Prof R N Iyengar presented the following at the IIT Gandhinagar conference

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Abstract:

  • The story of the child prince Dhruva who by his penance became the Pole Star is a captivating children’s story. This can be traced to the Brahmānda Purāna (BP) and the Visnu Purāna (VP) which were scripted into their present form in the early centuries of the Common Era (CE). But, there was no visible star at the North Celestial Pole (NCP) during the above period that could have been called Dhruva meaning fixed.

  • From where did the Purānas inherit such an astral legend so vividly? Thereby hangs a piece of Indian history of seminal importance going back to early Vedic times (Taittirīya Āranyaka) when the star Abhaya (Fearless) was stationary, to be popularly called Dhruva (Fixed) at the tail end of a group of fourteen stars looking like a four footed aquatic animal called Śiśumāra.

  • This constellation forgotten over millennia, except by a handful of orthodox Hindus through their sacred texts, is recognizable as the modern constellation Draco. Abhaya the fourteenth star on this whale-like animal figure is α-Draconis(Thuban),which was the North Pole Star for a fairly long period during 3200-2400BCE.

  • Due to the effect of precession, this sky picture changed with a Vedic text mentioning Dhruva to be moving. There are Vedic rituals of drawing Soma juice in Dhruva Graha or Sthālī (Dhruva cup) that has one to one correspondence with the fixed star of the same name. Even as late as 11th century Alberuni writes that the Hindus he knew, claim that their Pole Star is in a group of stars called Śākvara or Śiśūmāra.

  • Irrespective of when the Taittirīya Āranyaka and the Brahmānda Purāna got fixed, these texts carry cultural layers of the epoch circa 3000 BCE as long term societal memory.


This conference was conducted by IIT Gandhinagar, from Feb 10th to 12th 2023 at the Archaeological Sciences Center, IIT Gandhinagar campus.

An Excerpt from the conference website:

  • Even though field investigations for well over a century have contributed enormously to a better understanding of the civilization, several facets require further research with coordination between research institutions and government organizations.

  • These include the nature of the state and political organization, the climatic profile of each region, the authors of the Harappan civilization, the factors that contributed to its decline, its technological and cultural legacy, its possible connections to Vedic and other cultures of India, and the decipherment of the Harappan/Indus script, to name a few.

  • For this, it is necessary to hold coordinated deliberations on the results obtained so far, on further prospects of intensive field research, followed by science-based analytical research. The proposed international conference thus aims at (i) bringing together the scholarly community engaged in those themes, (ii) deliberating on the various facets and unresolved issues of this civilization, (iii) arriving at a consensus on terminologies used in this context, (iv) fostering future collaborations in fieldwork and research, (v) proposing a national centre for Harappan studies, (vi) bringing together various state governments and research institutions to evolve a mechanism for the protection, preservation of this rich cultural heritage with the help of Government of India.