Sri Aurobindo, the seer of modern India, blamed new trails in several worlds of human enterprise and had followers of signal eminence in many of them. Some made their mark in more than one sphere of activity. Integral Yoga and Overhead Poetry are two such areas in which a number of luminaries have left their mark. No follower of Sri Aurobindo, however, has not only penetrated these areas but also ventured into territories such as science and history. Here is where K.D. Sethna, or Amal Kiran as he was named by his Master, stands distinctly apart. This remarkable mind has taken virtually all knowledge for its domain and the clear ray of his piercing insight has probed not only profound issues of philosophy, such as the question of free-will or the spirituality of the future, but has investigated Einsteinian physics, detected Shakespeare's mysterious Dark Lady, Mr. W.H. and the Rival Poet, published 750 pages of poetry and followed the approach of Sri Aurobindo in plumbing the riches of European literature and the practice of Integral Yoga. However, that which is unique is his signal contribution to historiography. Here I shall not go into his remarkable investigations into Jewish history to fix the date of the Exodus, or into the question of the Immaculate Conception which patiently awaits a publisher of vision and courage. My attempt will be to highlight Amal Kiran's deep-delving reconstruction of ancient Indian history.

It is Sethna's characteristic that even in this most intellectual pursuit, the dissection of the vexed questions concerning the Harappa Culture, his inspiration is drawn from Sri Aurobindo. Repeatedly he returns to this fountain-head for sustaining his arguments, building firmly on his faith in the infallibility of the seer-vision of the Avatar of the Supramental.

An implacable honesty is what places Sethna head-and-shoulders above scholars setting out to prove a preconceived thesis. Despite having ready to hand so useful an opinion as Pusalkar's that the Sanskrit sindhu occurring in Assurbanipal's library refers to Indian cotton and is the source for the Arabic satin, Greek sindon and Hebrew sadin, which becomes evidence for trade between Harappa and Mesopotamia and of an Aryan element in the Harappan Culture, Sethna was not satisfied. It struck him as peculiar that where the Sanskrit karpasa, cotton, produced Hebrew and Greek analogues, that same product should be given a different name in Assyrian, Hebrew and Greek. So he wrote to the world's foremost Assyriologist, S.N. Kramer[1] who informed him that the Akkadian word was not sindhu at all butsintu, referring to woolen garments and having no relationship at all with India or the Indus! Kramer also denied that the Greek sindon and the Hebrew sadin could be equated with sintu or sindhu. Thus, what had seemed to be a sure linguistic proof of Aryanism in Harappan Culture was exposed through Sethna's relentless quest after truth to be a misreading of the Akkadian text by Pusalkar, although thereby Sethna lost a major support for his thesis. In the process, he also corrected a major misconception prevailing among our scholars regarding this word.

When Sethna approached H.D. Sankalia with the first draft of his The Harappa Culture and the Rigveda, that doyen of Indian archaeologists pointed out the single weak point in the thesis:[2] The lack of any evidence of Vedic Aryan culture from Sind and Punjab belonging to the 4000-2000 B.C. bracket. That was in 1963. Sethna did not rush into print ignoring this solitary flaw. He waited patiently for well over a decade-and-a-half till the necessary archaeological evidence surfaced from excavations to substantiate his intellectually flawless arguments.

This relentless dedication in the pursuit of truth and the uncompromising sincerity are features intrinsic to Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga which shine forth so radiantly in Amal Kiran.

In Karpasa in Prehistoric India[3] Sethna investigated the use of cotton in prehistoric India for arriving along a different route with additional evidence at the same conclusion that he had put forward in The Problem of Aryan Origins:[4] The Rigvedic Culture precedes the Harappan; the Indus Valley Civilization contains Aryan elements. A clinching argument is evolved by Sethna from the fact of cotton being first mentioned in the oldest Sutras. If the Rigvedic Aryans flourished in the Indus Valley after the cotton-cultivating Harappans, how is it that all the Vedas, Brahmans, Aranyakas and early Upanishads do not know karpasa. Cotton is even found at sites deeper inland in Gujarat, Maharashtra and near Delhi dated c. 1330-1000 B.C. This is very much after the alleged incursion around 1500 B.C. of Rigvedic Aryans. Such a continuous absence of the mention of a product argues for dating the Vedas before the cotton-knowing Harappa Culture. Here he also suggested that clues to the Indus script might be found in potters' marks found in pre-Harappan and Aryan sites, proved that Mulukha of Sumerian records is Harappa and that the Biblical Ophir is Sopara. Each of these warrants serious follow-up by historians not only of Indian prehistory, but of Mesopotamian and Jewish history as well.

The second edition of the important work on Aryan Origins[5] became necessary because in 1987 there was a recrudescence from within India and from Finland of the pernicious Aryan invasion theory which is at the root of the north-south, Aryan-Dravidian divide that raises its ugly head time and again in India.

