It all started in India?

[yiannis]

Back to a topic that was started a while ago by Dr. Pal, that is the origin of Macedonians from India.I was browsing the web and accidentally bumped on this:
"The place in Greece where people from Magadh (todayGÇÖs Bihar) were settled was called Magadhan. After passage of time, Magadhan became Makedan or Macedan and finally Macedonia, the birthplace of the great warrior, Alexander. Where-from had the name Alexander been derived? A man of incomparable beauty is called Alokasunder in Sanskrit and after passage of time, this Alokasunder became Alexander in Greece. Thousands of years ago the Brahmins, belonging to the tribe of Bhil, left their dwelling place Hamman in Afghanistan and settled in Greece, where their chiefs were called Bhilpos, a corrupt of Bhilpati. Later on this Bhilpos became Philip, the tribe to which the father of Alexander belonged and hence, Alexander was an immigrant from Hamman in Afghanistan. There is a small place called Attak, lying on the bank of River Sindhu, 942 miles north of the Arabian Sea. People who migrated to Greece from Attak, named their new dwelling place as Attak-sthan, which after passage of time became Atakthan and ultimately the great Greek city, Athens. .... "It goes on like this. Full text here:
http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/module ... age=20What do the rest of the companions think? Loudicrus nationalism or there might be grains of truth hidden somewhere?

[susan]

Well, I don't think there's much direct truth in it, but next week I'm going to Sri Lanka to visit someone who's spent years studying the connections between Skanda & Alexander - so maybe I'll know more when I return.Susan

[Dr. Pal]

Dear Yannis,
I strive to steer as far away from nationalism as is practicable (here I consider Alexander as a Guru) and it was distressing to be clubbed with those who see a Bihl in Philip. My GÇÿIndiaGÇÖ also includes Southeast Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Remember AlexanderGÇÖs GÇÿvictory over the IndiansGÇÖ in Karmania?
I have maintained that HerodotusGÇÖ reference to the Makedni may be related to Magadh or Magan which is a very ancient name. This Magadh was nearer to Bahrein than modern Bihar which came to be known as Magadh only after the 3rd century BC.(see my website http://www.geocities.com/ranajitda). Early Magadh was in southeast Iran which corresponds to Magan of the Sumerian records. Dilmun, Magan and Melukkha were almost always mentioned together and in my opinion these three states were somehow interconnected. Melukkha was the name of the Indus civilization.
To understand Alexander in the East one has to have a truer notion of the East. I have held that Gomata of the Behistun inscriptions was Gotama Buddha himself. Almost a century ago Spooner wrote that Gotama was from Persia. A Gotama in Persia shows that intuitively Tarn was right about AlexanderGÇÖs idea of Brotherhood, not Badian. As Jan Mathieu Carbon notes http://www.classics.und.ac.za/reviews/05-19pal.htm a paradigm shift is needed in Alexander studies. It is very likely that Alexander was much better informed about the links of Macedonia and Greece with the East that Aristotle. Many scholars have suggested that the Phrygians may have been related to the Bhrigus of the RgVeda, probably the greatest collection of ancient myths.Regards,Dr. Pal

[marcus]

It does sound like a spurious attempt to provide historical background to the spread of Indo-European languages - more Robert E Howard than anything truly historical.Still, it's quite fun, isn't it?Maybe Susan will come back from Sri Lanka with some good additional stories...All the bestMarcus

[yiannis]

Dear Dr. Pal,Just to clarify that I have not "clubbed" you along with anyone and I sincerely value your work, knowledge and opinions even if I don't necessarily agree with all of them...Regards,
Yiannis

[Dr. Pal]

Dear Yannis,The conduit for the early East-West exchanges was the precursor of the Susa-Sardis road which dates back to the 5th millennium BC or perhaps earlier. Colin Renfrew has visualized a movement of Indo-European speakers from the Catal Huyuk area at a very early date. This has not been generally accepted but reminds one of the tales involving Dionysius or Hercules. Significantly Seistan plays a very important role in this scheme. Recently scholars from Auckland University in New Zealand have utilized a statistical model (that has been useful in genetic mutation research) to analyse language evolution and have claimed that this supports RenfrewGÇÖs model. In my view this is a very synthetic technique that leaves many questions unanswered. I am more at ease with approach of Lane-Fox(not Robin), Wheeler, Glyn Daniel and O.G.S. Crawford and am deeply suspicious of the so-called New Archaeologists who, in my view, have moved away from the traditions of field archaeology. Others have taken Mehrgarh in Pakistan as a centre of early exodus. I have written that there was a mass westward migration after the fall of Sumer and Indus cities in the eighteenth century BC. As Trubetskoy and others have stressed, Jones model of classification of languages into IE and non-IE languages may be at fault.Regards,Dr. Pal