A Brief History of Roma People

Vincent van Gogh: The Caravans – Gypsy Camp near Arles (1888, Oil on canvas)

We know that the Roma originally migrated out of India. But what migration path did they follow? Also, where exactly did they originate from India?. A new study looks at maternal DNA to trace the Roma history and has some answers. This is particularly important because the Roma don’t have a reliable history and we all know how the Enlightened Europeans treated them.

The new study is mostly about what contributed to the heterogeneity of the Roma groups. What is of interest to us is that they left India about a 1000 to 1500 years back and went through Persia and Greece to reach the Balkans. By the 14th century, various Roma groups established themselves in the Balkan Peninsula and within a century they reached the periphery of Europe. When Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama set out on their famous voyages, the Roma were present in Spain and Portugal.

Investigating their Indian origins, the study found that the Roma originated mostly in North-Western India and a bit from East India. Among the North-Western states, Punjab is the most probable homeland for the Roma, thus creating a new market for Yash Raj films.

References:

Isabel Mendizabal et al., Reconstructing the Indian Origin and Dispersal of the European Roma: A Maternal Genetic Perspective,PLoS ONE 6, no. 1 (January 10, 2011): e15988.

Review: The Pacific

In his New Yorker piece titled, Hellhole, Atul Gawande describes what happens to prisoners in solitary confinement.

After a few months without regular social contact, however, his experience proved no different from that of the P.O.W.s or hostages, or the majority of isolated prisoners whom researchers have studied: he started to lose his mind. He talked to himself. He paced back and forth compulsively, shuffling along the same six-foot path for hours on end. Soon, he was having panic attacks, screaming for help. He hallucinated that the colors on the walls were changing. He became enraged by routine noises—the sound of doors opening as the guards made their hourly checks, the sounds of inmates in nearby cells. After a year or so, he was hearing voices on the television talking directly to him. He put the television under his bed, and rarely took it out again. [HELLHOLE]

War can be equally fatal on the mind. There is a scene in The Pacific where an American soldier is seen casually throwing stones into the blown up head of another soldiers as if it were a dustbin.In another when they are waiting in the dark for the Japanese, a soldier panics and shouts and the others kill him with the comment, “Better him than all of us”. Another soldier just blows his brains out unable to take it anymore.
The HBO miniseries, The Pacific, is about the American war against Japan, fought in various islands in the Pacific Ocean following Pearl Harbor. It follows the lives of three soldiers — Robert Leckie, Eugene Sledge and John Basilone — as they fight battles in tiny previously unheard islands, facing not just the Japs, but their own minds as well. The series is based on With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by Eugene Sledge and Helmet for My Pillow by Robert Leckie as well as the memoir of a marine who fought along with Basilone.
Basilone, a gunnery sergeant, was sent to Guadalcanal where he successfully repelled a Japanese attack on the American lines; Basilone single-handedly kept firing at them, thus denying them a victory. This made him an instantly recognizable hero in America where he is sent to sell war bonds. Being a soldier selling war bonds is not to his liking. He enlists again and is sent to Iwo Jima along with 30,000 marines; he is killed on the first day.
Robert Leckie too was present in Guadalcanal witnessing the carnage and he writes about it to his neighbor Vera. Also during an R&R in Australia, he courts a Greek immigrant Stella, but eventually Stella breaks up with him as she knows his fate. Eugene Sledge could not initially join the war since he had a heart murmur, but he eventually joins. On the island of Pavuvu, he catches enuresis and almost loses his mind. He has a debate with Leckie on faith and God. Sledge is then involved in the capture of the airfield on the Peleliu. Once the beach is secured, they attempt to cross the airfield and face heavy gun fire. He gets shot and is evacuated to their ship.
He comes back again and faces battles where they face Japanese gun fire from the caves. The Japanese had built tunnels in the coral mountains and the intelligence had no clue. In a month of fighting, there were 6500 casualties, but the island was not used again. The final battle is fought in Okinawa and they hear about a new bomb which was dropped in Japan ending the war.
Following the first attack on American soil by a foreign power since 1812, there was heavy enthusiasm among Americans to enlist to fight the Japanese, but these young men did not know what they were getting into. The enemy was not just the ‘Japs’, but the tropical jungle where they had to face non-stop rains, leeches, crabs, rats, and poisoned water supplies.This has to be contrasted with the battle locations shown in the other HBO series, Band of Brothers, which was fought mostly in the towns of Europe.
The war has been presented unlike anything I have seen before on screen. It delivers a simple message visually: war is hell. It is an expensive HBO production and with executive producers like Tom Hanks and Steven Speilberg, no compromise was made in recreating the battles; the level of detail present in the Normandy scene in Saving Private Ryan is there in each episode. It is not a sanitized version of history; the crimes on both sides are depicted.
But what gives depth to the series, is how the war affects the mind. In Okinawa, where the Japanese used human shields, there is a scene when Sledge and “Snafu” hear a baby cry from a hut. They are not sure if it is a trap. They had been in one instance before where a woman who was booby trapped was sent with a crying baby into the midst of American soldiers and they had to shoot her. This time they walk into the hut and find a baby crying and the mother dead. They stand unsure what to do. The tension is palpable. Right then another soldier walks in and carries the baby away. In the same hut another wounded Japanese woman asks Sledge to shoot her and lifts his gun to her forehead.
The series ends with Leckie, Sledge and his companions coming back home. They have to decide what to do. Leckie finds a job as a reporter and marries the girl to whom he was writing all those letters. Sledge is unable to decide what to do. He says he will never wear the uniform again and breaks down on a hunting trip; he says will never be able to shoot again.

