When an Indian Kushti wrestler rolls in the earth, his hair and body become covered in the burnt-umber hue of soft clay. It’s said that he becomes “of one color.” This is meant literally of course — his black hair is matted down by the same mud that covers his body — but it also conveys a spiritual ideal. Wrestling in India, which counts Kushti as one of its indigenous disciplines, has a monastic history. Winning a wrestling match (or a Kushti-Spardha) isn’t the ultimate goal. The attainment of a kind of virtuous integrity of mind, spirit, and body is: being of one color.
Higher aspirations than victory shouldn’t be mistaken for softness. Kushti fighters are strong and they live to train and fight. Like Aussie Muay Thai fighter James Polodna, who literally lives at Montreal’s Tristar Gym and isn’t allowed company, Kushti fighters reside in their training facilities and submit themselves to a Spartan routine. They abstain from alcohol, drugs, meat, and women. They live apart from society because theirs is not a universal pursuit. Life in the akhara, the monastery-like gyms where upwards of 60 fighters live and train, is rigorous and austere. Yes, there’s glory in victory, but it’s fleeting. To Kushti wrestlers, there’s immortality in the cultivation of the essence of strength.
That strength starts with the mud. Students at akharas cart hundreds of pounds of soft earth from riverbanks and lakebeds to their gyms every few weeks. That earth is mixed with oil, turmeric, rosewater, and sometimes buttermilk to create a fragrant, pleasing surface on which training exercises and bouts take place. The wrestling pit is covered, either by a thatch or concrete roof, to keep out the sun. Training is an orchestrated chaos of arched limbs and strained faces. Holds, moves, countermoves, throws are practiced in the rich darkness.
Days are regimented. Early in the morning every fighter studies under the guru of the akhara and practices a series of moves and countermoves called Jor (literally “exerting force”). This complex vocabulary of grappling includes familiar freestyle wrestling takedowns and more exotic, and potentially dangerous, maneuvers like using your head to pivot your body out of a hold. These moves are practiced until they become rote.
After morning practice the wrestlers eat. Their diet is highly structured as well. They’re all vegetarians and so they get their protein from a thick mixture called Khurak, made from clarified butter (ghee), milk, almond paste, or chick peas. They eat great volumes of this stuff. There are tales of fighters who would go through 50 pounds of ghee and 80 pounds of almonds a week. The better part of the afternoon is spent resting and followed by another regimen of strengthening exercises. Then more Khurak. Then sleep. When fighters compete they do so at raucous village festivals called Kushthi-spardhas that thousands in India’s north and central regions attend. These competitions tend to last all day, with featured fights unregulated by time or scoring. Pinning a man is the only way to win.
In other words, there are thousand differences between Kushti and modern-day mixed martial arts (the diaper-like loincloths the fighters wear differ significantly from ad-covered MMA shorts, and American MMA gyms are rarely, if ever, dedicated to monkey gods). But the differences are actually only superficial. The ethos of restraint, the cloistering off from society, and the aspiration towards achieving something transcendent are shared by both kinds of fighter. So is the yearning for competition.
And just like MMA and other western combat sports, kushti has its own legend — its Babe Ruth, its Muhammad Ali, its Fedor Emelianenko. Joseph S. Alter, an anthropology professor at the University of Pittsburg and scholar in Indian fighting, told me about the Great Gama, a Kushti fighter from the outskirts of Amristar in the Punjab who rose through the ranks of Akhara training, became a national champion in India by the age of 19, and, at the invitation of British wrestling promoter, landed on the cold shores of England in 1910. Once there, he won the John Bull belt by defeating Stanislaus Zbyszko in bout that lasted three hours. The Great Gama became world champion.
So, when the UFC announced that it would launch The Ultimate Fighter: India in 2013, at a press conference in Mumbai on September 11, 2011, and Man Jit Singh, the CEO of the company the promotion would be partnering with, pointed to India’s “long legacy of Kushti,” and said he hoped that “our fighters from the akharas and gyms will progress and eventually become UFC champions,”the questions were obvious: Could kushti find its way into the MMA fighter’s technical vocabulary, and could India once again produce a world champion?
