaeologist , this is undoubtedly a Hindu shaivite temple. I will be meeting him in 2014 again, will try to get many more details and photos and will post again.

Well if your archaeologist friend is right then history will have to be rewritten considerably.

Till date, the earliest stand-alone Hindu shrines date from the Gupta period (the "Golden Age" ) around 500 AD.

Before that, small shrines were built as parts of larger Buddhist complexes consisting of a stupa as the centerpiece.

Ancient History is always changing with new archaeological excavations. I am hoping I will be able to gather more evidence from the chief archaeologist when I meet him again. Even before that he may publish his research work which may be available for everyone.

Well if your archaeologist friend is right then history will have to be rewritten considerably.

Till date, the earliest stand-alone Hindu shrines date from the Gupta period (the "Golden Age" ) around 500 AD.

Before that, small shrines were built as parts of larger Buddhist complexes consisting of a stupa as the centerpiece.


This is mainly because Hinduism is a religion which came after Budhism and Jainism..Religion that predates Budhism and Jainism was called as Vedic Dharma which had no idols and was a monotheistic religion...

Today's Hinduism as we see it has huge influence of this old vedic dharma along with Budhism and Jainism,

Many old stupas where converted into temples during Pusyamitra Sungas reign..

Many old stupas where converted into temples during Pusyamitra Sungas reign.. this is old theory and has been discarded even by oh so pure secularists like romila thapar.

The Chinese pilgrim Hsuan Tsang wrote about Achchitara in detail, describing the fort, stupa, town and history. This is probably that stupa, and like most other holy places, people continued to worship there after the decline of Buddhism. Naturally, they turned it into a Hindu holy place. This is quite common. You'll find many places now occupied by Hindu temples or mentioned as Buddhist pilgrimage sites in the ancient record.

Also, there is no precedent for such a bizarre structure consisting of a stepped-pyramid with an exposed shivaling on top. Such things don't just pop out of thin air. It takes centuries for traditions to develop and this kind of temple has no corresponding tradition.

Early Hindu temples followed very strict guildelines about the plan, size, shape, material, construction methods etc. Example is Dashavatara (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashavatara_Temple,_Deogarh)Vishnu temple in Deogarh MP, dating from the Gupta period.

That is what early Hindu temples looked like:

Bhitargaon:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Brick_temple.jpg

Sirpur:
http://www.cg-04.com/sites/default/files/images/naya-raipur.preview.jpg

Deogarh:
http://www.indianetzone.com/photos_gallery/7/Dashavatar_9711.jpg

Temples were used in both Hindu and Buddhist tradition, like Mahabodhi temple (also built during Gupta rule). But the Buddhists were possibly not bound by the restrictive rules used to limit the size and height of Hindu temples. Hence:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4e/Mahabodhitemple.jpg/200px-Mahabodhitemple.jpg

^^ I understand what you are saying. Systematic construction of temples might have started in Gupta period, however, Hinduism being a older faith and co-existed along with Buddhism from 4th century B.C till Gupta period, must have have some ways of worshipping their gods using some religious structure ( may not exactly be like the temples you posted above). One such structure is referred in an ancient inscription about worship of Sankarsana and Vasudeva in 1st century B.C ( Hathibada and Ghosundi) . More about this inscription can be seen in my post.

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=93221599&postcount=80

Also, I haven't seen any other shiva temple in northern India during gupta period where a shiva temple is flanked by terracota figurines of Yamuna and ganga standing on turtle and crocodile . These terracota figurines looked like the terrocota figurines from Sunga dynasty .

What many people do not know that Hinduism is not ancient religion as some people claim it to be...Hinduism came after Budhism and Jainism..there is no mention of the word Hindu anywhere in vedas or Geeta...and if there is any in puranas then rest assured that puranas are not ancient..


Here is interesting read for how Budhism disappeared from south India

http://truthdive.com/2011/10/28/how-bodhidharma-and-his-buddhism-disappeared-from-tamil-nadu.html

What many people do not know that Hinduism is not ancient religion as some people claim it to be...Hinduism came after Budhism and Jainism..there is no mention of the word Hindu anywhere in vedas or Geeta...and if there is any in puranas then rest assured that puranas are not ancient..


Here is interesting read for how Budhism disappeared from south India

http://truthdive.com/2011/10/28/how-bodhidharma-and-his-buddhism-disappeared-from-tamil-nadu.html

There is no word Hindu in Puranas. Iranians for some reasons use "H" for "S" in Avestan and Old Iranian languages. The river Sindhu and the region Saptha-Sindhu in Avestan and Old Iranian became Hindu and Haptha-Hindu. The people in this region were known as Hindus gradually after Alexandar's conquest and in greek literature. The word India is also a anglicized form of greek word Indie , which more less refers to river Sindhu . Hinduism is a broader word and it includes anybody who practices ancient Sanathana dharma, shaivism, vaisnavism, shakti worship, vedic practices etc. The redaction of the Puranas seems to have happened in Gupta period but there is lot of old material in Puranas. Basically centuries old practices continue with a different name now. Sorry if there are some minor mistakes in this post.

What many people do not know that Hinduism is not ancient religion as some people claim it to be...Hinduism came after Budhism and Jainism..there is no mention of the word Hindu anywhere in vedas or Geeta...and if there is any in puranas then rest assured that puranas are not ancient..


Here is interesting read for how Budhism disappeared from south India

http://truthdive.com/2011/10/28/how-bodhidharma-and-his-buddhism-disappeared-from-tamil-nadu.html

Well, Buddhism was an organized religion, so naturally when the organizations collapsed, so did the religion.

Yes, Hinduism did exist in whatever form. People worshipped all sorts of gods just like they do today. Even buddhist complexes had temples to Hindu gods. There was no watershed moment when Buddhism was uprooted and everybody started going for Vishnu and Shiva. These gods were already there.

As for that blog post, it seems like an amateurish attempt to somehow establish a "Tamil" religion as opposed to "Hinduism". It's more politics than history, and I wouldn't vouch for it's accuracy.

This is my most favorite thread in the entire forum. Thank you for creating this thread and for sharing these discoveries.

