Frederick Eden Pargiter Quotes

There is a strong presumption in favor of (Indian) tradition; if anyone contests tradition, the burden lies on him to show that it is wrong.

All ancient Indian belief and veneration were directed to the mid-Himalayan region, the only original sacred outside land, and it was thither that rishis and kings turned their steps in devotion, never to the northwest.

There is nothing in them (Puranic accounts), as far as I am aware, really inconsistent with the most ancient book we possess, namely, the Rigveda, and they throw much light thereon, and on all problems concerning ancient India.

[Mandhātā pushed past] "the prostrate Paurava realm, and pushing beyond them westwards, he had a long contest with and conquered the Druhyu king who appears to have been then on the confines of the Panjab, so that the next Druhyu king Gandhāra retired to the northwest and gave his name to the Gandhāra country" (PARGITER 1962:262).

"If the Aryans had entered India from the north-west, and had advanced eastward through the Punjab only as far as the Saraswati or Jumna when the Rigvedic hymns were composed, it is very surprising that the hymn arranges the rivers, not according to their progress, but reversaly from the Ganges which they had hardly reached. " Imam me gange yamune sarasvati sutudri stomam sacata parusnaya asiknya marudvrdhe vitastayarjikiye srnuhya susomaya " (x 75.05) O Ganga, Yamuna, Sarasvati, Sutudri (Sutlej), Parushini (Ravi), hear my praise! Listen to my call, Asikni (Chenab), Marudvridha (Maruvardhvan), Vitasta (Jhelum) with Arjikiya, Sushoma (Sohan).

The bulk of the Rigveda was composed in the great development of Brahmanism that arose under the succesors of king Bharata who reigned in the upper Ganges-Jumna doab and plain;

[tradition] makes the Aila power begin at Allahabad and yet distinctly suggests that they came from outside India.

Indian tradition distinctly asserts that there was an Aila outflow of the Druhyus through the northwest into the countries beyond where they founded various kingdoms.

[The fact that there are Indo-European languages outside India: Pargiter clearly attributes the presence of these languages to the] Aila outflow of the Druhyus through the northwest into the countries beyond where they founded various kingdoms.

The Aryans began at Allahabad, conquered and spread out northwest, west and south, and had by YayAti’s time occupied precisely the region known as MadhyadeSa… They expanded afterwards into the Punjab and East Afghanistan, into West India and the northwest Dekhan…

The arguments used to prove the advance of the Aryans from Afghanistan into the Punjab might simply be reversed.

There was an outflow of people from India before the fifteenth century BC.

The river constituted the boundary between the Panjab and the Ganges-Jumna basin.

The next Druhyu king Gandhāra retired to the northwest and gave his name to the Gandhāra country.

Indian tradition knows nothing of any Aila or Aryan invasion of India from Afghanistan, nor of any gradual advance from thence eastwards.