My interview on Herald TV

https://youtu.be/yVlRS6opQtI?si=adXW6lyLwUnGSZzIhttps://youtu.be/yVlRS6opQtI?si=adXW6lyLwUnGSZzI

interview

https://youtu.be/yVlRS6opQtI

Interview on Herald TV

.                 https://youtu.be/yVlRS6opQtI?si=A2PNq0AHOnAyju8c

"Ancient India: Towards Searching Cultural Foundations ". INTRODUCTION ---Gopal Chippalkatti

This is a brief introduction to my book. " Ancient India: Towards Searching Cultural Foundations"

----Gopal Chippalkatti

References to the West Asian and European contacts galore in the in the wake of Indo-European language and Aryan race studies in the histories books on ancient India. The East and China are seldom mentioned. Rare references to 

contacts-relations-influences   between pre- Buddhist Magadh in Eastern India and Sichuan and Yunnan, the western provinces of China are somewhere mentioned in margins. However, in the eyes of this author these links point towards possibilities and for altering altogether our understanding of ancient Indian history, culture, religion, language and race. Connecting these links and destroying the myth of singular culture presuppositions of the ancient India it attempts to draw an altogether new picture. A new fountainhead of our cultural past emerges. It postulates an entirely new way of thinking and a new direction.

Zhang Quian, who  reached from China to Bactria via the trans Himalayan Silk Road  in 2nd century BCE, mentioned that  Sichuan cloth and Quian staves were transported directly to Magadh in Eastern India on ardourous routes for centuries together.  The book lists such references and expects thorough investigation using such scarce references,  both in Chinese and Indian sources, for detailed studies with all the concomitant cultural linkages. Though on a smaller scale and with limited resources, it begins to and expands the probing horizons into religion, language, philosophy and other spheres of culture.

Contents of the book are spread over eight chapters. In the first two chapters It lays threadbare the  linkages of varied relations between North East India, Bengal and Magadh with Sichuan and Yunnan with references to paths, trading commodities etc. in ancient and medieval times. It contains references from the  Indian scholars like Harprasad Ray, P.C. Bagchi, Sharat and Supriti Phukan, Arvind Jamkhedkar, Amalendu Guha,  Shridhar Vyankatesh Ketkar, Sunitikumar Chatterjee. It quotes from western  and Chinese scholars like Joseph Needham and Bin Yang. Giving a brief history of China it juxtaposes varied cultural contexts. It discusses the walls of China, Southwestern independent cultures in Sichuan and Yunnan,  use of bronze couldrauns and weapons, horses and chariots and things like bamboo, silk, rice and cowrees to weave a tapestry of an alternate coexistence of Eastern neighborhood cultures equally thick when compared with the western Aryans. It compares the philosophies, religions, social formations of the two landscapes of Eastern India and western China.

An archaeological and historical review of the Steppe Scythians- Shakas is attempted in Chapter III. It shows the advent of Scythian Northerners in early China and their possible connections with Shakys and Lichhavis of Magadh.

Chapter IV specifies the differences between Vedic and Shraman cultures and shows the eastern Shraman tradition as the foundation of earliest history and culture of India.  Chapter V brings forth Parshvanath as the founder of Shraman philosophy and shows Jain ethos in relief and it's connections with the aboriginals in central and eastern India. Buddhism- it's tradition, philosophy and religion- is portrayed in relation to the main thesis of the book and its spread across nations is shown in Chapter VI.  Languages in Assam Bengal and their connect with Sino-Tibetan-Burman languages is sketched in Chapter VII. A brief update on ancient Indian languages is attempted in Chapter VIII. The author has written a prologue to make his value premises clear. The book contains a considerably exhaustive bibliography.

Searching the geography of ancient steppe ancestry entering India through eastern gates of China's South Western Silk routes in pre Mahaveer, Buddha and Vedic days. May be through Zugarian Pass or Altai-Sichuan-Yunnan-Burma-India routes.