Overlooked Clues of Ancient History

S.N.Mahalingam

Superintending Engineer Tamilnadu PWD (Retd)

A generation which ignores history has no past – and no future

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Depuis la préhistoire et jusqu'à nos jours l'Inde a été en rapport

constant avec le monde méditerranéen. Qu'il s'agisse de commerce,
de religion, d'art, de philosophie, on ne peut comprendre l'histoire
de l'Europe ni celle de l'Inde sans tenir compte des échanges entre
ces deux mondes.
-Alain Daniélou

[Note:Following the presentation of a paper ‘Ancient Roots of Indians’ .in 7th International
Waves Conference ‘WAVES 2008’ June 27 – 29, University of Central Florida,. USA’ I have
presented in absentia the following papers: ‘Overlooked Clues of Ancient History’ and ‘Indus
Seals and Human Evolution’: International Conference on Indian History, ICIH 2009] .The
first paper ‘Overlooked Clues of Ancient History is presented here for the benefit of research
scholars.]
ABSTRACT

A person with Telugu as mother tongue found himself as an alien in Tamilnadu and searched for
his roots. He found it as a town by name Santhri in Haryana. This search revealed the whole
community might have had its origin in Indus valley region. Further

Search indicated their presence in the State of Arrapha. As a bonus the ancestry of Nagarathar
and hence Tamils traced to ancient Nagar and present day Tel Brak of Syria.

Incidentally based on the surnames pointed to the ancestral place of families, ancestral place of
three Rishis of Sapta Rishis have been identified in addition to the heritage of Kautilya Chanakya.
He cannot help but to touch the Aryan question, prevalence place names in the name of Rama and
its variants distributed throughout the world. Sami is a popular name of persons in southern states
of India. The existence of a tribe by that name in Scandinavia and about xxx places spread over
the globe has to be pointed out. This article is similar to a FIR of a police Station and has to be
investigated further by specialists of the related disciplines and so the author has not made any
attempt to present any theory but only presented the findings.
Genesis

A person with Telugu as his mother tongue felt alien in the land of Tamils that is Tamilnadu, in
spite of his love of Tamilnadu, its language, culture and its heritage. In fact he took active part in
the pure Tamil movement in his school days. He was always thinking about his roots, the country
of his ancestors and this thought was lurking in his subconscious mind. He read, in his school
days the works on ancient Indian history, Indus civilization, Lemuria or Kumarikkandam etc.

Years later, he had an opportunity to serve in Algeria, a former French colony where he had to
interact with the local Arab population. At a certain point of time he was introduced to a staff
member as Mr.Benegala. In Algeria, generally people were introduced to strangers only by their
family name or surname. Only intimate family members and friends will call them by their given
name or name proper. He was surprised, as he was reminded of the illustrious ICS officers,
Benegal Narasinga Rau and Benegal Rama Rau. The word Benegal indicated their surname.
Later he came to know of Syam Benegal a famous cinema director.

A few months later he had to meet a local engineer who belonged to a tribe called Kabil which
has a distinct language called Kabili. The area they live in large numbers is also called as Kabili.
In the course of conversation he came to know that the Algerian’s surname was Kadi a surname
of a Telugu devangar family in Salem. He also informed that one of the ministers of that country
who belonged to their tribe visited a village in north India where a language similar to Kabili was
spoken. The above information hibernated in the person’s subconscious mind.

At the fag end of his service in India, one of his colleagues informed about the existence of Hindi
speaking devangar community in Chanderi town in Madhya Pradesh. Then he thought whether
this could be his ancestral town. After retirement he passed his time by reading French books on
religion, history and philosophy of which the works of Alain Daniélou, an Indologist impressed
him and kindled his passion for trying to know the hitherto unknown areas of history.

Root traced and further developments

In the year 2006 by chance he typed santhri, his surname, in Google search. To his astonishment
he found a town by name Santhri in Haryana State tourist site. When he opened the link he found
the name of another town by name Karnal. Suddenly he thought why not this town Santhri be the
town of his ancestors. The family name of his friend is Karna and why not Karnal corrupted into
Karna or vice versa. Another name Bhirrana is found to be a Harappan site in Haryana. Then he
remembered another family of his friend arappa. Why not the name arappa be the corrupt form of
Harappa? But in Haryana no one appear to speak Telugu. The population at Haryana speaks only
Hindi or Haryanovi the local dialect.

The Telugu Devangar community is found dispersed throughout the Southern States. But most of
their family names do not match town and village names in the Southern States. By chance I
found the existence of a village called Santhri in Haryana. This is one of the family names of
Telugu Devangar caste. On further search, two more family names were identifies with names of
towns in the north. Of course it is not possible to get matches for every family name because the
place names as well as family names are subject to change due to various circumstances.

