Harking Back: The ancient tussle between prophets and priests.

Byline: Majid Sheikh

The most fascinating aspect of the evolution of the origins of our social beliefs is the way it has evolved over the last 5,000 years. For the sake of clarity we must examine the sub-continent as a whole, and as history tells us dividing lines of any type ultimately dissolve.

We know thanks to linguistic data, that the northern and western portion of the sub-continent speaks languages classified as Indo-European, or as some classify it as Indo-Aryan. The coastal languages starting from Baluchistan going toward the entire southern sub-continent is of an earlier Dravidian linguistic nature. In fact this language structure continues towards the Australian continent where the original inhabitants (sadly called Aboriginals, a racist colonial term) speak a language with a Dravidian structure. Why is this so?

In pre-historic times there were two major migrations from humanity's initial melting pot, that being Africa. The first was along the coast eastwards, while much later another major migration headed to the north, spilling over to the west and upper east. These migrations were not a rush of people, but a slow trickle, very much like the very recent Afghan migration into Pakistan, or the much earlier gypsy migrations to the west after every major invasion of the sub-continent.

As we focus on the linguistic structure of the land that is today Pakistan, we see only one enclave where people who still speak a language with a Dravidian structure, they being the Brahui people of Central Baluchistan, with small Brahui communities in Iran, Afghanistan, and even one small group in Turkmenistan. A 2016 survey says that there are 3.28 million Brahui speakers in the world.

But then as we in Lahore speak an Indo-Aryan language, be it Punjabi or Urdu, we must answer the question just who are the 'original' inhabitants of the land that we today call Pakistan, or let us say the Western and North-Western sub-continent. A research by the United Nations on the 'changars', or the 'gypsies' (the word 'Egypte' corrupted by the French) of the world showed them to have both Dravidian and Aryans genes, but all confined to the Punjab river banks and to western Rajasthan. So there is genetic evidence to show that before the 'changars' there were two major migrations. In this piece our interest is our own origins.

The Indo-Aryan migration was massive waves, but thousands of ebbs spread over thousands of years. The origin of the Aryans, a definition of...