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In Search of the Cradle of Civilization: New Light on Ancient India is a 1995 book by Georg Feuerstein, Subhash Kak, and David Frawley that argues against the theories that Indo-European peoples arrived in India in the middle of the second millennium BC (Indo-Aryan migration) and supports the notion of "Indigenous Aryans". Published by Quest Books, a branch of the Theosophical Society in America.

Content

Contradicting early historical linguistic views, the authors argue that Vedic civilization grew out of the "Indus-Sarasvati civilization", or Indus Valley civilization. The authors enumerate fifteen arguments for their revisionist views. Several of these arguments emphasize linguistic, architectural, cultural, agricultural, and technological continuity between Harappan culture, the Vedas, and post-Vedic Hinduism. They also argue that it is improbable that the Vedas were the product of a nomadic or semi-nomadic group. Early opinion considered the Rigveda as containing memories of an earlier nomadic period, whilst the later Vedas were the product of a society native to India. The authors argue that this early viewpoint of the Rigveda is based on mistaken and speculative interpretations, and that in actuality the Rigveda also describes society native to India.

The authors leave open the view that India is the Urheimat (original homeland) of the Indo-Europeans (the "out of India model"), saying that "the Aryans could just as well have been native to India for several millennia, deriving their Sanskritic language from earlier Indo-European dialects."

The authors find continuity in Indian spiritual and religious artifacts from Mehrgarh, one of the first cities in the world, to the present. It should be noted that historical linguistics does not rule out elements of cultural continuity in spite of language change, so that such claims, likewise, are not in conflict with mainstream opinion. In the view of the authors, however, this alleged continuity rules out the later influx of another ethnic group.

New age writer Deepak Chopra hailed the book as "ground-breaking".

Criticism

Alan Sokal (2006) quotes Feuerstein, Kak, Frawley (1995) as an example of Hindutva ideology that rejects "Western" scientific method as arbitrary, and aims to put in its place a claim of universality of "Vedic" science instead, an approach which he argues is pseudoscience (p. 41) and selection bias:

"Any findings of modern science that undermine the Vedic metaphysics are either discreetly ignored or else ascribed to Western materialist and monotheistic prejudices. In this way, Hindutva ideologues attempt to have their cake and eat it too." (p. 41)

Bibliographic information

• Georg Feuerstein, Subhash Kak, David Frawley, In Search of the Cradle of Civilization: New Light on Ancient India, Quest Books (October, 1995), ISBN 0-8356-0720-8.
• 2001 reprint, Quest Books, ISBN 978-0835607414.
• 2005 reprint, Motilal Banarsidass, ISBN 978-8120820371.

See also

• Aryan Invasion of India: The Myth and the Truth (1993)
• Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate (1999)
• The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis (2000)

Notes

1. In Search of the Cradle of Civilization "In Search of the Cradle of Civilization". Quest Books. The Theosophical Publishing House. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)
2. "The Vedas are the earliest available expression of the perennial philosophy, or universal spirituality", Feuerstein, Kak, Frawley 1995, p. 274; "ccording to Vedic tradition, science and religion are not only compatible but essentially identical, because both endeavor to know the truth." ibid., p. 279

References

• Meera Nanda (2003). Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodern Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism in India. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 0813533589.
• Alan Sokal, 'Pseudoscience and Postmodernism: Antagonists or Fellow-Travelers?' in: Garrett G. Fagan (2006). Archaeological Fantasies: How Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the Public. Routledge. ISBN 0415305934.

• 1995 books
• Historiography of India
• Hindutva
• Theosophy
• National mysticism