Cheers

What many people do not know that Hinduism is not ancient religion as some people claim it to be...Hinduism came after Budhism and Jainism..there is no mention of the word Hindu anywhere in vedas or Geeta...and if there is any in puranas then rest assured that puranas are not ancient..


Here is interesting read for how Budhism disappeared from south India

http://truthdive.com/2011/10/28/how-bodhidharma-and-his-buddhism-disappeared-from-tamil-nadu.html

Interesting, but I believe this author completely lost the fact that Buddhism in Tamil Nadu and in the whole of India reduced significantly and vanished in some parts because of Kumarila Bhatta and Adi shankara. In those days there were six primary school of vedic thoughts; the samkya, Yoga, Nyaya, Mimamsa, Vedanta and Vaisheshika. Similarly the Buddhist school of thought existed. Each of these different schools was headed by a scholar and scholars from these various schools had an intellectual debate over each other's philosophies and the loser had to abandon all his teachings and convert himself to the winner's philosophy.

Buddhism and Vedic philosophies were competing with each other and Kumaarilla Bhatta, the head of mimamsa philosphy took on many of the Buddhist monks and defeated them through his scholarly and dialectical success in his debates with them. Spread of Mimamsa was the main reason why Buddhism started to fall out significantly in India and it was only because of Kumaarilla Bhatta. Now mimamsa was competing with vedanta and Adi sankara was the head of vedanta. Adi Sankara wanted to stop the fast spread of mimamsa in the Southern part . Therefore he decided to take on the mimamsa scholar Kumaarilla Bhatta in a debate, who in turn directed Adi Sankara to his disciple named Mandamishra, as Bhatta was in a penance of slowly burning himself for his sins of commiting a guru droga to one of the Buddhist monks from whom he learnt the secrets of Buddhist philosophies, just for the sake of preparing better to defeat them in the future debates between mimamsa and Buddhism.

In the debate, Mandanamishra's wife Ubayabharati was made the judge and when Adi Sankara won his debate over Mandanamishra on philosophies, Ubayabharati started asking Adi Sankara about the nuances and intricate experiences of a family life, thinking that he would lose as he was a saint. Adi Sankara performed a para kaya pravesanam (soul travel) into a king's body and understood the nuances of sexual/family life. Thus he defeated Mandanamishra in the debate. In return for this loss, Mandanamishra had to abandon all mimamsa teachings in South India and he himself converted into the advaita philosophy of vedanta, becoming the first seer of Sringeri mutt.

Interestingly, it seems that the very first person to use the word "Dravida" was Adi Sankara in this famous debate with Mandanamishra. When Adi Sankara was asked who are you by Mandanamishra and his wife Ubayabharati, he introduces himself as "Mama Dravida Sishu", meaning I am the son of the place where the union of oceans take place, (Union of Dra and Vidh) meaning he is from the south. Therefore the word was used to represent the location and not a race. The Brits later used this phrase to conveniently divide people of India as Aryans and Dravidians and rule. Voila, we believe and follow it till date without any questioning.

Therefore, without any reference to Kumaarilla Bhatta and Adi Sankara, the fall out of Buddhism in Tamil Nadu and in India can never be justified.

Just my two cents and don't ask me "What nonsense!" before doing your own research.

Interesting, but I believe this author completely lost the fact that Buddhism in Tamil Nadu and in the whole of India reduced significantly and vanished in some parts because of Kumarila Bhatta and Adi shankara. In those days there were six primary school of vedic thoughts; the samkya, Yoga, Nyaya, Mimamsa, Vedanta and Vaisheshika. Similarly the Buddhist school of thought existed. Each of these different schools was headed by a scholar and scholars from these various schools had an intellectual debate over each other's philosophies and the loser had to abandon all his teachings and convert himself to the winner's philosophy.

Buddhism and Vedic philosophies were competing with each other and Kumaarilla Bhatta, the head of mimamsa philosphy took on many of the Buddhist monks and defeated them through his scholarly and dialectical success in his debates with them. Spread of Mimamsa was the main reason why Buddhism started to fall out significantly in India and it was only because of Kumaarilla Bhatta. Now mimamsa was competing with vedanta and Adi sankara was the head of vedanta. Adi Sankara wanted to stop the fast spread of mimamsa in the Southern part . Therefore he decided to take on the mimamsa scholar Kumaarilla Bhatta in a debate, who in turn directed Adi Sankara to his disciple named Mandamishra, as Bhatta was in a penance of slowly burning himself for his sins of commiting a guru droga to one of the Buddhist monks from whom he learnt the secrets of Buddhist philosophies, just for the sake of preparing better to defeat them in the future debates between mimamsa and Buddhism.

In the debate, Mandanamishra's wife Ubayabharati was made the judge and when Adi Sankara won his debate over Mandanamishra on philosophies, Ubayabharati started asking Adi Sankara about the nuances and intricate experiences of a family life, thinking that he would lose as he was a saint. Adi Sankara performed a para kaya pravesanam (soul travel) into a king's body and understood the nuances of sexual/family life. Thus he defeated Mandanamishra in the debate. In return for this loss, Mandanamishra had to abandon all buddhist teachings in South India and he himself converted into the advaita philosophy, becoming the first seer of Sringeri.

Interestingly, it seems that the very first person to use the word "Dravida" was Adi Sankara in this famous debate with Mandanamishra. When Adi Sankara was asked who are you by Mandanamishra and his wife Ubayabharati, he introduces himself as "Mama Dravida Sishu", meaning I am the son of the place where the union of oceans take place, (Union of Dra and Vidh) meaning he is from the south. Therefore the word was used to represent the location and not a race. The Brits later used this phrase to conveniently divide people of India as Aryans and Dravidians and rule. Voila, we believe and follow it till date without any questioning.

Therefore, without any reference to Kumaarilla Bhatta and Adi Sankara, the fall out of Buddhism in Tamil Nadu and in India can never be justified.

Just my two cents and don't ask me "What nonsense!" before doing your own research.


I completely agree with you on contribution of Kumārila Bhaṭṭa & Adi Shankara in uprooting Budhism from India...But Budhism was not completely uprooted during their lifetime...