Prof. Alter was intrigued when I put the question to him, but he warned that there is what he called an “idiosyncratic rather than pervasive masculinity” in Indian culture that complicates the rise of Indian wrestling and could keep it from having the kind of influence on the development of MMA some might hope for.
“Masculinity is more nuanced in the sense that there are two related dimensions,” he said. “It’s linked to self-discipline and the moral, non-violent, balanced, and considered restraint. The preservation of the essence of masculinity is what’s valued. That’s what makes a strong person.”
By Krishna Andavolu
Vice
Photos by Mitchell Kanashkevich
(2001)
The Kunwars had since set up an alliance with the Shah kings of Nepal from the dynasty of the Hindu monarch Prithvi Narayan Shah and held several important positions under the dynasty, helping to consolidate the Shah rule over Nepal.
It was at this time that Balbadra supported by only 600 troops (including women, the young and elderly) and fight these foreign mercenaries who had come to occupy his Hindu lands.
Seeing the condition of his people, Balbhadra decided to ask Kathmandu for more troops as reinforcement to fight the foreigners. Sadly as the Shah’s were still consolidating the Hindu Kingdom, these troops could not be provided on time and so the Commander decided to move on to Gopichand hill fort from Dwara on Nov 18, 1814.
Bhalbhadra Kunwar did not loose his life in the Gurkha-Anglo war, he procceded to Lahore, then capital of Punjab to join ranks with the new Lahore regiment formed by Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Balbhadra Kunwar in keeping with his brave past was made the General of this new regiment, which consisted of entirely Hindu Gorkhali troops. The word Gorkhali was strictly reserved for those Hindus who served under the Hindu kings, others who had served the Muhammadan warlords were known as “Munglane” and were seen as lowly and unclean.
own country with the increasing hold of the British over the political structure of India backed by its native Indian army. Everything was set for an explosion.
When the fires of freedom were spreading the Rani had no hesitation in throwing her lot in with the freedom fighters. Her brave and steady character with her son Damodar Rao was strapped tightly to her back going onto the battlefield earned her the respect of the other fighters such as Tatya Tope, Kunwar Singh, Amar Singh , Peshwa Nana Saheb and others.
All these disciplined and training patterns came in use during the Indian war of Independence in 1857. Many lives were lost and innocence people killed. Although India did not gain independence the Rani did win back Jhansi and created the state to its former glory having a full treasury and army of women matching the army of men.Finally, in 1858 with the rebel leaders either killed in action or hanged Sir Hugh Rose attacked Jhansi . The next day’s battle was the Rani’s last.
n 1542, she was married to Dalpatshah, the eldest son of king Sangramshah of Gond Dynasty. Chandel and Gond dynasties got closer as a consequence of this marriage and that was the reason Keerat Rai got the help of Gonds and his son-in-law Dalpatshah at the time of invasion of Shershah Suri in which Shershah Suri died.
This plan of Mughul invasion was the result of expansionism and imperialism of Akbar. When Rani heard about the attack by Asaf Khan she decide to defend her kingdom with all her might although her minister Adhar pointed out the strength of Mughal forces. Rani maintained that it was better to die respectfully than to live a disgraceful life.
It started in 1681 with the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb’s invasion of Maratha empire. It ended in 1707 with Aurangzeb’s death. Aurangzeb threw everything he had in this war. He lost it all.
At the time of Shivaji’s death in 1680, Maratha empire spanned an area far more than the current state of Maharashtra and had taken firm roots. But it was surrounded by enemies from all sides. Portuguese on northern Coast and Goa, British in Mumbai, Siddies in Konkan and remaining Deccan sultanates in Karnataka posed limited challenge each, but none of them was capable of taking down the Marathas alone. Mughal empire with Aurangzeb at its helm was the most formidable foe.