Indian History Carnival – 37: Vasco da Gama, Venice, Patanjali

Giacomo Benedetti looks at what ancient DNA can tell us about the Indo-European problem.

We can suppose that the Oxus valley was an ancient seat for the R1a1a people coming from South Asia, and that they spoke an Indo-European language. From Central Asia they should have moved to the Kurgan area in Ukraine, and from there to Central Europe. Another R1a1a people went eastward up to the Tarim Basin (see here) and another to the Andronovo area near Krasnoyarsk in Siberia (see here). But we know that they all had their ultimate origin in western South Asia, and their expansion in Eurasia seems to be dated particularly in the metal age, since all these cultures knew metals.

Recently Dr. Koenraad Elst wrote that there is no reason to believe that Patanjali the grammarian was also the author of Yoga Sutras. Sarvesh Tiwari decided to investigate.

Indologists objections revolve around the usual suspects: that there are interpolations, the non-homogeneity of texts, some philosophical concepts are allegedly imported from or influenced by the nAstika doctrines and therefore the resulting dating issues, some concepts that allegedly contradict and therefore could not have come from one person, dissecting the texts to such absurd level that the whole loses the meaning and then at that level showing the minor differences, and so on. But having seen those arguments we are convinced that none of them really stand water and we shall take a raincheck without getting into discussing those. We shall only say that the real issue here is the hankering to somehow give these texts absurdly late dates, besides of course trivializing their authorship, devaluing their worth and integrity, as well as obfuscating their origins and genesis.

In 1498, Vasco da Gama reached Calicut and met the Zamorin. Maddy goes through an account of the meeting and offers his commentary. He also displays how various artists rendered this meeting.

Shows the Zamorin with a golden conical crown which is a depiction of a possible Thalapaavu or turban. Did the Zamorin wear a turban for ceremonial occasions? It is doubtful, but may have been keeping up appearances. The people around are obviously half clad (in reality just wearing a dhoti) and look terribly muscular (virtually impossible). As we read in Correa’s and other writings, the possibility of rings around his shin and calves like Romans is pretty doubtful, though he wore a Shringala. The large spittoon is depicted wrongly and the overall ambience thoroughly inappropriate. The room itself looks too high (impossible for a thatched roof dwelling) with ornate curtains and hangings. Note that the Zamorin has no beard.

When the Portuguese discovered the path to Calicut, it had repurcussions not just in India, but in Europe as well. CHF writes

Within the next couple of years, economic depression engulfed many of the trade centres of Europe, with firms collapsing and banks failing. The crisis was felt most in Venice which was the largest buyer of Asian spices. The Venetian Senate passed a resolution on 15th January 1506 on the alarming fall in trade as a consequence of the Portuguese arrival in Calicut: Since, as everybody knows, this commerce has now been reduced to the worst possible condition, it is essential to take some action and to provide our citizens with every facility for sailing the seas.