Originally Posted by kingkobra
What many people do not know that Hinduism is not ancient religion as some people claim it to be...Hinduism came after Budhism and Jainism..there is no mention of the word Hindu anywhere in vedas or Geeta...and if there is any in puranas then rest assured that puranas are not ancient..
this is nonsense, to put it mildly. hinduism is much older than either jainism or buddhism. it was called sanatan dharma back then. the name hinduism is not ancient, doesn't mean the religion isn't. hinduism doesn't originate from puranas (which are mostly written in the centuries leading up to gupta period) but from vedas, which are some of the oldest books known to mankind.

But Budhism was not completely uprooted during their lifetime...
buddhism was absorbed in hinduism as time went along, it was not replacement of one by another. buddha for example is considered one of the avatars of vishnu in many vaishnava schools. the concept of shiv ling itself is supposed to have originated from buddhist stupas.
to philosophers the difference might have been very important, to common people it was not.
even the Pala kings of bengal, who once ruled upto afghanistan while considered buddhist by all historians, had no problems worshipping 'dharma', a form of vishnu with equal fervour.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/Indian_Kanauj_triangle_map.svg/530px-Indian_Kanauj_triangle_map.svg.png

People usually refer to Harsha's Empire as being the last major Buddhist kingdom of India, but actually, the Pala Dynasty, was the last major one. It was responsible for the propagation of esoteric forms of Buddhism to East Asia, perticularily Tibet. Consequrntly, many gods which were probably once popular in ancient Bihar and Bengal, have been preserved in places like Tibet and Japan. Mahakala for example, or Manjushri. Some of these deities may be older than the modern forms of Shiva, Vishnu, etc. In Tibet, people regularily chant long mantras to famous Bengali monks, such as Atisha, who propagated Pala Empire Buddhism to Tibet, when the Pala Empire declined:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/Astasahasrika_Prajnaparamita_Dharmacakra_Discourse.jpeg

Bengali literature (and thus the modern Bengali language), I once read, also seems to contain echos of Buddhist ideas, with notions of impermenance (anitya) and emptyness (shunyata) being found in thematic leanings. If the Bengali cinema of Satyajit Ray is anything to go by, I agree. The reason for this is probably that the Bengali language only seperated off into a distinct language from the old eastern Magadhi Prakrit around the time of the Pala Empire.

this is nonsense, to put it mildly. hinduism is much older than either jainism or buddhism. it was called sanatan dharma back then. the name hinduism is not ancient, doesn't mean the religion isn't. hinduism doesn't originate from puranas (which are mostly written in the centuries leading up to gupta period) but from vedas, which are some of the oldest books known to mankind.

buddhism was absorbed in hinduism as time went along, it was not replacement of one by another. buddha for example is considered one of the avatars of vishnu in many vaishnava schools. the concept of shiv ling itself is supposed to have originated from buddhist stupas.
to philosophers the difference might have been very important, to common people it was not.
even the Pala kings of bengal, who once ruled upto afghanistan while considered buddhist by all historians, had no problems worshipping 'dharma', a form of vishnu with equal fervour.

Santan Dharma is a completely different religion than Hinduism today...Sanatan Dharma which was a monotheistic religion had no temples or idols...Temples and Idols started with Jainism and Budhism...Budhism and Jainism were not absorbed into Hinduism....If they were then they would not have existed anywhere in India but they do...

Budhism and Jainism Influenced Sanatan Dharma and then a new religion or way of life style was born which was later named as Hindu Dharma..

About Budha being Avtar of Vishnu...It is usual crap that puranics try to feed to people but Budhists around world do not accept that neither did Dr.Babasaheb Ambedkar when he took Diksha of Budhism..

So Hinduism(Do not confuse it with Sanatan Dharma) as a religion is younger than Budhism and Jainism..

Earth has thousands of religions. They evolve and change all the time. New deities are exchanged and traded. So, when the Buddha was made into an avatar of Vishnu by some sects, it was just a natural process, not some conspiracy theory. The Buddha was seen as being a version of Lao Tsu in early Taoism, for example. On the flipside, some Buddhist stories regard Rama as being one of the Buddha's million's of previous incarnations.

Santan Dharma is a completely different religion than Hinduism today...Sanatan Dharma which was a monotheistic religion had no temples or idols...Temples and Idols started with Jainism and Budhism...Budhism and Jainism were not absorbed into Hinduism....If they were then they would not have existed anywhere in India but they do...

Budhism and Jainism Influenced Sanatan Dharma and then a new religion or way of life style was born which was later named as Hindu Dharma..

About Budha being Avtar of Vishnu...It is usual crap that puranics try to feed to people but Budhists around world do not accept that neither did Dr.Babasaheb Ambedkar when he took Diksha of Budhism..

So Hinduism(Do not confuse it with Sanatan Dharma) as a religion is younger than Budhism and Jainism..

Again this is Big B.S. Sanathana Dharma is the religion thought by Lord Krishna in Bhagavadgita. Bhagvadgita talks about worship of one supreme god Krishna . Sanathana means eternal it has no begining. The yadavas ( or the yadus of Rig veda) clearly worshipped Vishnu before the appearance of Krishna . You keep on repeating the same non-sense again and again without truly understanding the facts. This is the propaganda carried by pseudo-secular , communist and anti-Hindu forces . In Bhagavadgita Krishna talks about dharma and adharma. As a Khastriya he was reminded to fight in the battlefield and think of Lord Krishna while fighting. Recent excavations in Dwaraka revealed some idols of Lord Vishnu . Your repeated lies that there are no idols in Sanathana dharma has no validity. Now in Vedas , we see glorification and worship of Indra, Agni, Varuna, Mitra etc. Historians say it is greek who heavily influenced India to make their gods Idols . Modern Hinduism is nothing but continued age old practices that existed in India since the dawn of vedic civilization. Sanathan dharma is not monotheistic ( rigidity never existed) as you say but it allowed even worship of demigods like Indra mitra varuna etc.

