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Indo-European studies

Out of India Theory (OIT) is the hypothesis that the Indo-European languages (I-E) originated in India, from which they spread into Central and Southwestern Asia and Europe. The theory suggests that the Indus Valley Civilization was Proto-Indo-Iranian (in obsolete or popular terminology, "Aryan"). It suggests the spread of Proto-Indo-European from within Northern India. It uses mainly archaeological and Vedic textual references. This theory is not favored by the Indo-Europeanist community. The majority of the Indo-Europeanist community favours the Kurgan hypothesis postulating a 4th millennium expansion from the Pontic steppe.

This theory has been debated in academic literature, most recently by S.G. Talageri[1], Koenraad Elst[2], and Nicholas Kazanas[3]. Nicholas Kazanas presented a paper in JIES[4], where Kazanas' arguments were rejected by no less than five mainstream scholars, among them JP Mallory. In the latter issue of JIES, Kazanas responded to all his reviwers in the article ‘Final Reply’[4]. OIT proponents propose to use the language dispersal model proposed by Johanna Nichols in the paper The Epicentre of the Indo-European Linguistic Spread[5]. But shift the locus of the IE spread from the vicinity of ancient Bactria-Sogdiana as proposed by her to Northwestern India.

Contents

[edit] History

See also Aryan Invasion Theory (history and controversies).

When the finding of connections between languages from India to Europe led to the creation of Indo-European studies in the late 1700s some Indians and Europeans believed that the Proto-Indo-European language must be Sanskrit, or something very close to it. Some of the earliest Indo-Europeanists, such as Friedrich Schlegel[6], had a firm belief in this and essentially created the idea that India was the Urheimat of all Indo-European languages. Most scholars, such as William Jones, however realized from earliest times that instead, Sanskrit and related European languages had a common source, and that no attested language represented this direct ancestor.

The development of historical linguistics, specifically the law of palatals and the discovery of the laryngeals in Hittite, dramatically shattered Sanskrit's preeminent status as the most venerable elder in this reconstructed family. The demotion of Sanskrit from its status as the original tongue of the Indo-Europeans to a more secondary and reduced role as a daughter language led to the demotion of India as the favored Indo-European homeland in the early nineteenth century.

Robert Latham, an ethnologist, was the first to challenge the idea of an Asian homeland. He said that the homeland of the Indo-Europeans must be found wherever the greater variety of language forms were evidenced, that is, in or near Europe. Dyen (1965) has articulated this principle on similar grounds: A homeland in Central Asia is the simpler theory [7]. In 1930, in response to Latham's hypothesis, Lachhmi Dhar provided a different explanation for this greater linguistic diversification in the western Indo-European languages of Europe. Dhar's position invokes a linguistic principle based on the conservation principle. This holds that the area of least linguistic change is indicative of a language's point of origin, since that area has been the least affected by substrate interference.[8]

Current OIT proponents propose that there is no necessary link between the fact that Sanskrit is not the oldest form of IE and the hypothesis that India is not the oldest habitat of IE. It is perfectly possible that a Kentum language which we now label as PIE was spoken in India, that some of its speakers emigrated and developed Kentum languages like Germanic and Tokharic, and that subsequently the PIE language in its Indian homeland developed and satemized into Sanskrit (Elst 1996-227).

[edit] Chronology

Map showing the spread of the Proto-Indo-European language from the Indus Valley. Dates are those of the "emerging non-invasionist model" according to Elst.
Map showing the spread of the Proto-Indo-European language from the Indus Valley. Dates are those of the "emerging non-invasionist model" according to Elst.

Neolithic and Bronze Age Indian history is periodized into the Pre-Harappan (ca. 7000 to 3300 BC), Early Harappan (3300 to 2600), Mature Harappan (2600 to 1900) and Late Harappan (1900 to 1300 BC) periods.

One recent author with a degree in Indology is Koenraad Elst who is at least aware of the context of Indo-European studies.