After the death of Shivaji in 1680, a brief power struggle ensued in the royal family. Finally Sambhaji became the king. By this time Aurangzeb had finished his North missions and was pondering a final push in Deccan to conquer all of the India.
The beginning went quite well. Shah Alam crossed Krishna river and entered Belgaum. From there he entered Goa and started marching north via Konkan. As he pushed further,he was continuously harassed by Marathas. They ransacked his supply chains and reduced his forces to starvation. Finally Aurangzeb sent Ruhulla Khan for his rescue and brought him back to Ahmednagar. The first pincer attempt failed.
Julfikar khan, who was orchestrating Jinji siege, left the siege on Aurangzeb’s orders and marched back. Santaji followed him to North, but was defeated by Julfikar Khan. Santaji then diverted his forces to Bijapur. Aurangzeb sent another general Kasim Khan to tackle Santaji. But Santaji attacked him with a brilliant military maneuver near Chitaldurg and forced him take refuge in Dunderi fort. The fort was quickly sieged by Santaji and the siege only ended when most of the Mughal soldiers starved and Kasim Khan committed suicide. Aurangzeb sent Himmat Khan to reinforce Kasim Khan. Himmat khan carried heavy artillery. So Santaji lured him in a trap in the forest near Dunderi. A sudden, ambush style attack on Mughals was followed by a fierce battle. The battle ended when when Himmat Khan was shot in head and died. All his forces routed and Santaji confiscated a big cache of weapons and ammunition.
Jinji fell, but it did a big damage to the Mughal empire. The losses incurred in taking Jinji far outweighed the gains. The fort had done its work. For seven years the three hills of Jinji had kept a large contigent of mughal forces occupied. It had eaten a deep hole into Mughal resources. Not only at Jinji, but the royal treasury was bleeding everywhere and was already under strain.
In March of 1700, another bad news followed Marathas. Rajaram took his last breath. His queen Tarabai, who was also daughter of the gallant Maratha Commander-in-Chief Hambeerrao Mohite, took charge of Maratha army. Daughter of a braveheart, Tarabai proved her true mettle for the next seven years. She carried the struggle on with equal valor. Thus began the phase 3, the last phase of the prolonged war, with Marathas under the leadership of Tarabai.
In this war, Aurangzeb’s army totaled more than 500,000 in number (compared to total Maratha army in the ballpark of 150,000). With him he carried huge artillery, cavalry, muskettes, ammunition and giant wealth from royal treasuries to support this quest. This war by no means a fair game when numbers are considered.
Marathas had one big advantage on their side. They were the expert in fort warfare. The game of defense using forts had two components.
Marathas mostly launched offensive attacks in the region when Mughal army was away. They rarely engaged Mughal army in open fields till later part of the war. If situation seemed dire, they would retreat and disperse and thus conserve most of their men and arms for another day. The rivers Bhima, Krishna , Godavari and the mountains of Sahyadri, divide entire Maharashtra region is in several North- South corridors. When Mughal army traveled South through one corridor, Marathas would travel North through another and launch attacks there. This went on changing gradually and in the end, Maratha forces started engaging Mughals head on.
Last but not the least, we must give due respect to one more thing. The seeds of every political revolution can be traced back to a spiritual one and this was no exception. The “Bhakti” movement in Maharashtra that began with 12th Century saint Dnyaneshwar and spearheaded by saint Tukaram (who was contemporary of Shivaji), played a role of social catalyst of immense effect. It created a forum, a pool in society where everyone was welcome.
The common denominator in all these costly mistakes was a lack of realism.
During his prayer meeting on 1 May 1947, he prepared the Hindus and Sikhs for the anticipated massacres of their kind in the upcoming state of Pakistan with these words: “I would tell the Hindus to face death cheerfully if the Muslims are out to kill them. I would be a real sinner if after being stabbed I wished in my last moment that my son should seek revenge. I must die without rancour. (*) You may turn round and ask whether all Hindus and all Sikhs should die. Yes, I would say. Such martyrdom will not be in vain.” (Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol.LXXXVII, p.394-5) It is left unexplained what purpose would be served by this senseless and avoidable surrender to murder.