Here is one of the visnhu idols excavated from Dwaraka way before Buddhism and Jainism started in India. Mahabharata states that people of Dwaraka were vishnu devotees.

http://img577.imageshack.us/img577/4609/excavationsvishnudwarak.jpg

Again this is Big B.S. Sanathana Dharma is the religion thought by Lord Krishna in Bhagavadgita. Bhagvadgita talks about worship of one supreme god Krishna . Sanathana means eternal it has no begining. The yadavas ( or the yadus of Rig veda) clearly worshipped Vishnu before the appearance of Krishna . You keep on repeating the same non-sense again and again without truly understanding the facts. This is the propaganda carried by pseudo-secular , communist and anti-Hindu forces . In Bhagavadgita Krishna talks about dharma and adharma. As a Khastriya he was reminded to fight in the battlefield and think of Lord Krishna while fighting. Recent excavations in Dwaraka revealed some idols of Lord Vishnu . Your repeated lies that there are no idols in Sanathana dharma has no validity. Now in Vedas , we see glorification and worship of Indra, Agni, Varuna, Mitra etc. Historians say it is greek who heavily influenced India to make their gods Idols . Modern Hinduism is nothing but continued age old practices that existed in India since the dawn of vedic civilization. Sanathan dharma is not monotheistic ( rigidity never existed) as you say but it allowed even worship of demigods like Indra mitra varuna etc.

Here is one of the visnhu idols excavated from Dwaraka way before Buddhism and Jainism started in India. Mahabharata states that people of Dwaraka were vishnu devotees.

http://img577.imageshack.us/img577/4609/excavationsvishnudwarak.jpg


You have no idea of Vedas and the extent to which they promote Monotheism...western fools have made vedas a deity worshipping manual by cunningly ignoring certain verses like below.


Indram Mitram varunamagnimaahuratho divyah sa suparno garuthmaan| Yekham sadvipra bahudha vadantyagnim yamam maatarishwanamaahuh||
Rigveda 1.64.46

The real God is one, the enlightened ones, speak of Him in several ways, God is divine, the supreme protector and graceful sentient, the Universal soul. They call Him Indra, the Almighty, the universal friend [mitra]. Varuna the most acceptable and obliterator of sins, they describe Him as [agnim] the supreme guide of the Universe, {Yaman} the controller of the Universe, and {matarishvanam] the life of all lives.
------------------------------------------------------------------


Na dvitityo Na triyaschthurtho naapyuchyate|
N a panchamo Na shshtah sapthmo naapyuchyate|
Nashtamo Na navamo dashamo naapyuchyate|
Yagna yetham devamekavritham veda||
Sa sarvassai vi pashyathi yachha praanathi yachhana|
Tamidam nigatam sah sa yesha yeka yekavrideka yeva|
Ya yetham devamekavritham veda||
Atharva 13.4[2]19-20

There is no second God, nor a third, nor is even a fourth spoken of

There is no fifth God or a sixth nor is even a seventh mentioned.

There is no eighth God, nor a ninth. Nothing is spoken about a tenth even.

This unique power is in itself. That Lord is only one, the only omnipresent. It is one and the only one.

---------------------------------------

I would love it if you give me link to prove that idol is older than Budhism and Jainism...

Are you biased towards monotheism? :dunno:

Are you biased towards monotheism? :dunno:

Nope i am not..I just want others to know that Sanatam Dharma was monotheistic and Hinduism which came later has influence of Sanatan dharma,Budhism as well as Jainism and not other way around..

So u want to prove that "sanathana dharma" was a pure logical monothestic religion and not always the illogical polythiestic crap that it has become?

So u want to prove that "sanathana dharma" was a pure logical monothestic religion and not always the illogical polythiestic crap that it has become?


I want people to know that during course of History a new religion/way of life was born that was influenced by Santan Dharma,Budhism,Jainism..which was later named as Hinduism by invaders...

Hinduism-a religion whose formation possibly stopped the battle between all these three religions(sanatan dharma,budhism,jainism)..

I dislike monotheism.

I find animism more rational, since spirits can be a metaphor for psychological phenomenon. It is more emotionally pleasing, and feels more true to nature.

European Christians always tried to kid themselves that monotheism was more rational, because Plato and other Greeks advocated it - the idea of a prime mover behind the universe. But even polytheistic religions usually had a prime-mover anyway, so it wasn't a very good justification for monotheism. And modern physics has seemingly buried the need for anything like a creator.

In anthropoligical terms, monotheism is no more or less culturally advanced than polytheism - and often ends up being little different, with secular saints or heros serving the exact same function as minor deities.

When religion is at its best, its a secular psychology, when its at its worst, it is an unprovable metaphysical dogma. Thats why demigods and hungry ghosts will always be needed in a humanistic religion - for the essential storytelling tools and psychological tools they provide.

The Vedic tradition wasn't really monotheistic, but rather 'monist' or 'pantheistic', i.e. it posited that all things, including gods, were part of a larger totality, which could be called 'god' or 'the universe' or a single spirit - devas lived on high, but even they were inferior parts of some greater reality. That's a bit different from monotheism, although in practice, what is an angel in Judaism, if not a minor deity?

Your point is right though - maybe modern Hinduism was a way of merging the conflicting traditions and uniting India - you have Advaita Vedanta, which is so Buddhist, it might as well be Buddhism - Tantric Hinduism, which is little different to Tantric Buddhism - as well as Bakti which compares with the popular devotional movements in other religions - Vedism, which resembles something akin to Greco-Roman religion - as well as various other Sramana traditions, and god-archetypes for every taste (I prefer fierce ones like Kali personally, or renunciant yogic types like Shiva).

Wonderful.

YI would love it if you give me link to prove that idol is older than Budhism and Jainism...

I appreciate some of your comments above. I always thought that Agni and Indra are seperate. How about Vishnu and Rudra in Rigveda ?. Are they not seperate ?. Dr. Subash Kak does say that idea of a monotheistic god propagated from Rigveda to Egypt and it was Anaknetan who introduced the sun god Atan in and around 15th century BCE. One of the queens of Anaknetan is from the Mittani Kingdom. One of the Mittani kings writes a letter to his son-in-law which is almost identical to one of the Hymns from Rigveda.

Regarding the age of the Idol it is mentioned in several articles about the excavation carried by Dr. S.R.Rao in Dwaraka. The article says something about 1500 B.C.E. It says , By thermo-luminescence,carbon dating and other modern scientific techniques, the artifacts were found to belong to the period between 15th to 18th century BCE. In his great work, The lost city of Dwaraka, Dr Rao has given scientific details of these discoveries and artifacts.
The Inscriptions found in some of these excavations used late Indus script.

http://veda.wikidot.com/dwaraka

You can't carbon date stone, only biological samples like wood, which have ingested Carbon-14, and incorporated it into their fibre.

