The Hapta Hindu mentioned in the Vendidad is obviously the Saptasindhu (the Punjab region), and the first land, ‘abandoned by the ancestors of the Iranians because of severe winter and snow’ before they came to the Saptasindhu region and settled down among the Vedic people, is obviously Kashmir”. (TALAGERI 1993a:180-1)
Indian author
Shrikant Talageri, born in 1958, was educated in Mumbai where he lives and works. He has devoted several years, and much to study, to the theory of an Aryan invasion of India, and interpreted the Vedas with the help of the internal chronology of Rig vedic Rishes within Rig Veda with the help of genealogical records Anukramanis.
From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Even the strongest advocate of the Aryan invasion theory cannot, in all honesty, point out any specific spot outside India to which the origin of any, simply any, aspect of Hinduism could be attributed. Even if, for the purpose of this chapter, it is presumed that the 'Aryans' came from outside India, and that they imposed the Hindu religion on local inhabitants (two questions which will be dealt with subsequently in this book), it will have to be admitted that there is no trace of any foreign connections in Hinduism, much less the consciousness, of any such connections, among Hindus—and least of all, any foreign loyalties, associable with such foreign connections".
All these points are so obvious that anyone who says that Hinduism is as foreign to India as Islam or Christianity, deserves to have his head examined. The followers of both Islam and Christianity have full knowledge of and pride in the time and place of origin of their religions outside India, the early history of their religions outside India, the arrival of their religions into India (brought in by invaders and imperialists), and the manner in which their religions were established in India. On the other hand, until the Aryan invasion theory was mooted by the European imperialists, no Hindu had ever suspected that any foreign connection could be attributed to his religion. Even today, with the Aryan invasion theory being instilled into every Hindu brain right from childhood, no Hindu worth his salt would accept the contention that Hinduism is of foreign origin.
"Muslims and Christians are not 'foreigners' in India. Muslim and Christian fundamentalists may identify wholly with their foreign brethren, and some Muslims may even gloat at the idea that they are the descendants of Islamic heroes who 'conquered and ruled' a land teeming with kāfirs, but the fact remains that they are all Indians as much as the Hindus (including the 'Aryans'). At a certain point of time, their ancestors were the more helpless among the Hindus who were forcibly converted to Islam. […] in historic times there were invasions of India by Persians, Greeks, Scythians, Kushans and Huns. Many of the invaders stayed in India and got integrated into the population. Today some anthropologist may manage to dig out material and claim that some community or other constitutes the descendants of one or the other of those invaders. But who would treat such a claim, even if it were proved beyond doubt, as the basis for branding that community as a 'foreign' community? […] every single foreign community entering India, right from ancient times, has been completely absorbed into the Indian identity […] and according to the Aryan invasion theory itself, this happened in the case of the 'Aryans' as well […] Hindu nationalism has nothing to do with the childish, petty and ridiculous idea of dividing Indians into 'outsiders' and 'insiders' on the basis of whether or not their ancestors, actually or supposedly, came from outside." (TALAGERI 1993:46-47).
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Sanskrit has many words for the horse: aśva, arvant or arvvā, haya, vājin, sapti, turanga, kilvī, pracelaka and gho ṭ aka, to name the most prominent among them. And yet, the Dravidian languages show no trace of having borrowed any of these words; they have their own words kudirai, parī and mā [...] The Santali and Mundari languages, however, have preserved the original Kol- Munda word sādom. Not only has no linguist ever claimed that the Dravidian and Kol-Munda words for ̳horse‘ are borrowed from 'Aryan‘ words, but in fact some linguists have even sought to establish that Sanskrit gho ṭ aka, from which all modern Indo-Aryan words are derived, is borrowed from the Kol-Munda languages.