The timeline of the breakup of Proto-Indo-European, according to what Elst calls the "emerging non-invasionist model" is as follows: During the 6th millenium BC, the Proto-Indo-Europeans were living in the Punjab region of Northern India. As the result of demographic expansion, they spread into Bactria as the Kambojas. The Paradas moved further and inhabited the Caspian coast and much of Central Asia while the Cinas moved northwards and inhabited the Tarim Basin in northwestern China, forming the Tocharians group of I-E speakers. These groups were Proto-Anatolian and inhabited that region by 2000 BC. These people took the oldest form of the Proto Indo-European (PIE) language with them and, while interacting with people of the Anatolian and Balkan region, transformed it into its own dialect. While inhabiting Central Asia they discovered the uses of the horse, which they later sent back to Urheimat[9]. Later on during their history, they went on to take Western Europe and thus spread the Indo-European languages to that region.[9] During the 4th millenium BC, civilization in India was evolving to become the urban Indus Valley Civilization. During this time, the PIE languages evolved to Proto-Indo-Iranian[9] Some time during this period, the Indo-Iranians began to separate as the result of internal rivalry and conflict, with the Iranians expanding westwards towards Mesopotamia and Persia, these possibly were the Pahlavas. Their also expanded into parts of Central Asia. By the end of this migration, India was left with the Proto-Indo-Aryans. At the end of the Mature Harappan period, the Sarasvati river began drying up and the remained of Indo-Aryans split into separate categories. Some travelled westwards and became the Mitanni people by around 1500 BC. The Mitanni are known for their links to Vedic culture, after assimilating and establishing a presence in the Hurrian homeland, they established a culture very similar to that of Vedic India. Thus the Mitanni language is still considered Indo-Aryan. Others travelled eastwards and inhabited the Gangetic basin while others travelled southwards and interacted with the Dravidian people. [9]

[edit] Linguistics

See also linguistics, or historical linguistics.

OIT proponents have used the arguments presented by linguistic scholars to show that either the linguistic evidence is inconclusive or supports OIT hypothesis. OIT proponents propose to use the language dispersal model proposed by Johanna Nichols in the paper The Epicentre of the Indo-European Linguistic Spread[5]. But shift the locus of the IE spread from the vicinity of ancient Bactria-Sogdiana as proposed by her to Northwestern India. These assertions have not been accepted by mainstream linguistic scholars.

[edit] The Evidence of Linguistic Isoglosses

There are, as Shan M.M. Winn points out, “ten ‘living branches’… Two branches, Indic (Indo-Aryan) and Iranian dominate the eastern cluster. Besides these ten living branches, there are two extinct branches, Anatolian (Hittite) and Tocharian. Whatever the dispute about the exact order in which the different branches migrated away from the homeland, the linguists are generally agreed on two important points:

1. Anatolian (Hittite) was the first branch to leave the homeland.

2. Four branches, Indic, Iranian, Hellenic (Greek) and Thraco-Phrygian (Armenian) were the last branches remaining behind in the original homeland after the other branches had dispersed.

Certain likenesses between the Hellenic (Greek) branch and the Indo-Iranian branch seem suggestive that Greek and Indo-Iranian shared a common homeland for awhile after the splitting of the other IE branches. Such a homeland could be northwestern India.

Talageri(Talageri 2000: Ch 7, section III)[1] quotes the argument presented by Winn that [10] Greek and Indic should not be separated by millenniums of linguistic change - due to the close grammatical correspondences between them.

H. Hock[11], who does not support OIT, does not consider OIT disapproved on linguistic isoglosses evidence.

[edit] Dravidian Substrata in Rigvedic Sanskrit

A concern raised by mainstream linguistic scholars is that the Indic PIE languages show influence from contact with Dravidian. Talageri's (2000 Chapter 7 Sec V)[1] quotes a paper by Edwin F. Bryant, Linguistic Substrata and the Indigenous Aryan Debate (1996). After his examination of the claims and counterclaims of the linguists, Bryant concludes that the ‘evidence’ of a linguistic substratum in Indo-Aryan is inconclusive.

