Ambala
Ambala is a city and a municipal corporation in Ambala district in the state of Haryana, India, located on the border with the Indian state of Punjab and in proximity to both states capital Chandigarh.
Quotes
[edit]- If the first home of the Aryans can be determined at all by the conditions topographical and meteorological, described in their early hymns, then decidedly the Punjab was not that home. For here there are neither mountains nor monsoon storms to burst, yet storm and mountain belong to the very marrow of the Rigveda... If there is an area which fulfils these conditions, according to Hopkins, it is ―a district […] where monsoon storms and mountain scenery are found, that district, namely, which lies South of Umballa (or Ambālā). It is here, in my opinion, that the Rigveda, taken as a whole, was composed. In every particular, this locality fulfils the physical conditions under which the composition of the hymns was possible, and what is of paramount importance, is the first district east of the Indus that does so.
- Edward Washburn Hopkins 1898:20, The Punjab and the Rig-Veda. Hopkins, Edward W. pp. 19-28 in JAOS (Journal of the American Oriental Society), Vol. 19, July 1898. Quoted in Talageri, S. G. (2010). The Rigveda and the Avesta. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.
- It is certain ... that the Rigveda offers no assistance in determining the mode in which the Vedic Aryans entered India., .. If, as may be the case, the Aryan invaders of India entered by the western passes of the Hindu Kush and proceeded thence through the Punjab to the east, still that advance is not reflected in the Rigveda, the bulk at least of which seems to have been composed rather in the country round the Sarasvati river, south of the modern Ambala.
- Arthur Berriedale Keith. (1922: 79); 1922, The Age of the Rigveda ' in The Cambridge History of India , Vol.I. quoted from THE ṚGVEDA AND INDO-EUROPEANS Author(s): Nicholas Kazanas Source: Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Vol. 80, No. 1/4 (1999), pp. 15-42
- A.B. Keith: "The Age of the Rigveda", in : The Problem of Aryan Origins by K.D. Sethna, Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi, 1992.
- Max Müller, Weber, Muir, and others held that the Punjab was the main scene of the activity of the Rgveda, whereas the more recent view put forth by Hopkins and Keith is that it was composed in the country round the SarasvatI river south of modem AmbAla.”
- The History and Culture of the Indian People, Vol. I: The Vedic Age edited by R.C. Majumdar, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Publications, Mumbai, 6th edition 1996.
- When the [Rig Vedic] hymns were written the focus of Āryan culture was the region between the Jamnā (Sanskrit Yamunā) and Satlaj (Shutudrī), south of the modern Ambālā, and along the upper course of the river Sarasvatī. The latter river is now an insignificant stream, losing itself in the desert of Rajasthan, but it then [in Rig Vedic times] flowed broad and strong...
- Basham, A.L., The Wonder That Was India, third edn, Rupa & Co., Calcutta, 1981, pp. 31-32. quoted in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.