So, he was dismissing as cowards those who saved their lives fleeing the massacre by a vastly stronger enemy, viz. the Pakistani population and security forces. But is it cowardice to flee a no-win situation, so as to live and perhaps to fight another day? There can be a come-back from exile, not from death. Is it not better to continue life as a non-Lahorite than to cling to one’s location in Lahore even if it has to be as a corpse? Why should staying in a mere location be so superior to staying alive? To be sure, it would have been even better if Hindus could have continued to live with honour in Lahore, but Gandhi himself had refused to use his power in that cause, viz. averting Partition. He probably would have found that, like the butchered or fleeing Hindus, he was no match for the determination of the Muslim League, but at least he could have tried. In the advice he now gave, the whole idea of non-violent struggle got perverted.
t cannot be denied that Gandhian non-violence has a few successes to its credit. But these were achieved under particularly favourable circumstances: the stakes weren’t very high and the opponents weren’t too foreign to Gandhi’s ethical standards. In South Africa, he had to deal with liberal British authorities who weren’t affected too seriously in their power and authority by conceding Gandhi’s demands. Upgrading the status of the small Indian minority from equality with the Blacks to an in-between status approaching that of the Whites made no real difference to the ruling class, so Gandhi’s agitation was rewarded with some concessions. Even in India, the stakes were never really high. Gandhi’s Salt March made the British rescind the Salt Tax, a limited financial price to pay for restoring native acquiescence in British paramountcy, but he never made them concede Independence or even Home Rule with a non-violent agitation. The one time he had started such an agitation, viz. in 1930-31, he himself stopped it in exchange for a few small concessions.
The ethical framework limiting the use of force to a minimum is known as “just war theory”, developed by European thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas and Hugo Grotius between the 13
Within the Portuguese territories, physical persecution of Paganism naturally hit the Brahmins hardest. Treaties with Hindu kings had to stipulate explicitly that the Portuguese must not kill Brahmins. But in the case of Christian anti-Brahminism, these physical persecutions were a small matter compared to the systematic ideological and propagandistic attack on Brahminism, which has conditioned the views of many non-missionaries and has by now been amplified enormously because Secularists, Akalis, Marxists and Muslims have joined the chorus. In fact, apart from anti-Judaism, the anti-Brahmin campaign started by the missionaries is the biggest vilification campaign in world history (emphasis added).
De Nobili’s approach was one possible application of the Jesuits larger strategy, which aimed at converting the elite in the hope that they would carry the masses with them. This approach had been tried in vain in China, in Japan, and even at the Moghul court (today, it is finally meeting with a measure of success in South Korea). A practical implication of this strategy was that Christianity had to be presented as a noble and elitist religion. This came naturally to the Jesuits, who (unlike, for instance, the Franciscans) styled themselves as an elite order.
If the missionaries were sincerely unhappy with the institution of caste, it was not because of its intrinsic inequality. The problem with caste was that it offered a lot of communal togetherness, social security and a certain pride in one’s caste identity. Through the missionary propaganda, we have come to see caste as an exclusion-from, but in the first place it is a belonging-to [a community]. Even for the lowest castes, humiliation by higher placed people on account of caste did not outweigh the considerable benefits of belonging to at least some caste.
It is therefore not true that the Church’s motivation in blackening the Brahmins had anything to do with a concern for equality. The Church was against equality in the first place, and even when equality became the irresistible fashion, the Church allowed caste inequality to continue wherever it considered it opportune to do so. As a missionary has admitted to me: in Goa, many churches still have separate doors for high-caste and low-caste people, and caste discrimination at many levels is still widespread. Commenting on the persistence of caste distinctions in the Church, a Dalit convert told me: I feel like a frog who has jumped from one muddy pool into another pool just as muddy.
