The fact that no script has been found yet in the north older than Ashoka's inscriptions does not mean no script existed, just as the fact that before the script in the urn, no script of such antiquity was found in Tamizh Nadu.
We must remember that the north was ragaged by conquest more than the south. Which is one reason, there are very few really OLD temples in the north as compared to the south.
All the finding of the script tells us is that we, the Tamizhs had a script as far back as 1500 BC. This kind of rubbishes the entire timeline that the western historians have been giving for India; you know that the Aryan Invasion happened around 1500 BC and then the first scripts came into being miraculously by 500 BC.
Of course these are my humble conclusions from this. Not being a historian, I might be completely wrong. Which is the good thing about this group isn't it? That we have so many eminent historians, who can at least correct our mistakes and answer our queries? :-)
Arun
On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 18:04:03 -0000, Sridhar Rathinam
dear mr.sps that was an wonderful summary of post 1947 indian scenario. and i personally feel that we (means(politicians) should not use the cornering tactics i.e., making tamil as "chemozhi" by merely playing the number game in parliment. we should make them to accept the truth that ours is chemozhi or we have that much old scripts by means of producing scientifically proven evidences. as per the slogan on our coings sathyameva jeyathe vaimaye vellum.
I must share with you all a conversation I had today with a north indian colleague. We were having lunch and I was lamenting the fact that we hardly knew anything about North-east India's history. Then I went on to state that this was the same with respect to South India wasn't it? The history taught usually follows this path:
Indus Valley Civilization --> Aryan Invasion Theory---> Budhha/Mahavira----> Chandragupta Maurya---> Ashoka---> Kanishka--->Gupta period--->Harshavardhana---> little bit about Pallavas and Mahabalipuram---> Then we come to the Muslim era--> Ghori/Ghazni--->Qutubuddin Aibak---Thuqlaq--->Babur and descendents--->British Rule...
Maybe a little bit of Krishnadeva Raya...but the north indian chap said he didnt know who KrishnaDeva Raya was!!
Anyway.. when I said this.. my colleague made this remarkable statement (remarkable in its ignorance... ) "But we read the history of north india because that was where Civilization was"...
I almost went ballistic at this statement.. So I gave him a brief crash course in Tamizh history... talked of our Roman connections 2000 years ago... Pallavas/Chozhas etc...
I also mentioned the Adichannalur Urn and the writing and told him heck we had writing 3500 years back at least..
Anyway, I think this is just illustrative of the kind of history taught by our Central Govt...
Arun
On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 07:21:06 -0000, Sivapathasekaran
After reading your mail, I went and checked the Dinathanthi yesterday and laughed aloud reading it. My god, Akbarukkum, ashokanum kooda vidhyasam theriyadha madasambranikal vazhum kalakattathil naam erukkirome enbathu vedhanayana vishayam. The headlines says "Tamil culture is 4000 years old and Tholkappiyam is being compared with Moghul culture which is hardly 500-600 years old. How many ignorant people read Dina thanthi and will think that the news is true. This paper reaches laksh of people in TN and everyone arebeing fooled. Where is the media ethics heading towards? what are the sub-editors and editors doing? It clearly shows that the media is not for givign proper news but only to make money out of news. People should realise that only 5-10% of wht they read in newspapers are correct.
Also, this news is covered in Todays Indian Express. Good to see that this news is attracting attention.
Thanks for your clarification. I have not come across any of Thapar's Muslim rule articles to comment on them, so I will refrain from that. But as I said she's def not into the Invasion theory.
I see your point, but from when did we as a civilization start generating objective history? Objective history is an oxymoron and all historians(acredited or not) are going to paint all colors(both saffron and red included) they want over it. Very few people declare their bias upfront - actually the only person I remember doing that is Howard Zinn in his 'People's History of the United States'.
I agree with you that history textbooks(state or central) need to take into consideration the whole country. But lets please give individuals some credit - every history book in this country talks abt Krishnadevaraya and if your friend did not know abt him, that tells us more abt his interest in history as a discipline that abt the history book, doesn't it? For example, I have a Bengali friend who's never been South of the Vindhyas but who knows more abt S. Indian history that most of my S. Indian friends put together. So does that prove that the history book he studied in Calcutta, Kanpur and Bombay had more S. Indian history than the S. Indian counterparts? Not really.
Dear SB Should we amend the statement as Tamil present day first indian language which had script?
What I mean is we know that there were Pictorial writing in the Indus Valley
I was recently seeing a programme on babylon and the ancient documented way of life and worship was similar to Puri Jaganath Festival and the speculation was influence might have traveled from east westwards or west eastwards..
That brings us to the discussions in relations to scripts...
Next Question
What are the skeletal features of this man found in the urn,,,Negroid?caucasoid?Mongolid?