New Delhi, November 23: Former director-general of Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) B.B. Lal on Saturday dubbed the hypothesis of "Aryan invasion of India" a myth. He alleged that it was still accepted for reasons other than historical.

"The theory that there was an Aryan invasion of India is completely wrong," Lal stressed in a seminar in New Delhi and alleged that political reasons were behind its being in the textbooks.The dating of the Vedas to 1200 BC by Max Muller was ad hoc and even he confessed it to his colleagues, Lal claimed and argued that the Rig Veda could not be later than 2000 BC.

He also discounted the discovery of skeletons at Mohenjodaro site, the basis for hypothesising an invasion and said, "the hard fact is that these came from various levels, some from the middle and some from the late, and some were found in deposits after the site was abandoned".

There were no remains of weapons and material culture of the invaders at the site, the former director-general said.

He also came down on those historians who assert that the 'Dravidians' are descendants of Harappans who dispersed after the 'Aryan invasion'. None of the four southern states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala has any Harappan sites, but sites of Neolithic culture, Lal said.

"Do the proponents of this theory expect us to believe that urban Harappans, on being sent away to south India, shed overnight their urban characteristics and took to a stone age way of living?" asks Lal.

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