Witzel states that RV level I has no Dravidian loan words at all[12]. Talageri argues that RigVedic Sanskrit not having any knowledge of any other language is in conflict with the Aryan migration theory, as the Aryan immigrants had adopted the “material culture and lifestyle” of the Harappans (Allchins 1997: 223; also Witzel 1995: 113)

H. Hock (1975, 1984) rejected the Dravidian substratum list of grammatical and syntactical features created by M.B. Emeneau (1956, 1969,1974), F.B.J. Kuiper (1967) and Massica (1976). He pointed out that most of these features actually have parallels in other Indo-European languages outside India, and therefore they were more likely to be internal developments in Indoaryan. Since then, several other linguists, some of which are proponents of the Aryan migration theory, have rejected the idea that these features are Dravidian features. But others have kept the theory open.

P. Thieme (1994) examined and rejected Kuiper’s (1991) list of 380 words from the Rigveda, constituting four percent of the Rigvedic vocabulary in toto, gave Indoaryan or Sanskrit etymologies for most of these words, and characterized Kuiper’s exercise as an example of a misplaced “zeal for hunting up Dravidian loans in Sanskrit”. Rahul Peter Das, likewise rejects (1994) Kuiper’s list, and emphasises that there is “not a single case in which a communis opinio has been found confirming the foreign origin of a Rgvedic (and probably Vedic in general) word”.

[edit] Place Names and Hydronomy

Indo-Aryan languages are the oldest source of place and river names in northern India - which is an argument in favor of seeing Indo-Aryan as the oldest documented population of that area.

During a conference on Archaeological and Linguistic Approaches to Ethnicity in Ancient South Asia, held in Toronto on 4th-6th October 1991, Dr. Witzel[13] states that “in northern India, rivers in general have early Sanskrit names from the Vedic period, and names derived from the daughter languages of Sanskrit later on. In Europe river-names were found to reflect the languages spoken before the influx of Indo-European speaking populations. They are thus older than c. 4500-2500 BC (depending on the date of the spread of Indo-European languages in various parts of Europe). This is especially surprising in the area once occupied by the Indus civilization, where one would have expected the survival of earlier names, as has been the case in Europe and the Near East."

OIT proponents argue that this suggest that Aryan were indigenous to India. As per the migration theory Aryan came to a area of relatively advanced civilization spread over 1.5 million km, they could not have changed existing names without creating confusion and without use of force.

Witzel himself (1999/2:$1.9) notes that the Sumerians in the 3rd millennium already knew the name Sindhu as referring to the lower basin of the Indus river, then the most accessible part of the Harappan civiliza­tion. OIT proponent argue that this shows presence of Aryan in India well before the mainstream date of 1500 BC.

[edit] Sanskrit

OIT proponents suggest that Sanskrit remains in many respects closest to PIE, as a standard textbook of IE testifies (Beekes 1990)[14] . T Burrow (1973) has also said that Vedic Sanskrit is less altered from original Indo-European than any other member of the family[15]. This suggests that Vedic Sanskrit in some aspects is more conservative than other branches of IE. Sometimes conservative traits in a language can be correlated with the speakers having a more sedentary lifestyle. This could suggest that Indo-Aryans were sedentary and remained in the original homeland while other groups left.

Since according to the “Indo-Aryan immigration” theory the IndoAryans were on the move over many thousands of miles (from the Russian steppe, Europe and/or Anatolia) over a very long period of centuries encountering many different other cultures, their language could not have retained this closeness to PIE.

[edit] Philology

The determination of the age in which Vedic literature started and flourished has its consequences for the Indo Aryan question. The oldest text, the RigVeda, is full of precise references to places and natural phenomena in what are now Panjab and Haryana, and was unmistakably composed in that part of India. The date at which it was composed is a firm terminus ante quem for the presence of the Vedic Aryans in India.

In a rather shoddy way, Friedrich Max Müller launched the hypothesis that the RigVeda had to be dated to about 1200 BC, and eventhough he later retracted it, that arbitrary guess has become the orthodoxy. [16] It is forgotten too often that in his own day, other scholars rejected this extremely late date on a variety of grounds. Maurice Winternitz based his estimate on purely philological considerations: “We cannot explain the development of the whole of this great literature if we assume as late a date as round about 1200 BC or 1500 BC as its starting-point.” [17] You cannot credibly cram the complicated linguistic, cultural and philosophical developments which are in evidence in Vedic literature, into just a few centuries. (Elst 1999: Ch2.1)[2]. Kazanas states that the date of Rigveda is a doctrine supported by arguments alone and no actual evidence (Kazanas 2000:2)[3]


OIT proponents propose that bulk of Rigveda was composed prior to Indus Valley Civilization by linking archaeological evidence with data from Vedic text and archaeo-astronomical evidence.

