Talk:Rakhigarhi

Redirect from Rakhi Garhi

I think I should make a redirect from Rakhi Garhi to here. If this page is deleted, that should be deleted too. -- Finlay McWalter 00:29, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Done.Jarhed (talk) 08:20, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

improperly formatted infobox

Rakhigarhi

Region	Haryana

separate modern Rakhigarhi from the excavation at Rakhigargi

Same issue I mentioned at Talk:Bhirrana. AlexanderVanLoon (talk) 08:04, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

ASI etc

@Fowler&fowler and Cpt.a.haddock: I am not sure why there is such a dispute about the ASI report. WP:RS asks us to use published sources, which I don't think the ASI report is. Even published WP:PRIMARY sources should be cautiously, and only secondary sources can be reported as fact. - Kautilya3 (talk) 14:27, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

What can I say. The learned Captain Archibald is citing field reports submitted by Dr Nath to his bosses at ASI. The report has a dozen pages of recitation of Sanskrit verses from the Rg Veda. There is a good reason why so many western scholars seem to think that little or nothing has been published about Rakhigarhi. Then there is the "peer-reviewed" paper of Shinde et all. The JSTOR description says, xxxx by Vasant Shinde, Vice Chancellor, Deccan College, published in the Journal of the Deccan College, published by the Vice Chancellor of Deccan College. It is cited by 0 authors in Google Scholar. Contrast that with L Goisan et al (published in the same year 2012) which is already cited in 52 published papers; contrast Shine's paper with Rita Wright's book Ancient Indus, published 2010, which has 54 citations in published papers. t What does that mean? This is a low impact paper. Wikipedia cannot give it the same billing as high impact papers. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:05, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

The large discrepancy in the figures is due to the fact that Nath and Shinde provide two figures, one for the excavated area and another for the area encompassed by all the excavated areas. There's a published peer-reviewed journal article (by Shinde) that backs Nath up. It's perhaps only Shinde's figure that is not backed up by a secondary source but that has only been included as a tentative estimate as it has been widely reported in the press thereby validating the attention being paid to it in this (quite incomplete) article. If you look at the history of this article, you will notice that while the learned firm of Fowler & Fowler were predisposed towards the precise figure of 80 hectares, they later revised it to 80–105 ha. which is just 19 ha. short of Amarendra Nath's 124 ha. figure (which possibly includes newly discovered mounds). The 124 ha. figure is for the "core" area while the 240 ha. figure is for the "encompassed" area. As for "report to his bosses", I don't have access to Nath's reports in Puratattva to see what his official ASI reports state. No comment on comparisons of papers on the entire IVC vs. one small dig in Haryana. No comment also on "recitation of Sanskrit verses …", "western scholars", etc.; Fowler&fowler's bias shines through quite plainly. @Kautilya3: IIRC, it was our mutual acquaintance, Suraj Bhan, who discovered Rakhigarhi :)--Cpt.a.haddock (talk) (please ping when replying) 15:11, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

I think it is fine to include all the area figures that we have available. But, to make claims like the largest IVC site etc., I think we need confirmation from multiple reliable sources. I wouldn't count news reports as reliable sources for scientific information, because they just report what they are told. - Kautilya3 (talk) 17:01, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Giosan et al is not on "entire IVC," Captain, only on whether the Ghagger Hakra dry channels were once carved by a glacier fed river. You only need to read the pdf of the cover letter written by Mr Nath to realize what that report is. As for the rest, all I know is that before I edited this article, it had begun to look like this. Doesn't matter whom you knew, I know rigor, and I'll make sure you will too before I'm done with this article. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:17, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

@Cpt.a.haddock: Indeed, I am aware that Suraj Bhan (archaeologist) made the discovery. I remember the spats we had on that page, and your insistence on using Sarsuti-Ghaggar/Chautang as opposed to Sarasvati/Drishadvati! - Kautilya3 (talk) 19:01, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

And, Captain, "one small dig in Haryana?" I commend your hard won modesty. Just a week ago, it was the largest IVC settlement, bigger by far than Mohenjo-daro and Harappa combined, the center of IVC from which IVC spread to distant places, and soon to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site (leaping past Dholavira, Harappa, Nalanda, Golden Temple, who at least have been nominated and have been waiting, and waiting, and waiting, patiently). Mr Shinde who is media savvy, if he is anything, has been talking up a storm about the momentousness of this discovery, which according to several Indian newspapers, has increased in decibel level, since the change of government in Delhi in 2014. As for my changing the area from 80 to 100+, there was nothing deliberate about it, just my awareness of more estimates. Instead of giving me credit that I did show flexibility, that I found seven estimates, whereas the Captain was flogging the dead horse (or should I say, the yet to be born foal) of just one, content to give the maximum (400 hectares) of those estimates, the Captain is insinuating dishonesty. Finally, if Shinde et al has not been vetted by a secondary source, why are you putting it back in? Leave it at 124 hectares. Allow me, then, to remove Mr Shinde's optimistic musings. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:17, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

