Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c20.s1.37

v1.c20.s1.37

Like many other scholars, Shaffer (1984a) and Biswas (1990) have exposed the Aryan myth. Several eminent Indian archaeologists have fallen into this linguists’ trap. Banerjee himself (1965: 224, 232) has criticised H.D. Sankalia and D.P. Agrawal for equating Aryans with the Chalcolithic people and the Banasians respectively, and has approvingly quoted A. Ghosh who was “not so sure of the correctness of the attempted equation, and the old theory of the linguists”. Yet, Banerjee imagined that the ‘Aryans’ (whoever they were) came to India and introduced iron technology and PGW culture. Chakrabarti (1968) has given cogent arguments in favour of an eastern, rather than western, origin for the PGW, thereby negating the PGW-Aryan correlation.