Furthermore, everything we know about the history of Indian art suggests that figure is from later than the specified time - the style is post-Mauryan, at least.

That Vishnu looks like it could be from the middle ages - 10th - 11th century onwards me thinks.

^^ I think the best way is to check is with S.R.Rao himself about this Idol. He is the best person to clarify the authenticity and age of this stone. I would like check with him before I comment further on this Idol.

I appreciate some of your comments above. I always thought that Agni and Indra are seperate. How about Vishnu and Rudra in Rigveda ?. Are they not seperate ?. Dr. Subash Kak does say that idea of a monotheistic god propagated from Rigveda to Egypt and it was Anaknetan who introduced the sun god Atan in and around 15th century BCE. One of the queens of Anaknetan is from the Mittani Kingdom. One of the Mittani kings writes a letter to his son-in-law which is almost identical to one of the Hymns from Rigveda.

Regarding the age of the Idol it is mentioned in several articles about the excavation carried by Dr. S.R.Rao in Dwaraka. The article says something about 1500 B.C.E. It says , By thermo-luminescence,carbon dating and other modern scientific techniques, the artifacts were found to belong to the period between 15th to 18th century BCE. In his great work, The lost city of Dwaraka, Dr Rao has given scientific details of these discoveries and artifacts.
The Inscriptions found in some of these excavations used late Indus script.

http://veda.wikidot.com/dwaraka

All four vedas promote Monotheism..there are many names of Almighty Ishwar given in vedas based on various attributes.

Vishnu is also a name of formless, Almighty God based on quality. Quality is a sunder- “Vishnu” word is made from “Vishlari” Dhatu and the sense of Vishlari” is omnipresent. So he who has the quality of being Omnipresent at all times without a second’s break, He is Vishnu and no other Vishnu exists equivalent to this God. Similarly, Brahma= “Vri Vridhau” i.e., the biggest amongst the universe. Naturally, He is Almighty God. So, the name of Almighty God is also Brahma. Similarly, according to Yajurveda mantra 16/41 shiv means he who is beneficial/causes welfare, is shiv. The most beneficial, who creates and nurses the universe is Almighty God. So, Shiv is also name of Almighty God.

------------------------------------------
Agni (embodiment of knowledge), Indra (vast
wealth owner or commander), Vishnu (omnipresent), Brahma (great),
Varuna (purifier), Mitra (loves everyone), Rudra (harsh the wicked
ones), Dravinoda (giver of wealth and strength) soma (creator of
herbs, roots etc.) are his different names given in Rig 2/1/3-7
------------------------------------------

Hundred names of god in four vedas

http://adityadham.com/aditya/godnames.html

^^. In the Daksha prajapati yagna Lord shiva's associates broke the teeth of Pusa. I was under the impression that mitra, varuna, vayu, pusa, brihaspati are all different personalities who are headed by Lord Indra in the heavenly planet. The puranas consistently have this theme. Infact the Rigveda glorifies all these personalities. The purusa sukta prayer ( 10th mandala) talks about the supreme purusa ( or god) .

So u want to prove that "sanathana dharma" was a pure logical monothestic religion and not always the illogical polythiestic crap that it has become?

The streak of Nazi Aryan invasion theory rears its ugly head in your dismissal of other valid theology. Why is it crap?

One needs to read the Nicene Creed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicene_Creed to understand Christian Theology, its assumptions and grand conclusions on God, Son and Holy Ghost. Three entities! And the explanation that they are the same, i.e. aspects of the One. Note, the effort to make the Son, Jesus as both human and god and hence immaculate conception.

I am making no judgment on the Vedic/Hindu/Sanatan evolution/theory/creed. What is remarkable however is that the same concepts are seriously discussed with full latitude to all the variations. There is Brahma vs Atma (self), its relationship to one another, with 3 possible valid explanations. Advaita claiming that they are the same, Dvaita believing in separate realities and Vishist Advaita believing in qualifications of the relation. The latitude of the practitioners of the faith to allow any valid qualifying attribute of Brahma to be worshipped (i.e. demi - gods, Ishta Deva) by any Atma, a truly democratic process and hence the bewildering array of demi - gods is indeed remarkable. It goes back to the very essence of Indian philosophy all the way back to the Indus Civilization wherein true democracy reigned.

this is nonsense, to put it mildly. hinduism is much older than either jainism or buddhism. it was called sanatan dharma back then. the name hinduism is not ancient, doesn't mean the religion isn't. hinduism doesn't originate from puranas (which are mostly written in the centuries leading up to gupta period) but from vedas, which are some of the oldest books known to mankind.

buddhism was absorbed in hinduism as time went along, it was not replacement of one by another. buddha for example is considered one of the avatars of vishnu in many vaishnava schools. the concept of shiv ling itself is supposed to have originated from buddhist stupas.
to philosophers the difference might have been very important, to common people it was not.
even the Pala kings of bengal, who once ruled upto afghanistan while considered buddhist by all historians, had no problems worshipping 'dharma', a form of vishnu with equal fervour.

To me, scholars saying this is very very interesting and it strengthens my belief that the idol worship with all the moorthis that we have today in a hindu society is a legacy left behind by the buddhist religion.

Majority of the ancient idols definitely reflect buddhist statues of east asia and that makes me believe that what we worship as idols of vishnu, varaha, etc. etc.. are nothing but reflection of various buddhist monk's imaginations of various forms of buddha.

Idol worship in my belief definitely started with buddhism and this is precisely what swami vivekananda was also talking about.

Unfortunately, what is disheartening is the fact that Hinduism today has lost its core principle of being a way of life, by following sanatana dharma and the concepts of the six philosophical school of thoughts and has rather become a religion, relying on idol worship, many meaningless rituals, etc..