Family name Identified village

Santhri Santhri in Haryana

Karna Karna(L) in Haryana

Bhirrana Bhirrana in Haryana

Banalu Banalu in Punjab

Arappa (H)arappa

This could indicate that the ancestors of the Telugu Devangar community might have been one of
the linguistic groups of the Indus Civilization.

Another interesting fact is that there is another branch of Devangar community who speak
Kannad. Both communities have the same culture but only their mother tongue is different.
Thewir community deity is the same by name Sowdeswari or Sowdambika and they celebrate the
same community festivals in addition to the hindu festivals. They appear to have ben moving
together as wherever you find the telugu speaking community you find the Kannada speaking
community also in the same town but in a different locality. For instance in Sale, Tamilnadu,
telugu speaking devangars settled in the northern bank of a river whereas the Kannada speaking
community is settled on the southern bank. So both the community might have moved together
to the south in the distant past on an uncertain age.

There are more than one hundred Telugu speaking castes living in Tamil Nadu. They also might
have had their origin in the north and migrated to the south around 1000 BCE, when the people
fled the Indus Valley. According to historians, “The Brahui speech in Baluchistan is the only
Dravidian dialect in the North and may be regarded as the sole surviving fragment.”

A similar study of family names of Saurastra community, Nattuk Kottai Chettiar community may
throw more light on the History of India that will form entirely another study to connect the South
India to Mesopotamia region. Only fragmentary facts were presented as a deeper probe could be
made only by specialists.”

Further leads

One of the customs prevalent in Haryana is also followed by this Devangar community. They
have the ‘Gothra’ and marriage within the same gothra is not allowed. The problem arises
because families having different surnames may have the same gothra and comes to the fore only
just before the marriage ceremony. In such cases, when the marriage becomes unavoidable, by a
simple ceremony, the bride is arranged to be adopted by a family having different gothra. In one
known case the families with the surnames, Santhri, Raga and Angapa have the same gothra: an
old man of Santhri family has revealed this just before his death.

Interesting information presented itself when this person by chance referred a French book of
stories for children. The book was published by one George G. Harrap & Co, Ltd. To his mind it
occurred that the ‘Harrap’ could be a family name. It is a British publishing house with branches
in Europe. He thought whether it could be a corrupted form of Harapp(a). This with the comment
of Sir John Marshall “that the town planning of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro resembled that of
Lancashire and Manchester of England.” This statement was found in a 6th standard book,
Chronicle of History and Civics which forced him to think whether the ancestor of Harraps could
be a migrant from the Indus Valley and he are other co-migrants could be the architects of
Manchester and Lancashire. May be this also needs a deeper probe?

Surnames of Rishis?
He tried his method of using the surnames to find the ancestry of the following of the Sapta
Rishis perhaps the august audience may find in interesting. The results are as follows:

Rishi Ancestral place?

Atri ATRI TE Italy

Marisi Gissi CH – Italy : and also Lebanon

Krath Krathuse-Ikast, Ringkobing, Denmark

u

Perhaps only the above Rishis were known by their surnames and the others by their proper
names?

A similar exercise for Kautilya, perhaps the surname of Chanakya, pointed his ancestry to
Kautiala in Finland having Latitude 61.533 and Longitude 24.25 a town named Khutayleh in Irak,
Latitude 34.388 and Longitude 41.147, also shown by the search engine.

A letter by the author was published in the magazine Madras Musings, October, 1 – 15, 2007
which is reproduced below:

Persian Pallavan.
“The dynasties of the kingdoms were known by different names, Mauryas, Pallavas, Pandyas, etc.
None of the text books reveal why they were called by such names.

The French TV channel TV 5 Monde ran a feature film on Sha of Iran, Reza Pahlavi. The name
Pahlavi sounded to me like Pallava. So collected the following details from the Internet.

1. Pahlavi: a middle Persian language spoken in Pre-Islamic Iran from 3 rd Century BCE to
9th Century CE during the rule of Sassanian dynasty. Naresh and Vishtam (a corrupted
form of Vishnu? Narasimha and Simha Vishnu of Pallava dynasty) are names of persons
of that period. Pahlavi are the royal house name. Pahlavan is a village on Azarbayjan-e-
Gharbi in Iran. Could Pallavan be a corrupted form of Pahlavan? Will the historians
probe further?”

Reading this letter in the magazine, a reader sent a Xerox copy of a report that appeared in the
New Indian Express on Ram about the work of Lalith.. Pathak details are given below.

The New Indian Express column published on 20-07-1888, ‘Ram only a historical figure, says
expert’ gives the following account:
 Some documents on West Asian and Egyptian history bring to light that king Dasrath of
Sanskrit speaking Aryan race succeeded his father Shurtarna to the Maitanian throne in
north Syria in BC 1365.

