Archaeologists, Sanskrit scholars tie up to decipher Rigveda text

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Last Updated04/06/2024

In the research to potentially establish a relationship between the Harappan civilisation and the people of the Vedic age, a group of archaeologists are now collaborating with Sanskrit scholars to decipher the text of the Rigveda.

A clear understanding of what is mentioned in the Rigveda text is important in order to correlate archaeological evidence in excavations of Harappan settlements
- Haryana’s Rakhigarhi and Banawali,
- Kalibanga on the Haryana-Rajasthan boundary, and
- Dholavira in Gujarat.
The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) recently made a major addition to the Class 12 History textbook, under a chapter titled Bricks, Beads and Bones
- The Harappan Civilisation, based on DNA evidence from the 4,600-year-old remains of a woman, indicating that the Harappans were an indigenous people.

Research is required to establish that Harappans and the Vedic people were the same.
- While excavating the site of Rakhigarhi, we found evidence of ritual platforms and fire altars. Parallely, fire worship is mentioned in Rigvedic texts.
- Need to get more understanding about what is mentioned in Rig Vedic text, and how much of that can be correlated with archaeological evidence.
Currently, there is a debate about the period of origin of the Vedas, with one set of historians holding that the Vedas originated between 2,000 BC and 1,500 BC.
However, another set of historians believe that the Vedas date farther back to 2,500 BC or 4,500 years ago. This would coincide with the age of the genetic evidence from the erstwhile Harappan woman’s bone samples tested at the Rakhigarhi site.

description in Rigvedic text of the Saraswati river. The mention of the river is recorded at least 71 times in the Rigvedic text.
During archaeological excavations, we discovered a majority of Harappan settlements along the banks of the Saraswati.
Of nearly 2,000 known Harappan settlements spread over the Indus basin and in Gujarat, almost two-thirds, at least 1,200, are located along the basin of the Saraswati.
Another point of reference which may link the Harappans with Vedic times is a set of animal bones found

DNA analysis from the blood samples of 3,000 modern South Asians from different linguistic and religious groups,
- Found that from the Andaman and Nicobar islands to Ladakh and Kashmir, and from Afghanistan to Bengal carried genetic similarities to the Harappan woman’s skeleton.