The most important examination in this new edition relates to the question of the presence of the horse and the spoked wheel in the Harappa culture. The circle with six radials within seen on several Harappan seals is not found in Sumerian tablets or Egyptian hieroglyphics as a sun-symbol (which is what I. Maha-devan et. al. argue it represents). The damaged seal showing a man standing astraddle on spoked wheels suggests the presence of a spoked-wheel chariot. Moreover, S.R. Rao's finding at Lothal of a drawing on a potsherd of a figure standing on two wheels resembling the paintings of Assyrian charioteers is a clinching piece of evidence. Even more conclusive is the fact that the C-14 date for this damaged seal is 1960 B.C., long before the alleged invasion of Aryan cavalry that supposedly occurred around 1500 B.C.

Sethna shows that Asko Parpola, the Finnish scholar, is wrong[6] in stating that no evidence of horse-bones is available in the Harappa Culture. At Rana Ghundai's pre-Harappan stratum horse's teeth have been found much before 2000 B.C. The same Rana Ghundai IIIc Culture exists at low levels of Harappa and Mohenjodaro. From the opposite angle, no evidence of the horse has been discovered in the excavations in Punjab and Haryana in post-Harappan sites - which should have been die case if the Aryans brought the horse and the Rigveda into India around 1500 B.C. - while equine bones have been found of that date from both Mohenjodaro and Harappa. Sethna quotes the 1980 report from G.R. Sharma on excavations in the valley of the Belan and Son revealing evidence at the Neolithic sites of the domesticated horse as well as the wild horse dated between 8080 B.C. and 5540 B.C. at Koldihwa and Mahagara. Moreover, there is the 1990 report of K.R. Alur identifying horse bones dated to c. 1800-1500 B.C. in repeated excavation at Hallur in Karnataka, before the supposed Aryan invasion. Alur has pointed out that the metacarpals allegedly of the domestic ass found in Mohenjodaro and Harappa are definitely not of the ass and are possibly of the smaller size horse. Therefore, the Aryans whom Parpola would like to immigrate into India around 1600-1400 B.C. cannot possibly have introduced the horse in the Deccan several centuries before their arrival. Sethna clinches his point by quoting the ardent invasionist, Mortimer Wheeler himself: "It is likely enough that camel, horse and ass were in fact all a familiar feature of the Indus caravans." Thus, lack of representation of the horse, like that of the camel, on the seals does not rule out their being in use in the Indus Civilization, particularly when their bones have been found much before the horse is supposed to have been introduced by the invading Aryans around 2000 B.C. If the horse is a conclusive sign of Aryan presence, men the report from Sharma proves that the Aryan was in India long before even the Harappan Civilization. Actually, even where picturisation is concerned, Sethna cites[7] S.P. Shukla's account of a terracotta horse-like animal figurine with a saddle on its back from Balu in the Harappan urban phase.

Sethna could have rested content here. However, with the integrity that is so typical of him, he raises the question of what evidence there is of any trace of chariots in Neolithic times where remains of the domesticated horse have been found? Pointing out that in the Rigveda the chariot is not invariably horse-drawn, he draws attention to a pot from Susa showing an ox-drawn chariot similar to the Kulli ware of South Baluchistan with which trading existed. The Rigveda seems familiar with Baluchistan, as Parpola notes. Therefore, with the horse already present much before the Rigvedic time, and this illustration of a chariot, the probability of horse-drawn chariots becomes acceptable even in pre-Harappan times.

Sethna also takes on the eminent academician, Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, and points out the contradictions in his assigning to Indra the role of the destroyer of the Indus Valley Civilization.[8] Archaeologists have found overwhelming evidence, going back to much before the second millennium B.C., of heavy flooding of Harappan settlements. In Mohenjodaro itself there is evidence for at least five such floods, each lasting for several decades, even up to a century. Evidence has also been found of considerable rise in the coast-line of the Arabian Sea. Hence, there is no need at all to posit a horde of invading Aryans for demolishing imaginary dams where natural forces are found to be responsible. Chattopadhyaya also fails to notice that whatever weapons Indra is mentioned as using are described clearly in the same hymns as being of symbolic nature. Similarly, the material objects demolished are also symbolic. Firstly, the Rigveda gives mighty forts not only to the enemies but also to the Aryans, and these forts surpass anything that has been found in archaeology of that time (ninety-nine or hundred in number, made of stone or metal). Secondly, if the invasion came from the north, how is it that instead of the northern Harappan sites it is the southern Mohenjodaro which shows a noticeable decline in material prosperity? Moreover, even here there is no settlement at all over its ruins, which is peculiar if the Aryans destroyed it.