In the past century, the Churches one after another came around to the decision that the lower ranks of society should be made the prime target of conversion campaigns. Finding that the conversion of the high-caste people was not getting anywhere, they settled for the low-castes and tribals, and adapted their own image accordingly. One implication was that the Brahmins were no longer just the guardians of Paganism, but also the antipodes of the low-castes on the caste ladder. A totally new line of propaganda was launched: Brahmins were the oppressors of the low-caste people.
Then again, the Aryan Invasion theory was the alpha and omega of the version of India history spread by anti-Brahminism.[5] Phule’s book Slavery starts out with this view of history: “Recent researches have shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Brahmins were not the Aborigines of India…. Aryans came to India not as simple emigrants with peaceful intentions of colonisation, but as conquerors. They appear to have been a race imbued with very high notions of self, extremely cunning, arrogant and bigoted.”
Even among the champions of the Hindu cause, anti-Brahminism acquired a following. The Hindu reform movement Arya Samaj rejected Brahminism and its heretical brainchildren, idolatry and the caste system, as utterly non-Vedic. Brahmin temples were desecrated in the name of Hinduism. Orthodox Brahmins were attacked as the traitors of Hindu interests.
It is undeniable that Hindu Maha Sabha ideologue Savarkar spoke of reviving the “race spirit” of the Hindus. So did Golwalkar. Sri Aurobindo even used the term “Aryan race”, which to him meant exactly the same thing as “Hindu nation”, 
After 1945, the English language gradually lost the usage of the term “race” for the concept of “nation”; the Hindu nationalists followed suit. This was only natural: they had never cared for “race” in the biological sense so dear to the Nazis. The very concept of race, having been narrowed down to its biological meaning, has simply disappeared from their horizon. It is plainly untrue that Hindu ideologues at any time have shared Hitler’s racism.
Most secularists pretend not to know this unambiguous position of Savarkar’s (in many cases, they really don’t know, for Hindu-baiting is usually done without reference to primary sources). Likewise, Savarkar’s plea for caste intermarriage to promote the oneness of Hindu society is usually ignored in order to keep up the pretence that he was a reactionary on caste, an “upper-caste racist” (as Gyan Pandey puts it), and what not. There are no limits to secularist dishonesty, and so we are glad to find at least one voice in their crowd which does acknowledge these positions of Savarkar’s.
The first point rightly acknowledges that Savarkar, not being a historian, accepted the Aryan invasion theory promoted by prestigious seats of Western learning; and that he saw modern Hindus as a biological and cultural mixture of Aryan invaders and indigenous non-Aryans. He shared this view with Indian authors across the political spectrum, e.g. with Jawaharlal Nehru. Like Nehru, he saw no reason why people of diverse biological origins would be unable to form a united nation; the difference being that Nehru saw this unification as a project just started (“India, a nation in the making”), while Savarkar believed that this unification had come about in the distant past already.
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke has written a book on the strange case of a French-Greek lady who converted to Hinduism and later went on to work for the neo-Nazi cause, Maximiani Portas a.k.a. Savitri Devi. The book is generally of high scholarly quality and full of interesting detail, but when it comes to Indian politics, the author is woefully misinformed by his less than impartisan sources.
If one is inclined towards fascism, and one has the good fortune to live at the very moment of fascism’s apogee, it seems logical that one would seize the opportunity and join hands with fascism while the time is right. Conversely, if one has the opportunity to join hands with fascism but refrains from doing so, this is a strong indication that one is not that “fascist” after all. Many Hindu leaders and thinkers were sufficiently aware of the world situation in the second quarter of the twentieth century; what was their position vis-a-vis the Axis powers?
And indeed, in the successful retreat from Dunkirk and in the British victories in North Africa and Iraq, Indian troops played a decisive role. It would earn the Hindus the gratitude of the British, or at least their respect. And if not that, it would instill the beginnings of fear in the minds of the British rulers: it would offer military training and experience to the Hindus, on a scale where the British could not hope to contain an eventual rebellion in the ranks. After the war, even without having to organize an army of their own, they would find themselves in a position where the British could not refuse them their independence.