The people were called ‘Hurrians’ and claimed themselves to be ‘Ikshakus’ which meant
‘a representative sent by god to rule over people’ who arrived in West Asia about BC
1800.

But the Maitanian kingdom of the Sanskrit speaking Aryan race lasted only around one
hundred years from BC 1465 to BC 1355, the study said, adding it appears that the term
‘Hari’ and ‘Hari OM’ in Indian scriptures is the remnant of Hurrians in Maintanni.’

The expert is reported to be Prof. Lalit P. Pathak and the title of his work is ‘Indian
names – West Asian origin’

This provoked a log on to the internet for browsing the information on hurrians and in this
process some new facts presented itself for an analysis and were presented as follows.

Aryans
For instance, the Bible talks a lot about God but does not offer proofs for the existence of God. It
rather assumes the existence of God and then proceeds to establish not the basis but the
consequence of such belief. The same paradigm may be tried in establishment certain events in
ancient history. One such event could be the Aryan question.

Roman script is widely used in almost all the European languages. Each language has its own
way of pronouncing the letters. Regional variations are also there to make it a bit complicated.
One such example is the name Kandasami written using English pronunciation. But it will be
Candasami if French pronunciation is used. In the pronunciation of the letter ‘h’ is also a classic
case. In some languages it is silent and in other languages there are specific rules for the
pronunciation depending upon its place in a word. In reading ancient scriptures it is all the more
difficult. In some cases one letter may be mistaken for the other.

Suppose assuming that the letter ‘h’ has been misread instead of ‘a’ and in that case the name
‘hurrians’ will become ‘aurrians’ in the source language and this will be ‘Aryans’ in English but
Aryens in French. So the people who were called as hurrians could be in fact Aryans.

Prof. Pathak has dealt with the name of Ram and so it may be worthwhile to supplement
additional information that came across while investigating the roots. The name of Ram has not
occurred in any literature of Hurrians or Hittites or any people during prehistoric period. It is a
mystery how it suddenly appeared as the title of Egyptian kings.

On RAM
According to Paul Johnson (1999), the last king of eighteenth dynasty Hortemheb had no heir and
he arranged for the succession to pass to another general from the delta, the vizir of lower Egypt,
(Menpeh.tirê' ), who took the throne as Ramesses I founder of the nineteenth dynasty. It was his
son Sethos I, and grandson Ramesses II, who built the Asian empire to something approaching to
its old splendour.

The history of Egypt is dotted with the invasions from Asia and invasion of Asian states by
Egypt. So there should have been cultural exchanges between the two. Probably the legend of
Ram could have been known to them due to their contact with their neighbours. As vizier of
Lower Egypt, Ramesses, having known the popularity of Ram would have adopted it as his title
Ramesses I.

The Ram’s name is popularly adopted in Scandinavian countries as Ramussen. The antiquity of
that name has to be investigated.

A review of the literature on prehistory different spellings was used in denoting the same name.
For example, the Egyptian kings noted above were spelt as Rames and Ramesses. It is the same
with the name of the kingdoms also, for example Maintanni and Mitani indicate the same
kingdom. So there is no guarantee that the word to denote the Aryans could have been correctly
spelt and given as Hurrians.

The following information of the genealogy of the kingdom of Indraprastha which was ruled by
Indians for 124 generations for a period of 4157 years, 9 months and 14 days between the event
of Mahabharata and the beginning of the Mughal era in 1193 AD was given in http-www-
hindunet_org-hindu_history-medieval-kings_chron.htm. There was only one king by name
Ramchand had the name of RAM during the whole period of about four millenniums whereas
about 11 Egyptian kings were named after Ram as Ramesses during the period from 1320 BCE
to 1085 BCE. (Paul Johnson, 1999).

Consider a variant of Ram spelt as ROM then there is a Romulus who found the city of Rome, the
house of Romanov to the dynasty of which belonged the last Czar of Russia and a country
Romania. Perhaps there will be more such cases if one searches persistently. Can this be taken as
indicative that the name of Ram was not so popular in India during prehistoric period whereas it
was more popular in the West Asia, North Africa and Europe? More questions and fewer
answers!

Further information from internet:

Internet sites on Hurrians gave information that a Hurrian kingdom called kingdom of Arrapha
also benefited from the demise of Babylonian power in sixteenth century BC. Compare the name
of Harappa of Indus Civilization and this Arrapha. Do they not appear similar? What could be the
relation between these two names? Also compare the surname arappa of Telugu Devangar
community. Again a mystery?