@Cpt.a.haddock:,@Kautilya3:: Sorry I took it literally, assuming you were old octogenarian friends of Suraj Bhan, who irrespective of his ideology, was a rigorous researcher. I commend the Captain and Kautilya, and sincerely, for holding the line on that page, and for not falling for the low hanging fruit offered by those who jump from branch to low branch in the groves of Hindu nationalist scholarship. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:43, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

All the credit for that goes to Captain. I was really gunning for Suraj Bhan as a representative of all the dodgy leftist cover-ups on Ayodhya. That is why I am surprised that he is not being more appreciative of the effort you are putting into this page. Those news reports are truly depressing. Trying to make any sense of them is a Herculean effort! - Kautilya3 (talk) 03:24, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: I've simply taken exception to Fowler&fowler's belittling of the work of the ASI or the Deccan College as if they are somehow inferior sources. This is particularly when Possehl et al. all rely on the ASI's reports for their analyses. Yes, all this mythical river stuff that these guys go on about is depressing. But that doesn't really enter the picture here. Anyhow, I'll try to dig up a better source for Nath's work. Thanks.--Cpt.a.haddock (talk) (please ping when replying) 10:02, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Judging from the news reports, I have serious doubts about their reliability. If they don't know that all this hype seriously damages their credibility, their judgement is seriously in question. - Kautilya3 (talk) 12:41, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

@Cpt.a.haddock: (copying @Kautilya3:): If you think I have something against the ASI or Deccan College, please read G. S. Gai, which I created in 2008, and which survives (with the exception of an unsourced line added by his son that he was the first PhD of DC) in more or less unchanged form today. I had in fact forgotten about that article and a number of others A. N. Narasimhia, Kappe Arabhatta, Tripadi, all created because I had waded into a controversy on the India page. I had not even heard of the Kannada language at that time, let alone knew it (which I still do not). But it shows you what you can do if the sources are rigorously looked for. For the record I knew nothing about ASI either when I joined Wikipedia ten years ago except Curzon's creation of it. ASI had some great people, not only the early IVC excavators (Bannerjee and Vats), but also their epigraphists DC Sircar and Gai, but unfortunately their director BB Lal did great harm to the reputation of the institution by politicizing it. Also, and this is my personal view, the ASI did inestimable harm to Indian archaeology by restricting access to the digs (pretty much to their own people) in the first four or five or six or seven decades after India's independence. Lack of contact with foreign scholars deprived them the essential skepticism and rigor that such interaction engenders. As for the ASI reports, I'm sure foreign scholars read them, but also test them against other sources. Very few, for example, seriously believe that Lothal had a dock, even if they themselves don't have plausible explanations for it. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:24, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

The ASI report of Amarendra Nath

The report, which is a draft report, see here, page 2, was submitted on the last day of 2014. In it, Mr Nath, states:

As desired, I am enclosing a draft report on the excavations at Rakhigarhi .... I am aware of the fact that the report under submission is incomplete in its presentation in terms modem inputs required in an archaeological report. You may be aware of the fact that the ground staff available to this section is too meagre to cope up the work of report writing. The services of only one semiskilled casual labour engaged to this section has been withdrawn vide F. No. 9/66/2014-15/EB-I1496 Dated 01.12.2014. The Assistant Archaeologist who is holding the charge antiquities and records of Rakhigarhi is available only when he is free from his office duty in the Branch. The services of a darftsman accorded to this unit are hardly available."

