A new date for the Ṛgveda

Philosophy and Chronology, 2000. — Special issue of Journal of Indian Coucil of Philosophical Research (June, 2001). — 23 pp.A shorter, slightly different version with the title 'The Rgveda and Indo-Europeans' by N. Kazanas was published in the Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (ABORI), vol 80, 1999 (Pune, India, 2000). It presents the thesis that the RV is far older than mainstream indologists maintain and ascribes the composition of the bulk of it to the fourth millennium BC (some hymns even earlier). It argues that the IndoAryans were natives of Saptasindhu (ie the land of the Seven Rivers in what is today north-west India and Pakistan) examining archaeological, literary, linguistic and comparative-mythological material. Some of the arguments would need reformulation in view of new and firmer (mainly archaeoastronomical) evidence, which in fact reinforce the conlusions on the early date of the RV.