It is not unreasonable to suggest that Savarkar’s collaboration with the British against the Axis was opportunistic. He was not in favour of any foreign power, be it Britain, the US, the Soviet Union, Japan or Germany. He simply chose the course of action that seemed the most useful for the Hindu nation. But the point is: he could have opted for collaboration with the Axis, he could have calculated that a Hindu-Japanese combine would be unbeatable, he could even have given his ideological support to the Axis, but he did not. The foremost Hindutva ideologue, president of what was then the foremost political Hindu organization, supported the Allied war effort against the Axis. 
That HMS support to the anti-Nazi war effort was not merely tactical but to quite an extent also ideological, is shown by a series of statements by Nirmal Chandra Chatterjee, president of the Bengal Hindu Mahasabha and vice-president of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha. He declared in February 1941: “Our passionate adherence to democracy and freedom is based on the spiritual recognition of the Divinity of man. We are not only not communal but we are nationalists and democrats. The Anti-Fascist Front must extend from the English Channel to the Bay of Bengal.” (Hindu Politics, Calcutta 1945, p.13) 
All this is hardly the language of a collaborator with the Axis powers. For anyone still in doubt on the Hindu Mahasabha’s position, he declared in March 1942: “In the conflict of ideologies the Hindus have made their position perfectly clear. We hate Nazism and Fascism. We are the enemies of Hitler and Mussolini. We are longing and struggling for our own emancipation and we want to repel any dictator who would try to reduce sections of humanity to slavery to serve the whims of his own megalomania.” (Hindu Politics, p.26) And in December 1943: “We are wholeheartedly anti-Fascist. Every anti-Imperialist must be anti-Fascist.” (Hindu Politics, p.68)
Yet, the British accused the Freedom Movement, including the HMS but also the Congress, of Nazi sympathies. Already in the 1930s, they had sometimes equated no less a person than Mahatma Gandhi with Hitler (a comparison which made Gandhian Congress activists feel proud). That was the only way they could hope to lessen the sympathy of the increasingly influential American public opinion for the Indian anti-colonial struggle.
As the science of language, historical linguistics in the early 19th century saw itself as providing a framework for studying the history and relationships of languages in the same manner as biology describes the animal world. But whereas biology has been revolutionized by the discovery of the genetic code, no similar breakthrough has brought new illumination to linguistics. Over the protestations of its many critics, mainstream historical linguistics has remained within the parameters of 19th century thinking. In the meanwhile, archaeological discoveries have altered our understanding of ancient Eurasia.
The Vedic texts are being interpreted as a record of the complex transformations taking place in the pre-2000 BC Indian society. We understand how the 19th century construction of the Orient by the West satisfied its needs of self-definition in relation to the Other. To justify its ascendancy, the Other was defined to be racially mixed and inferior, irrational and primitive, despotic and feudal. This definition was facilitated by a selective use of the texts and rejecting traditional interpretations, an approach that is now called Orientalism. The terms in the construction were not properly defined. Now we know that to speak of a “pure” race is meaningless since all external characteristics of humans are defined in a continuum.
The comparative philology of the most ancient languages was a quest for origins, an attempt to return to a privileged moment in time when God, man, and natural forces still lived in mutual transparency. The plunge into the distant past in search of ‘roots’ went hand in hand with a never forgotten faith in a meaningful history, whose course, guided by the Providence of the one God, could be understood only in the light of Christian revelation.
This dual inheritance was the mark of the imperial destiny of the West. Vernant reminds us that despite his monotheism, the poor Jew, since he lacked Aryan blood, should have seen “the dark silhouette of the death camps and the rising smoke of the ovens.”
