Thursday, October 27, 2005

Origins of Indians: Version 2.0

I have refined my theory to incorporate Hinduism's diverse origins. Previously, I argued that it’s a synthesis between Dravidian and Indo-Aryan beliefs but Dravidian deities taking higher position.

For the newcomers to this blog a brief description of male migration to the Indian sub-continent, as I see it, in the chronological order:
* Haplogroup-F Dravidians ->40-50000 years ago?
* Haplogroup-L Dravidians ->30000 years ago
* Haplogroup-H Dravidians ->20-30000 years ago
* Haplogroup-R1a Dravidians ->10-20000 years ago
* Haplogroup-J Semites -> 6-8000 years ago
* Haplogroup-R1a Indo-Aryans ->3-3500 years ago

Hindu Trinity:

In my previous post, I argued that Hindu trinity is entirely Indian. Though one of the trinity Shiva’s origins is evident in Dravidian worship, the origins of Brahma and Vishnu are ambiguous.

Abraham and Brahma:

I have read about the similarities between these two figures. Unfortunately, those articles also compare Krishna and Christ which I find highly improbable. So I was confused about the validity of this theory. Anyway, I’m going to ignore Krishna part and consider only Abraham part.

Religious strains of India:

1. Tribal nature worship: Haplogroups-F,L, H and R1a(Dravidian)
2. Shiva-Shakti worship: Haplogroups-F,L,H and R1a(Dravidian)
3. Semitic Brahma: Haplogroup J
4. Vedic gods(Indra, Agni, Vayu etc...): Haplogroup R1a(Indo-Aryan)

Vishnu:

Vishnu is most plausibly the abstract of Indian folk heroes. Two of his human avatars Rama and Krishna were mortals. Since all of them have been depicted as dark skinned, I’ll include them as of Dravidian strain. Therefore, the final strain;

5. Abstract of folk heroes, Vishnu: Haplogroups-F,L,H and R1a(Dravidian)

Notes on Shiva and Shakti:

NuSapiens pointed me to Marija Gimbutas and her works on matrilineal European society while commenting on one of my previous posts. Perhaps, the present state of Shiva’s prominence doesn’t actually reflect the situation before patriarchic Indo-Aryan migration. The penis could have been just a subordinate of all powerful vagina in olden days. The phallus might have been created just to complement the yoni. However, the influence of Indo-Aryans resulted in phallus becoming all powerful Shiva. Nevertheless, in East and South India goddesses are still powerful. Both symbolic phallus and yoni also got the human forms reflecting Indo-Aryan imagination of gods (Though I’m not sure if Indo-Aryans were idolaters or not but Dravidians were).

Update: 29 October 2005
Gods without temples:
The original Indo-Aryan gods were not the only ones without any temples dedicated to them even Brahma[1] one of the trinity hardly finds any temple for him. Both these clearly point out their non-Indian origin and also the minority position of the people who were associated with these gods in the general population.

Relative numbers of R1a Dravidians and R1a Indo-Aryans:
Perhaps, peaceful migration of Indo-Aryans into North West of India might have resulted in materially superior civilization of Dravidians accepting the religious culture of Indo-Aryans. Most plausibly, linguistically Indo-Europeanization of North, East, West and Central India started around 1500 BCE and continued till 1000 CE. I think there should be a proper study of developement of stable societies in various Indian regions to understand the spread of Indo-European languages. Also, the role of Buddhism and Jainism in spreading Indo-European languages in North India(North, East, Central and West Indian regions).

As I said before, the peaceful migration of Indo-Aryans most probably brought females too. At present 90% of Indian caste/tribal mtDNA is India specific(East Eurasian?) and rest supposed to be European specific(West Eurasian?). I would argue, the frequency of Indo-Aryan R1a corresponds to this 10%. R1a frequency is supposed to be around 20% in caste Indian population. That would make 50% of R1a in that is Indo-Aryan. Though the balance of Dravidian and Indo-Aryan R1a might vary from region to region[2]. There were arguments that near homogeniety of Indian females might be due to polygyny and female infanticide practiced by this group. But I think in old socities that could be easily compensated by the heavy loss of men in the battle field and actually there could be higher number of females alive than males. So even 10% is an optimistic calculation. Anyway, from the old scriptures it looks like females did have a greater freedom and respect.

[1] The mythological story relating to non-worhsip of Brahma goes something like this. Brahma is the creator(just like Abraham is the father of all the tribes, thus the basic character of these two figures remained same in Semitic and Hindu religions). However, he married( or tried to seduce her or obsessed with her. .... or ... or ...or...damn these mythological stories ) his own creation Saraswati. Shiva angry with such an incestuous behaviour of Brahma cursed him that nobody would worship him.

[2] The Brahuis in Pakistan who supposed to exhibit 40% R1a might be purely Dravidian R1a.

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