Everytime, I see people rushing to the nearby temple with liters and liters of milk in their hand to give the demi gods a good lactic acid body rejuvenation everyday, I feel so ashamed to be a part of a society that is ignorant of the fact that the same milk could be used to feed millions of hungry, malnourished and starving babies of this country. Even the so called demi gods would be laughing at what we do. No wonder, why people are losing all their hopes in religion today, because it is just filled with false promises through many meaningless rituals. These rituals(with an exception to vedic rituals and some other scientifically proven rituals) in reality are made to just please the priestly class. By just following the rituals and totally ignoring the traditional teachings of sanatana dharma, we are just fooling ourselves and to me it reminds what I had heard in a movie named "The man from earth" that says "Piety is not what the lessons bring to the people. It is the mistakes people bring to the lessons" What a way to describe what's happening with every religion today on the face of this planet!

All this "idol-worship" nonsense is getting annoying. This is an archaeology thread, not a religion thread.

If you guys wanna imagine some pure "Sanatan Dharma" without "idol worship" like Islam or something then please find some other thread.

Thanks.

^^^^

You have the choice to ignore the postings or the members you do not like reading. Just because it is an archeology thread, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't discuss on the archeological findings. If an archeological discovery, reveals a Vishnu statue, looking like Buddha, there is no harm in speculating whether the entire idea of idolatry could have originated from Buddhism.

So you cannot accuse us of creating a total disconnect with the thread topic. If you do not like, get into partial reading mode or add me to your ignore list!

seems like your whining and hyper criticism about anything and almost everything Indian would never stop in this forum!

Thanks.
:cheers:

All this "idol-worship" nonsense is getting annoying. This is an archaeology thread, not a religion thread.

If you guys wanna imagine some pure "Sanatan Dharma" without "idol worship" like Islam or something then please find some other thread.

Thanks.

It is an Archaeology thread...Idols are part of archaeology...they give us sneak peak into our History which in our case is more mysterious than anywhere else..

To me, scholars saying this is very very interesting and it strengthens my belief that the idol worship with all the moorthis that we have today in a hindu society is a legacy left behind by the buddhist religion.

Majority of the ancient idols definitely reflect buddhist statues of east asia and that makes me believe that what we worship as idols of vishnu, varaha, etc. etc.. are nothing but reflection of various buddhist monk's imaginations of various forms of buddha.

Idol worship in my belief definitely started with buddhism and this is precisely what swami vivekananda was also talking about.

Unfortunately, what is disheartening is the fact that Hinduism today has lost its core principle of being a way of life, by following sanatana dharma and the concepts of the six philosophical school of thoughts and has rather become a religion, relying on idol worship, many meaningless rituals, etc..

Everytime, I see people rushing to the nearby temple with liters and liters of milk in their hand to give the demi gods a good lactic acid body rejuvenation everyday, I feel so ashamed to be a part of a society that is ignorant of the fact that the same milk could be used to feed millions of hungry, malnourished and starving babies of this country. Even the so called demi gods would be laughing at what we do. No wonder, why people are losing all their hopes in religion today, because it is just filled with false promises through many meaningless rituals. These rituals(with an exception to vedic rituals and some other scientifically proven rituals) in reality are made to just please the priestly class. By just following the rituals and totally ignoring the traditional teachings of sanatana dharma, we are just fooling ourselves and to me it reminds what I had heard in a movie named "The man from earth" that says "Piety is not what the lessons bring to the people. It is the mistakes people bring to the lessons" What a way to describe what's happening with every religion today on the face of this planet!

wow i just loved your post..thank you..

^^. In the Daksha prajapati yagna Lord shiva's associates broke the teeth of Pusa. I was under the impression that mitra, varuna, vayu, pusa, brihaspati are all different personalities who are headed by Lord Indra in the heavenly planet. The puranas consistently have this theme. Infact the Rigveda glorifies all these personalities. The purusa sukta prayer ( 10th mandala) talks about the supreme purusa ( or god) .

I do not believe in Puranas for a second...in Bhavishya Purana it is said that Prophet Muhammad was actually a demon named Mahamada...no doubt in my mind that puranas are very very recent and have been written to fool gullible people..

All this "idol-worship" nonsense is getting annoying. This is an archaeology thread, not a religion thread.

If you guys wanna imagine some pure "Sanatan Dharma" without "idol worship" like Islam or something then please find some other thread.

Thanks.

Nice. Nazi training of Witzel invades your thinking! Tell me which religion does not resort to idol worship. Catholics have images of the Lord painted in their Chapels. Core of Islam has the Kabaa (BTW what is in the Kabaa, pray tell) in Mecca around which worshippers congregate. In all Abrahamic faiths there is imagery and ergo idol worship. Idol worship happens everywhere, tis an aid to mortals to concentrate. Christian faith has the Lord in imagery form. I don't understand your Nazi rigidity dismissing anything Indian. No religion is perfect.

There is absolutely no need to demonize idols. If you examine any religion, there is some form of earthly object in church, mosque, temple that has some imagery or other to aid religious congregation and concentration. Most of them engage in some ritual or other, listening to sermons, bowing down, a written word that is recited. As long as humans exist they need these aids for religious purposes.

Ah...looks like barrykul took my post about monotheism seriously. I just wanted kingkobras reaction since he was going on about how "sanatan dharm" was monotheistic




Trust me I have nothing against "idolatry" . It's just another belief system and not superior or inferior to any other belief system.

Also, the superiority/ inferiority of belief systems is off-topic so kindly find a new thread for it

Anyways from what I can tell, the term "sanatan dharma" is quite recent, dating back to Indian national movement in the late 19th century. It is not mentioned in any Vedas or puranas

Anyways from what I can tell, the term "sanatan dharma" is quite recent, dating back to Indian national movement in the late 19th century. It is not mentioned in any Vedas or puranas

It has been called Sanatan Dharma or Vedic Dharma...The reason there is no mention of name of this religion in Vedas is because the Hrishis and Brahmavadinis who wrote these vedas were starting a way of life and not a cult..

http://agniveer.com/religion-vedas/

Dogma is the enemy of peace, so I don't really wanna say this...

...but monotheism sucks.

It is the worst form of religion.

Everywhere monotheism goes, native traditions are stamped out.

It is imperious, intolerant, philosophically juvenile and boring.

I believe in the brotherhood of all humans - not just those who follow a certain god - with the rest being second-class citizens, "mired in their own ignorance". Monotheism claims to be universalistic - all humans being equal under one religion - but in practice, it divides humans just as badly as nationalism does - because there will always be 'believers' and 'unbelievers'.