Anuraag Sanghi has a review of Arun Shourie’s Eminent Historians

Till 1857, the British followed the Spanish model, and used religious logic, to justify their plunder and massacre in India. The British used religious differences to foist artificial Muslim ‘leaders’ on India – to finally partition India. While Shourie is critical of these Muslim ‘leaders’ (rightly), of Nehru (partly to blame), he is gentle in his criticism of the British role (Chapter 14).

If you find interesting blog posts on India history, please send it to varnam.blog @gmail or to @varnam_blog. The next carnival will be up on Feb 15th.

Writing Historical Fiction (5): Research

Langum Prize for American Historical Fiction for 2010 has gone to Ann Weisgarber for The Personal History of Rachel DuPree. This book does not tell the story of murder or hidden treasure or scheming viziers, but is about black settlers in the American West. This is not my cup of green tea, but here is a snippet from an interview with Ms. Weisgarber on how she did the research.

Next I had to learn about the issues that shaped Rachel when she was a child and a young woman. This called for history lessons about black culture. I discovered popular music, slaughterhouses in Chicago, and race riots in East St. Louis. I discovered Ida B. Wells-Barnett and admired her greatly. So did Rachel. Absorbing the culture was another step toward my seeing the world through Rachel’s eyes.
Last, I had to learn about the mindset of the time period. I read novels and diaries written before and after the turn of the 20th Century. I discovered Rachel’s story was not unique; most women in the West, including Indians, struggled to feed their children. Many women lived with determined men. Heartache and homesickness were not unique experiences, but shared by many women. Rachel was one woman among many
My background in sociology pushes me think about my characters as people of their times. I believe it’s important to include references to literature, to music, and to popular culture. Characters don’t live in vacuums but are influenced by the news of their day as well as by events in the past. Newspaper headlines impact lives.[An interview with Ann Weisgarber]

The Khambat Story

In 1293 CE, Marco Polo visited a port town called ‘Cambaet’ or Khambat in Gujarat and wrote

In 1468, three decades before Vasco da Gama reached Malabar, a Russian horse-dealer named Afanasy Nikitin too reached there and was impressed with the riches. The Economic Times has an article on this city, which is no longer by the sea.

The prosperity of Khambat also had a significant impact on history. Take for instance the period around 1535 when Bahadur Shah, the Sultan of Gujarat refused to bow to Mughal imperial authority. The Mughals, newcomers to India, were eager to extent their reign across the country after having defeated the Lodi king at Panipat. Faced with an attack by the Mughal emperor Humayun, the Gujarat Sultan was confident of beating the enemy back, his confidence in his military being based on two elements.
However, the Mughal army pressed on, its ranks inflated by men seeking a share of Khambat’s wealth. The port town’s wealth became its own undoing and it burnt for three days in the wake of the Mughal attack. It also gave the Mughals their first view of the sea and of the opportunities it offered.
A generation later, Humayun’s son Akbar set his sights on Gujarat. He was motivated by the twin needs of attaining a sea outlet for his land-locked empire and for subduing the robber/baron nobles who were looting the wealth of the state. If men were drawn to India via Khambat, so were ideas. For Akbar, his first glimpse of the sea at Khambat also brought him into contact with merchants from Portugal, Turkey, Syria and Persia. Akbar wanted to be on friendly terms with the Portuguese who controlled the sea traffic to Mecca by their domination of the Arabian Sea. Over time, interaction with the Portuguese increased to an extent when Christian priests coming as part of a diplomatic mission from Portugal were given permission to preach and even convert people. Later, in 1612, the British adventurer William Hawkins would leave India from Khambat, after four years of dodging Mughal court intrigue and Portuguese hostility, while in Jahangir’s court.[Khambat: Once there was a sea]

Optical Illusions

You must have seen these images, typically used for displaying optical illusions. For example, in the first image, do you see a duck or a rabbit? In the second image, do you see an old woman or young woman? Now National Geographic has reported on one of the oldest such illusions which comes from a Paleolithic cave in France.

In a particularly striking example, a small figurine has been given the details of a bison on one side and those of a mammoth on the other. The Paleolithic artist was clearly playing with the similar contours of the two animals and creating a single object that could be flipped to represent one species or the other.[World’s Oldest Optical Illusion Found? ]

You can see the image here. This prompted Ravages to sent the following photo, found in temples in Tamil Nadu. Do you see a bull or an elephant?