[edit] Sarasvati River

Many hymns in all ten Books of the RV (except the 4th) extoll or mention a divine and very large river (naditamaa), named Sarasvati[18], which flows mightily “from the mountains to the [Indian] Ocean” (giríbhya aaZ samudraZat: VII, 95, 2). (Kazanas 2000:4)[3] Talageri states that “the references to the Sarasvati far outnumber the references to the Indus” and “The Sarasvati is so important in the whole of the Rigveda that it is worshipped as one of the Three Great Goddesses” (Talageri, 2000: Ch 4: The Rigvedic Rivers)[1]. According to palaeoenvironmental scientists the desiccation of Sarasvati came about as a result of the diversion of at least two rivers that fed it, the Satluj and the Yamuna. “The chain of tectonic events … diverted the Satluj westward (into the Indus) and the Palaeo Yamunaa eastward (into the Ganga) … This explains the ‘death’ of such a mighty river (the Sarasvati) … because its main feeders, the Satluj and Palaeo Yamunaa were weaned away from it by the Indus and the Gangaa respectively” [19][20]. This ended at c 1750, but it started much earlier, perhaps with the upheavals and the large flood of 1900, or more probably 2100 [21][22]. P H Francfort, utilizing images from the French satellite SPOT, finds (1992) that the large river Sarasvati is pre-Harappan altogether and started drying up in the middle of the 4th millennium BC; during Harappan times only a complex irrigation-canal network was being used in the southern region. With this the date should be pushed back to c 3800 BC. The RV hymn X, 75, however, gives a list of names of rivers where Sarasvati is merely mentioned (verse 5) while Sindhu receives all the praise (verses 2-4 and 7-9). This may well indicate a period after the first drying up of Sarasvati (c 3500) when the river lost its preeminence. It is agreed that the tenth Book of the RV is later than the others. (Kazanas 2000:4, 5)[3]

[edit] Items not in Rigveda

  • The RV knows no silver. It knows ayas ‘metal’ or ‘copper/bronze’ and candra or hiran-ya ‘gold’ but not silver. Silver is denoted by rajatám- híran-yam literally ‘white gold’ and appears in post-Rivgvedic texts. There is a generally accepted demarcation line for the use of silver c 4000 BC and this metal is archaeologically attested in the Harappan Empire (Allchins 1969: 285; Rao 1991: 171). (Allchins et. all cited by Kazanas 2000:13)[3]
  • The Harappan culture is also unknown to the RV. The characteristic features of the Harappan culture are urban life, large buildings, permanently erected fire altars and bricks. There is no word for brick in RV and iswttakaa ‘brick’ appears only in post-Rigvedic texts.(Kazanas 2000:13)[3]
  • The RV mentions no rice or cotton, as the Vedic Index shows. Rice was found in at least three Harappan sites: Rangpur (2000-1500), Lothal (c 2000) and Mohenjodaro (c 2500) as Piggott (1961: 259), Grist (1965) and others testify (Rao 1991: 24, 101, 150 etc). Yet, despite the importance of rice in ritual in later times, the RV knows nothing of it. The cultivation of cotton is well attested in the Harappan civilization and is found at many sites thereafter.(Piggott et. all cited by Kazanas 2000:13)[3] (Elst 1999: Ch 5.3.10)[2]
  • Nakshatra: Sergent mentions: “The Rg-Veda doesn’t allude to it, except in its 10th mandala, the youngest one according to most indologists."[23] And even the youngest book only mentions “constellations” (RV 10:85:2), a concept known to all cultures, without specifying them as lunar mansions. At any rate, it is only at the end of (if not completely after) the Rg-Vedic period, well after the European branches of IE had left India, that the Nakshatra system was devised. This indicates once more that the RigVeda was pre-Harappan. (Sergent cited by Elst 1999: Ch 5.5) [2]
  • Bronze swords were used aplenty in the Bactrian culture and in Pirak, but are not mentioned in the Rigveda (a short knife can be made from soft metals like gold or copper, but a sword requires advanced bronze or iron metallurgy). [24] (Elst 1999: Ch 5.3.10)[2]
  • The weights and measures of Kautilya's Arthashastra (later Vedic text) are the same as those used in Lothal. [25]