A linguistic “Garden of Eden’’ called the proto-Indo-European (PIE) language was postulated. Europe was taken to be the homeland of this language for which several wonderful qualities were assumed. This was a theory of race linking the Europeans to the inhabitants of the original homeland and declaring them to the original speakers of the PIE. By appropriating the origins, the Europeans also appropriated the oldest literature of the Indians and of other IE speakers. Without a past how could the nations of the empire ever aspire to equality with the West? Indian literature was seen to belong to two distinct layers.
Bad intent should not turn anyone away from good science. Why isn’t PIE good science? It looks reasonable enough: If there are biological origins then there should be linguistic origins as well. And why don’t we believe that the nature of language tells us something about culture? If Europeans have been dominant in recent history, then why don’t we accept it as a characteristic of the European? Thus the origin of the PIE must be in the European sphere from where the energy of its early speakers carried them to the far corners of Asia and allowed them to impose their language on the native speakers. There are several problems with the idea of PIE. It is based on the hypothesis that languages are defined as fixed entities and they evolve in a biological sense. In reality, a language area is a complex, graded system of several languages and dialects of a family.
Such an overlap need not imply that the speakers of either group intruded into the overlapping region. We note further the warning by N.S. Trubetskoy (1939) that the presence of the same word in a number of languages need not suggest that these languages descended from a common parent:
It was Bishop Caldwell (1875) who suggested that the South Indian languages of Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, and Telugu formed the separate Dravidian family of languages. He further suggested that the speakers of the proto-Dravidian language entered India from the northwest. Other scholars argued against this Dravidian invasion theory. Scholars have argued that this attempt to see both the North and the South Indian languages coming to the subcontinent from outside (West Asia) as another example of the preoccupation with the notion of the “Garden of Eden’’.
The definition of Aryan and Dravidian are extrapolated from the culture of the speakers of the North and the South Indian languages. But the cultures of the North and the South are the same as far back as we can go. (There is some minor difference in kinship rules.) There is even a mirroring of the sacred geography. The North has Kashi and Mathura; the South has Kanchi and Madurai. Who is to say what the original was? If there is no cultural difference then the use of the term “Aryan” as defining the culture of just the speakers of the North Indian languages is misleading.
The Indian linguistic evidence requires the postulation of two kinds of classification. The first is the traditional Indian classification where the whole of India is a single linguistic area of what used to be traditionally called the Prakrit family. Linguists agree that based on certain structural relationships the North and the South Indian languages are closer than Sanskrit and Greek.1, Second, we have a division between the North Indian languages that should really be called North Prakrit (called Indo-Aryan by the linguists) and the South Indian languages that may be called South Prakrit (or Dravidian).
Since Puranic themes occur in the iconography of the Harappan times (2600-1900 BC), some take the Puranic material to precede the Vedas so that the Vedas could be placed in the second millennium BC. I think the only logical resolution of all the archaeological and textual evidence is to assume that the Indic area became a single cultural area at least around 5000 BC. The Indian civilization was created by the speakers of many languages but the language of the earliest surviving literary expression was Vedic Sanskrit, that is itself connected to both the North and the South Prakrit languages.
The discovery of Tocharian as a centum language was seen as an example of a heroic movement of centum-speaking people from the west. But now the discovery of Bangani, a centum language in India, has make the whole idea of a treelike division suspect. Consider also the question of our knowledge of the vocabulary of various languages. For some languages, this knowledge was primarily obtained in quick field-work done decades ago by scholars who were not native speakers. Could it be that they missed out on vital evidence?
Even Kannada has a cognate. Also, many Hindi speakers pronounce the word for “hundred” as sainkara rather than saikara, which the field studies tell us is the “correct” form. Does that make Hindi a centum language? The archaeological findings from India and the discovery of the astronomy of the Vedic period are fatal for the constructions of historical linguistics that arose in the 19th century and are still being followed in schoolbooks in India although textbooks in the West have begun to present the new picture. While the general language categories seem reasonable, the concept of overlapping families seems essential to obtain better conceptual clarity. The breakdown of the old paradigm calls for considerable effort to create a new one to take its place.