The Earliest Writers & Writing Systems

A major human breakthrough, besides agriculture, was the ability to represent a language graphically. In ancient societies, where most of the people were illiterate, the writing was done by scribes.

In this video, Sara Brumfield of UCLA demonstrates how scribes wrote on clay tablets in Mesopotamia.
This video from The Oriental Institute, Chicago, talks about these scribes and the rationale behind cuneiform.
Egyptian scribes and their work is described in this video from The Oriental Institute, Chicago

Ancient Cloth Production in Greece and Turkey

The Bryn Mawr Classical Review has a review of Brendan Burke’s From Minos to Midas: Ancient Cloth Production in the Aegean and in Anatolia. Ancient Textiles Series 7. This is interesting because the Minoan culture existed during the Mature Harappan period and we can learn how these states produced and exchanged clothes as well as how they used seals.

Two interesting sections in this chapter caught my attention: his discussions of purple dye and of Minoan seal stones. Burke argues for the appearance of purple dye from murex snails to occur in Minoan Crete before anywhere else in the Mediterranean (34ff). He brings together textual sources, bioarchaeological evidence, artifacts, and archaeological facilities and contexts in his discussion, and extends it to consider the role of textiles in ancient overseas trade between Minoan Crete and other cultures in the eastern Mediterranean.
Burke argues for the administration of textile production in the Old Palace Period, based on seal impressed loom weights and spindle whorls as well as a certain type of prismatic seal. He suggests that a motif found on more than twenty-five different seal stones represents three to five loom weights suspended from a bar at the bottom of a warp-weighted loom (44ff, especially fig. 30).3 Burke concludes that the standardized weights of loom weights and their concentrated numbers indicate a “regulated textile industry administered by the Old Palace at Knossos” (58).[Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2010.12.67]

Briefly Noted: Centurion (2010)

Centurion The Roman Ninth Legion is a favorite topic of movie makers and novelists. The movies include the forgettable Aishwarya Rai starrer The Last Legion (2007) and upcoming The Eagle (2011) and the novels include Stephen Bennett’s Last of the Ninth and Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth. The British film Centurion deals with the legion’s adventures against the Picts in 117 C.E.
Why this interest in the Ninth legion? Around 117 C.E, the legion disappeared in Britain like how the army of Cambyses II vanished in the Egyptian desert. There are many explanations for this disappearance: some think they perished in the Bar Kochba Revolt while other suggest it was in the conflict with the Parthians. In this movie, Neil Marshall, provides another explanation.
The movie is the swords and sandals version of The Seven Samurai. When their legion is decimated by the Picts (a visually stunning scene) and the General kidnapped, seven survivors decide to rescue him. They reach the Pict camp, but fail to unlock the General’s chains, thus leaving him to his death. The seven then decide to return back to the Romans who have moved to Hadrian’s Wall, but are chased by the Picts. Some survive, some don’t.
Being a plot driven action movie, it does not have much time for character development like Gladiator. There is action — chases, battles, torture — right from the start as if James Bond time traveled to the second century. Even if you have been saturated with Roman violence, this one takes it up a notch. It is a watchable movie: not a classic and not so bad either.

150 years of ASI

The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) is understaffed: they don’t have enough people to protect sites under their care nor enough people for underwater archaeology. They don’t have the power to protect sites like the Megalithic site near Thrissur. But then you got to work with the ASI you got and not the ASI you want. That ASI is completing 150 years and on this occasion, Frontline has a politically correct interview with the Director-General (he refuses to comment on Ayodhya, Sethusamudram).

Let me tell you that the ASI is a highly understaffed organisation. The government is aware of the problem and is making its best efforts to strengthen the ASI by providing additional manpower. Whatever may be the extent of additional manpower, such problems cannot be tackled by government initiatives alone. Unless civil society comes forward to defend our heritage, there is very little hope for our monuments. I am not saying this in order to evade our responsibility. Monuments in remote areas are guarded by one attendant. In many cases, the nationally protected monuments do not have the minimum requirement of attendants. So by the time the communication reaches the authorities, the damage is already done.As I said earlier, the ASI must put in its best efforts to stop these. But civil society and people in the neighbourhood too should take proactive steps on these matters. The ASI or the State governments cannot really make much progress on their own[Custodian of heritage]