By the author's own admission, this is an incomplete draft report. So how reliable is it in terms of WP:RS? Its area estimates have been quoted in a preliminary announcement (a primary source) by the new excavator in his house journal, and which incidentally was published in 2012, a full two years earlier. And it has been bouncing in the echo chambers of India's frenetic media. Can we agree to take out the numerous references to the newspaper reports, most of which are perfunctory to say the least? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:26, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

The incomplete draft report does not necessarily mean that these figures/estimates are incomplete. But fair enough. I'll try and dig up Nath's reports in Puratattva and see what he says there.--Cpt.a.haddock (talk) (please ping when replying) 09:38, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

The Puratattva paper, which I did take a look at last week, at least the one with three authors, was quite well written, but unfortunately it did not address the question of area. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:42, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Rakhigarhi

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Rakhigarhi's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "hisar gazeteer":

• From Hisar district: "Hisar gazeteer" (PDF). Haryana Gazeteers Organisation. Retrieved 23 May 2012.
• From Hisar (city): "Hisar gazeteer" (PDF). Haryana Gazeteers Organisation. Retrieved 23 May 2012.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 09:17, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Forthcoming research on who built the IVC

See The Hindu, Who built the Indus Valley civilisation?. It involves a DNA study of 4 skeletons from Rakhigarhi and will be published in a few weeks. Doug Weller talk 21:00, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

It also desribes four scenarios regarding the possible outcomes. Interesting read, from Joseph. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:35, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Irula people

@Tyachi: you reinserted diff the following text (bold):

Results announced in September 2018 and a paper published in cell magazine shows that the dna shares same common ancestry of Irula people but did not include any traces of either the steppe ancestry or the Iranian ancestry, in line with the Aryan migration theory, which says that Indo-Aryans migrated into India after the Harappan times.

References

You also added a source diff, "Pune: Deccan college professor Dr VS Shinde and the Rakhigari". Retrieved 2020-10-04., providing an incorrect link; this is the correct link.

• IndiaToday says:

that I4411 "has more affinity with South Indian tribal populations". Notably, the Irula in the Nilgiri highlands. A draft of the paper argues that this individual could be modelled as part of a clade [a group sharing descent from a common ancestor] with the Irula but not with groups with higher proportions of West Eurasian related ancestry such as Punjabis

• Bal, in The Caravan, makes no mention of the Irula people;
• Mahalakshmi, in Frontline, does not mention the Irula people;
• The Wire, does not mention the Irula people;
• Shinde et al. (2019) does not mention the Irula people;
• Das, in Nature India, does not mention the Irula people;
• Tony Joseph does not mention the Irula people;
• Das, in MumbaiMirror:

The ASI was born from the intermingling between Iranian farmers and the local Dravidians. Ironically, within the country, the DNA match has been found, not with any of the modern-day inhabitants around Rakhigarhi, but with the Irula tribe of the Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu.

• Narasimham et al. (2019) state that the Rakhigarhi-DNA shows Iranian hunter-gatheres ancestry. As for the Irula people, Narasimhan et al. (2019), The Formation of Human Populations in South and Central Asia, don't mention them in the main article, only in the supplementary material, where they state (p.307-308):

For the eight groups consistent with having entirely ASI ancestry (Adiyan, Ulladan, Palliyar, Malayan, Yanidi, Irula, Gugavellalar, Pulliyar) and having extremely low or no Steppe pastoralistrelated ancestry as shown in Supplementary Materials S5

So, the correct addition would have been "the dna shows affinity with present-day South Indian tribal populations, most notably the Irula people." Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 19:30, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Hey Joshua where can the Supplementary material be found? The Irula connection need scholarly references. So far it has only news and articles. ChandlerMinh (talk) 07:02, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

@ChandlerMinh: here. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:20, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Hey @Joshua Jonathan: Isn’t it important to mention that modern day Indians have a significant amount of steppe ancestry? Isn’t that the whole point? The Shinde paper doesn’t make reference to it. They are interested in Harappan DNA. What about modern DNA especially that for North Indian Brahmins? ChandlerMinh (talk) 05:22, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Dating

@Johnbod: It is not BP. It is BC. The full quote from the article is, "Yes, the shift in centre of gravity is as fundamental as that. The Harappan site at Rakhigarhi, in Hisar district, is the biggest one known yet—at up to 550 hectares, it’s more than twice the size of Mohenjodaro. It’s also the one with the deepest time-scale, taking shape at 5500 BC and running four millennia. The nearby satellite site of Bhirrana, part of this Bronze Age metropolitan network, is even older: it offers the classic arc of evolution, beginning from early Neolithic farming around 7500 BC. Almost 10 millennia ago. Even with India’s endless capacity for imagining deep time, that’s serious depth. On the edge of modern Rakhigarhi village, buffaloes amble out of a pond placidly, unmindful of passing archaeologists or of the runic mysteries glimmering under the undulating mounds."

It is the science that is dubious, shaped by the common Indian jealousy about Mehrgarh and Mohenjo-daro. I stay away from these articles. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:53, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Ok, thanks - I was brought here by this section. Johnbod (talk) 15:04, 1 October 2021 (UTC)