In the foregoing presentation it has been shown the probability of the presence of Telugu
devangar community that represents Telugu linguistic group of Dravidian family. The Indus
civilization is a multi-ethnic society so certainly other linguistic groups should have been present
for which data could not be procured. One possible group that could have been represented the
Tamil language may be that of Nattuk Kottai Chettiar community of Tamilnadu. They also feel
that they were not native to Chettinad and their ancestral place is elsewhere.. Because they were
also called as Nagarathaar they feel that their ancestral place Nagara could be Kancheepuram as
some Sanskrit poet has written ‘Nagareshu Kanchi’. But for that there appears to be no evidence
that it is called as Nagara. In the near past they had settlements only in an area called Chettinad
located in Pudukkottai, Sivagangai and Madurai districts of Tamilnadu. Their family profession is
commerce and they were Saivites. They lived in at least two storied palatial buildings with many
rooms. The above facts and the town planning of Chettinad Towns suggest them as possible
candidates of Tamil linguistic group in Indus Civilization as the town planning and architecture
of Indus civilization resembled Chettinad town planning and architecture.

The only place with the name Nagar in the prehistoric times is located in Irak at Tell Brak which
was called in pre-akkadian era as Nagar or Nawar (see Appendix III). Another reference to
Nagara was given by Alain Daniélou as a town near the present day Jalalabad of Kabul Valley in
Afghanistan. This place was also called as Nysa or Dionysopolis by Greeks and Ptolemy called
this place as Nagara (perhaps the present Nakora in Afghanistan) in his Geography and this is
supposed to be an ancient religious place of worship by Saivites. If the analysis of surnames or
the names of communities are taken as indicative of the ancestral place, then for the Tamil group
it will be Nagar in Iraq or Nagara in Afghanistan or Harappa and for the Telugu group with
family name arappa, it will be the kingdom of Arrapha or Harappa. Does it mean the Dravidians
and their languages originated in Babylon before the pre-akkadian period? Or Indus Valley
people went to Mesopotamia to find kingdoms? Does it indicate that Dravidian influx preceded
the Aryan? Are the population that inhabited Indus Valley prior to Dravidian influx were also
invaders? Did some mysterious people inhabit Indus valley as suggested by Alain Daniélou
(1983)? Again this calls for a detailed study.

Surnames generally indicate the place of origin of a family if such name is used by that family.
Suppose a place is indicated by a surname. It may be a second or third settlement of that family.
In that case it will indicate the latest settlement and not the ancient one. For instance santhri is
indicated as the ancestral place for a family. But the ancestors of that family might have come
from some other place. So some families may have surnames indicating the latest ancestral place
and some other families have the surnames indicating very ancient places of origin. May be that
is why the surname arappa indicate also the kingdom of Arrapha. Of course it requires a detailed
scrutiny. At the present status of available information it is not possible to say which of the two
places is their initial habitation..

One or two months back there was a media report in TV news about the Al Qaeda commando
attack on an isolated tribe in Irak for their refusal to embrace the benevolent and peace preaching
Islam. An appraisal of their culture, language and religious beliefs may furnish some missing
links to piece together Ancient History not only of India but also of the world.

Similar data of family names (surnames?) has to be obtained for the various linguistic groups at
least in the southern states for a detailed analysis. This could be possible only by a team and not
by a single individual and involvement of the media. The above facts have been presented based
on the information that presented itself during the course the author’s search for his roots and is
brought to the notice of the enlightened historians for a deeper probe that may throw more light
on the prehistory and expand the horizon of history.
The author is indebted to Alliance Français of Madras, ICHR Southern Regional Centre at
Bangalore and Mythic Society, Bangalore for permitting him to utilize heir facilities.

References :

Alain Daniélou : Histoire de l'Inde, Editions du fayard, Paris,1983: Shiva et Dionysos,

Fayard.
Anneli Airaksinen. Le peuple dont descendent tous les Scandinaves : Minorités :GEO. No.302,
Avril 2004
Mahalingam S.N. An Outline for Research in Prehistory of India, International Symposium on
Indus Civilization and Tamil Language, 15 &16-2-2007, Chennai.
Mahalingam S.N. Algerian Connection? : Madras Musings, July 1-15, 2007, Lokhavani Hall-
Mark Press, Chennai.
Mahalingam S.N. : Persian Pallavan, Madras Musings, July 1-15, 2007, Lokhavani Hall-Mark
Press, Chennai.
Paul Johnson. The Civilization of Ancient Egypt, Harper-Collins Publisher, 1999.
Safi Douhi. L’incroyable Voyage des premier Hommes, GEO, No. 310, Décembre
2004.
News Item in The New Indian Express Dated: 20-07-1998
Hurrians – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Landon, Dale E. (Indiana IUP); Hurrians and the Ancient Near East History;[The Hurrians and
the Ancient Near East History-Landaon,D_A]
The Kassites, the Hurrians, and the Arameans: The Encyclopedia of World History. 2001.