Bronze keris ?

[A. G. Maisey]

Pusaka, there is much that is not mentioned in the Vedas, and I do not know why.

The Aryans were pastoralists, they moved into India, they brought verbal traditions with them, encountered a Bronze Age culture, spread through the Indian Sub-Continent, and as they spread they carried aspects of the material culture of the indigenous people of India with them.

By the time that the era begun by the Aryans, that is, the Vedic Age, was replaced by the Hindu belief systems, iron was widely used throughout India.

In their homeland, immediately prior to the migration into the Sub-Continent, it seems probable that iron was unknown. Similarly, the first major culture that the Aryans encountered in India was still a Bronze Age culture, even though Iron was being made and used in other parts of India at that time.

We have a very good idea of when the Iron Age began in various parts of the world.

We have know when the Vedas were written.

We know that the only part of the Vedas that was originated outside of India is the Samhitas, which is the oldest part of the Vedas.

We know that Ashvamedha was performed in ancient times, and that there is a possibility that it has been performed in relatively recent times.

We know approximately when the Aryan migrations began

There appears to be no longer any scholarly debate about any of this.

I am aware that there is a lot popular content, and some rather unpleasant debate on the net around the subjects raised here, but I prefer not to involve myself in this type of discussion. There is a place for myth, legend and popular belief, there is a place for that which is accepted as factual, or at least probably factual, by the academic community. Sometimes I like to play with the myth, legend, popular belief thing, other times I prefer to try to stay as closely in tune as possible with the academic stream of thought. In this present matter I tend to prefer academia to popularism.