The coup de grace is administered with evidence from the undersea excavations at Dwaraka, where the submergence has been dated to about 1400 B.C., tallying with what the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa state regarding this event following Krishna's death. If the Kurukshetra war took place around this time, surely the period of the Rigveda will have to be considerably anterior to it and can by no means be around 1500 B.C. as the invasionists would like to have it! Hence, there is no question of invading Aryans destroying the Harappa Culture a mere hundred years before the Kurukshetra war. The Rigveda, therefore, necessarily precedes the Harappa Culture which ended around the middle of the second millennium B.C. Thus, Sethna shows conclusively that all available evidence sets the end of the Indus Civilization quite apart from any violent destruction by Rigvedic Aryans.

In 1988 came another major paper from Asko Parpola on the coming of the Aryans to India and the cultural-ethnic identity of the Dasas. Parpola based his hypothesis of Rigvedic Aryan movement from Swat to Punjab around 1600-1400 B.C. on the Mitanni treaty and the Kikkuli chariot-horse training manual. However, neither document has the word "Arya", nor does the recitation of the names of deities conform to the Rigvedic turn of phrase, as Sethna perceptively notes. Linguistic study shows that there is a large gap between the Rigvedic epoch and the time of the Mitanni document whose language is found to be middle-Indie and not Indo-Iranian or Old Indo-Aryan as supposed initially.

Sethna's eagle eye spots the inner contradiction in Parpola's hypothesis. Parpola feels that the Harappans spoke proto-Dravidian and not Indo-European because the horse is absent from the seats and figurines. Yet, he characterizes the chalcolithic cultures of the Banas Valley and Malawa (Navdatoli) as Aryan although there too the horse is conspicuously absent. Further, when Parpola asserts that Pirak horsemen first brought the horse into use into India he forgets that no horse-bones have been found at Pirak at all! He also makes the mistake of equating a possible Aryan presence in Swat with Rigvedic Aryanism in arguing that there was a horse-knowing culture's incursion from Swat into India which was a Rigvedic invasion. Sethna shows that while the brick-built nature of the fire-altars found in Swat equates them with those in Kalibangan and the Harappa Culture, this sets them apart from the Rigvedic which is innocent of brick. Use of silver is mentioned by Parpola as a feature of the Namazga V culture which he claims to be Aryan and from where Rigvedic Aryanism was brought into India. But, points out Sethna, the Rigvedic period does not know silver at all. He shows that Parpola is wrong in his understanding of what black metal,shywmayas of the Atharvaveda is. It is certainly not iron, but an alloy of copper and tin, while ayas of the Rigveda is copper. Even in the later Shatapatha Brahmana, there is no knowledge of iron, lohayas or red metal being copper, ayas resembling gold being brass. Hence the Rigveda is considerably anterior to die iron age which Parpola fixes for it in Pirak c, 1100 B.C.

Parpola next uses the cultivation of rice for the first time in the Indus Valley as a sign of Rigvedic Aryanism invading India in the post-Harappan period. However, rice is already present in several Harappan sites within and outside the Indus Valley, while it is unknown to both the Rigveda and the Avesta. Therefore, Sethna is quite right in claiming that the Rigveda precedes the Harappa Culture and definitely the post-Harappan Pirak phase off. 1800 B.C. Even the PGW type of pottery, with its traits of rice cultivation, is absent along the route supposedly taken by immigrating Aryans. The latest excavations (1976-1982) by J.P. Joshi indicate that PGW culture is an indigenous development without any break from the local proto-historic culture and is not associated with invading Aryans from the west.

Sethna marshals powerfully persuasive arguments in favor of the Rigveda being, for all practical purposes, autochthonous to India, using recent statements from Colin Renfrew pointing out that nothing in the Veda hints at any intrusion. The Rigveda repeatedly alludes to ancient seers of hoary antiquity but never speaks of any immigration nor mentions any previous habitat. Sethna's incisive intellect fastens upon every possible objection that might be raised against the great antiquity proposed for the Rigveda. As a particular verse carries a reference to camels, he points out that there has to be some evidence of adequate antiquity of the domesticated camel for his hypothesis to be proven. He locates such archaeological evidence going back to the third millennium B.C. To this he adds the negative argument that silver has been known from 4000 B.C. but is not known to the Rigveda, which, therefore, must precede this date. Again, the earliest occurrence of cultivated rice is dated to Neolithic Mahagara and Koldihwa c. 6810-5780 B.C. Sethna prefers to deduct 240 — this is the solitary ad hoc element in his otherwise sound argumentation besides the gratuitous identification of Talmena with tala-mina for proposing the tribe of Minas from Talmena colonizing Sumeria - and come to 5300 which fits in with his proposition that the Rigveda would begin c. 5500 B.C. and be ignorant of rice while knowing the horse well as the Neolithic sites have the horse-bones whose C-14 dating is 6700 B.C.