Polytheism is more natural and more tolerant - when a polytheistic religion encounters a new deity or ethnic group, the new tradition is just incorporated - like the Cult of Orpheus in Greece.

When you delve deep enough into spirituality, you realise that political ambitions about changing the world are the wrong approach - we can act with our conscious - but dreaming about revolutions will not lead to a happy life - just an uptight existence, where you constantly try to violently force your opinions on others, as if you are their teacher, when you are infact their equal peer, with just as many flaws. As the Tao Te Ching says, being more like water - yielding and accepting of the world as it is, is the only way to be happy. Artificial systems that have been 'reasoned out' like monotheism, are a form of violence - an artist that seperates themself from their audience, and attempts to teach them something, has lost all perspective. We must each find our own raison d'etre, but at least folk heroes and folk deities are natural places to find inspiration.

I do not believe in Puranas for a second...in Bhavishya Purana it is said that Prophet Muhammad was actually a demon named Mahamada...no doubt in my mind that puranas are very very recent and have been written to fool gullible people..

Vishnu Purana seems to be the oldest purana among all of them . Vayu Purana and Bhagavat Purana seems to be the next . Modern scholars have given dates of 100 BCE to 4th century A.D for Vishnu Purana. H.H.Wilson gives a 1st century BCE date for Vishnu Purana. Any way, some material/incidents in these puranas are definitely old. Some incidents like Vyasa sitting on the banks of River Saraswati are definitely old. I belive some real world people and incidents made into these puranas along with some allegories.

Puranas are definitely not as old as the Vedas. The basic idea was to make the complicated insights of Vedas into a more palatable form. First of, we assign the creator of Puranas as Ved Vyasa, per his narrator disciple Lomaharshana (Romaharshana). Even a cursory glance at most puranas seem to have a complex layering of different types of info - IMHO, there is a deliberate mix of cosmology, geography, ethics amongst others along with baseline narrative of a God.

Definitely they have been accorded a second tier when it comes to resolving Dharmic Questions.. as they are only Smritis (Recollections of transcendental experiences). Shrutis (Vedas) as the ultimate goto for conflic resolution along with upanishads.

Having said that Puranas have been the medium of instructing the masses, as also holding the vestigeal connectivity with vedic culture in the larger society via stories and bhakthi.

http://www.visvacomplex.com/Tamil_Inscription_Of_China.html

http://www.visvacomplex.com/image/kublaikhantamilinscription1.jpg

http://www.visvacomplex.com/image/kublaikhantamilinscription2.jpg

That Vishnu looks like it could be from the middle ages - 10th - 11th century onwards me thinks.

I just got the book "The LOST CITY OF DWARAKA" by S.R.Rao. It wasn't clear to me on what was the date of the Vishnu sculpture, I posted in one of my previous posts ( post # : 211) until I read the book. This is what the book has to say.
"The sculpture of Vishnu holding Gada in the upper right hand and cakra in the upper left hand in the onshore excavation in 1979 may represent the Trivikrama form of Vishnu ( plate. CXXX) although two lower hands with Sankha in one of them are missing. This plaque is made of schist. In the Trivikrama form of cult images of Dwaraka and Bet Dwaraka temples, the lower left hand holds Sankha and the lower right a Padma. In the plaque under discussion the cakra is in the upper right and gada in the upper left. Jaya, an attendant and Satyabhama or Rukmini , a consort of Krishna or seen near the left leg of the image. The diety wears a Kiritamukuta under a Chatra ( canopy) in 3 tiers. At the level of gada and chakra are two seated figures which cannot be identified. One of them is carrying a kalasa in the hand. This figure is datable to 9th century on associated ceramic evidence. The Amreli plaques of Vishnu and other dieties are much earlier in date ( Rao, S.R. 1961). There is a marble figure of which two feet are all that remain of this once magnificient diety ( plate . LXXII) from Bet Dwaraka."

I am highlighting this article to show how f'ed up the Germans had become in their maniacal obsession of Herr Max Mueller's bogus theory of "Aryan". They usurped the swastika as their own and created the Third Reich, exterminating untold number of people, a vast majority being Jews. They took the out-of-wazoo term "Aryan" of Mueller and linked it with the ancient Hindu swastika symbol then turned the whole thing into a killing monster.

India has a right to take these scumbags to International Court and ask for reparation. And Harvard ought to be ashamed of imbeciles like Michael Witzel who continue to propagate the same demented ideology.

http://www.gannett-cdn.com/media/USATODAY/GenericImages/2012/09/26/buddha-1-credit--elmar-buchner-4_3_r560.jpg

Sculpture taken by Nazis likely made from meteorite (http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/sciencefair/2012/09/27/buddha-sculpture-from-nazi-expedition-made-of-meteorite-meteor/1594935/)
A new report about an ancient Tibetan sculpture may sound like something you've seen in the movies. It involves an important archaeological find, it was once in possession of Nazis, and it holds a newly discovered secret. The sculpture, it turns out, was probably carved from a 15,000-year-old meteorite, researchers report. It sounds like Indiana Jones was involved, but not so.

All this is laid out in a report on the statue in the current edition of the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science. /

The "iron man" statue is thought to be a depiction of the god Vaisravana, the Buddhist King of the North, aka the Hindu deity Kubera, report German researchers led by Elmar Buchner of the University of Stuttgart. The statue was probably carved about 1,000 years ago.The researchers started testing the statue's origins in 2007 after its auction to a collector, who allowed it to be tested.

"In Tibet, meteoric iron used to be carved, but that tradition died out a long time ago, and only ancient artifacts are known," says Buchner and colleagues in a report on the statue in the Meteoritics & Planetary Science journal.

Complicating the investigation, the 23-pound "iron man" has a peculiar history. A Tibetan expedition organized by Nazi SS chief Heinrich Himmler and led by zoologist Ernst Schäfer discovered the statue in 1938. The expedition probably brought the statue to Germany because of the swastika carved in its center, a good luck sign that existed in Tibetan culture long before the Nazis appropriated it as the symbol of their racist ideology.

Chemistry tests show the statue's iron matches fragments of the "Chinga" meteorite field found near the Siberian-Mongolian border in 1913 by gold prospectors, the study says. A large chunk of that meteorite -- the third largest known from the meteorite field -- was probably carved into the statue, Buchner says in a statement: "We believe that this individual meteorite fragment was collected many centuries before."

"All the evidence hangs together that it is from the Chinga meteorite," says Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History curator of meteorites Tim McCoy, who was not part of the study. He called for art historians to analyze the statue more carefully to certify its putative ancient origins, tied by the study team to a Tibetan Buddhist culture roughly 1,000 years old. Iron meteorites have been carved into more ancient objects, such as knives, beads and fishhooks, McCoy says. "But this is the most elaborate object I've ever seen carved from a meteorite. Somebody put a lot of work into this."

"Iron meteorites are basically an inappropriate material for producing sculptures," the study concludes. "The challenging use of the 'iron man' meteorite as well as the partial gilding of the statue implies that the artist was certainly aware of the outstanding (extraterrestrial) nature of the object carved."

Hirebenakal (Kar) Indian Megalithic wonder (http://www.frontline.in/stories/20130111292605600.htm)

I do not believe in Puranas for a second...in Bhavishya Purana it is said that Prophet Muhammad was actually a demon named Mahamada...no doubt in my mind that puranas are very very recent and have been written to fool gullible people..

Read this somewhere - Bhavishya Puran is definately edited or newly created or they have added part related to Muhammud because it does not have anything beyond that and seems it was edited just a few years back and it seems to end abruptly in era it was written. Other Purans are more or less intact. So you definately have to experience them(by practising some of the mantras) to make your belief strong.

Clubbing all the Puranas as very recent and therefore of little value is simply bogus. Vishnu Purana, Bhagavat Purana seems to have been very old going by the ancient stories and the matter in them. This is a easy excuse by western scholars to redicule puranas as recent and most likely written after the greek conquest.

^^ On same token they dont claim prophecies of other religious texts as insertions after the fact it happened.

Its hard to reduce puranas to a simplistic idea. From my limited insights, I see it as strokes of genius with different timelines, some historical, some geological and some cosmic, all flattened to be palatable.

There are also inconsistencies that has crept into the narration, aiding such odd explanations. Despite all these, most narrations are consistent across multiple literature, which is really interesting. First of, no culture seems to have such volume of rich, deep insights on multitude of topics.

http://i.imgur.com/y0CVT.jpg?1
http://i.imgur.com/SfteA.jpg?1
http://i.imgur.com/WURty.jpg?3
http://i.imgur.com/4Hon4cM.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/4hXW50H.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/2wZl9HA.jpg?1?4140
http://i.imgur.com/27GUDO5.jpg
http://www.inst.at/trans/16Nr/05_1/sengupta_06.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/SKZtqcs.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ITBptPT.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/uFHmQSY.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/9U1DHJD.jpg?2?1957

Reliefs from Sanchi Stupa gateways and railings.

Shows you the fortifications in ancient India.

These relief images were made in the early Satavahana (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satavahana_dynasty) period.

http://i.imgur.com/tnNw4Nu.jpg?1?9227

http://i.imgur.com/FEIYvuh.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/3zI5OBy.jpg?2?3530
http://i.imgur.com/MFIC4ke.jpg?3?7560

They are venerating the Peepal tree. The Peepal tree is one of the symbols that represents the Buddha, because in ancient India they never show the image of the Buddha. Essentially they are worshiping the Buddha.

http://i.imgur.com/1zi9Z3i.jpg

Dharma Chakra also represents the Buddha.

http://i.imgur.com/AW0J7o3.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/WpZwX55.jpg?2?8248

Peepal tree.

http://i.imgur.com/oMBtG84.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/IFkWcKj.jpg?1

Again Peepal tree.

edit

http://i.imgur.com/DCDagaH.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Kmqinw0.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/wUgROEZ.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/2bxLfw7.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/cvgrGYe.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/cO1FKbK.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/2mxNyKQ.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/jFYvvqA.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/X3gKrmy.jpg?1?6770
http://i.imgur.com/Bt4SG5F.jpg?1?7378

Armed Goddess. She has almost every weapon known to Indians sticking out of her hair.

This is from the Sunga empire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunga_Empire).

http://i.imgur.com/laKbbg0.jpg

Durga with multiple arms, slaying the demon is first visible in Mathura art in the 3rd century AD.

http://i.imgur.com/Gz83IMT.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/kRpQGaH.jpg

Durga with many, many arms are shown in Gupta (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gupta_Empire) art.

http://media1.santabanta.com/full1/Hinduism/Goddess%20Durga/god26d.jpg

Modern examples

Great posts by Sir Lurkalot. . It is interesting to see Buddha being worshipped as a Peepal Tree and as Dharma chakra . So the worship of Durga seems to be from ancient times. Is the Armed goddess from Sunga period with numerous arms sticking out of her goddess Durga ?.

Great posts by Sir Lurkalot. . It is interesting to see Buddha being worshipped as a Pippal Tree and as Dharma chakra . So the worship of Durga seems to be from ancient times. Is the Armed goddess from Sunga period with numerous arms sticking out of her goddess Durga ?.

Definitely nice posts by Sir Lurkalot.

Yes Durga was referenced extensively in portions of Mahabharatha. Prior to taking the Agyathavasa, Yudhishtra makes special prayers to Durga.. seeks her special blessings to complete the agyathavasa successfully. He gets a darshan of her and guidance.

Durga was Kshatriya's fave God since ancient times. Interesting to see archaeological time capsules.

Great posts by Sir Lurkalot. . It is interesting to see Buddha being worshipped as a Peepal Tree and as Dharma chakra .

Not only those two. Many other symbols like stupas, etc, etc.

Here are examples below of king Siddhartha/Buddha.

http://i.imgur.com/kBK12.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/lWgwX.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/NCKI6lj.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/MXuISvj.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/uVya0Vi.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/nuMNFyn.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/f2m02Hd.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ycKEm.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/hXUDpyK.jpg

You can see empty thrones, chariots, horses, etc. These scenes involve king Siddhartha/Buddha, but they never show his figure. Until around 2nd centiry AD.

Is the Armed goddess from Sunga period with numerous arms sticking out of her goddess Durga ?.


It's said to have evolved from it. The modern imagery you see today was made around the Gupta era.