On this set of evidence the whole of the RV, except for some few passages which may be of later date, must have been composed prior to Indus Valley Civilization.(Kazanas 2000:13[3], Elst 1999: Ch 5.5[2])

[edit] Memories of Urheimat

It has been pointed out that the Vedas[26] present no direct mention of a Urheimat, unlike other ancient texts such as the Torah. To have forgotten a homeland which they may have left a few centuries ago (based on Aryan migration models) is incoherent with what has been seen in other parts of the world in Ancient History. Other branches of IE have a clear migration history, even if no literary record has been preserved. It is commonly accepted that the Celtic and Italic peoples were invaders into their classical habitats. The Celts’ itinerary can be archaeologically traced back to Slovakia and Hungary, and Germany still preserves some Celtic place-names. In France, Spain, and the British Isles, a large pre-IE population existed, comprising at least two distinct language families. The Iranians are fairly clear about their history of immigration from Hapta-Hendu and Airyanam Vaejo, two of sixteen Iranian lands mentioned in the Zoroastrian scripture Vendidad. (see below).(Elst 1999: Ch 4.6)[2]


Some branches of the IE family have no memory of any migration, some have vague memories of their own immigration into their historical habitat, the Iranian branch has a distinct memory of migration from India to Iran, and only the Indian branch has a record of emigration of others from its own habitat. However, if the Indian subcontinent, the site of the composition of the Vedas, was the Urheimat of the Vedic people, this problem would not be present.(Elst 1999: Ch 4.6)[2]

[edit] Comparative mythology

It is a well known fact of History that people first lose their religion and then perhaps their language: eg Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Iranians et al, lost their old religion but retained to different degrees their old language. Religious elements and terms change more easily. Comparint the Table of Deities, it can be seen that the IndoAryans have retained the names of more deities than any other branch. In fact, no major motif of the old religion is found in two or more IE branches that is not preserved in the RV also. (Kazanas 2000: 6, 7) [3]

[edit] Indo Iranian and Avesta

Talageri (Talageri, 2000: Ch 6: The Indo-Iranian Homeland)[1] argues that the documented evidence shows Indo-Iranian were present earlier in Eastern region. Talageri quotes P. Oktor Skjærvø "the earliest evidence for the Iranians is 835 BC in the case of Iran, and 521 BC in the case of Central Asia. [27] The earliest geographical names … inherited from Indo-Iranian times” indicate an area in southern Afghanistan, as per Skjærvø’s".[28] He also quotes Gherardo Gnoli, Zoroaster’s Time and Homeland "show very clearly that the oldest regions known to the Iranians were Afghanistan and areas to its east. Gnoli repeatedly stresses “the fact that Avestan geography, particularly the list in Vd. I, is confined to the east,”[29] and points out that this list is “remarkably important in reconstructing the early history of Zoroastrianism”. Talageri states that The Rigveda and the Avesta are united in testifying to the fact that the Saptasindhu or Hapta-HAndu was a homeland of the Iranians.

Talageri states "The development of the common Indo-Iranian culture, reconstructed from linguistic, religious, and cultural elements in the Rigveda and the Avesta, took place in the “later Vedic period”. He quotes J.C. Tavadia [30] and Helmut Humbach[31] to show the period of MaNDala VIII is the period of composition of the major part of the Avesta. This indicates the possibility of a rivalry between the Proto-Indo-Iranian which eventually led to split of the culture to the Iranian and Indo-Aryan cultures.[32] The Avesta also shows that Iranians of the time called themselves Dahas, a term also used by other ancient authors to refer to peoples in the area occupied by Indo-Iranian tribes..[33].

[edit] Archaeo-astronomy

Dr. Narahari Achar of the University of Memphis concludes based on a simulation using the software SkyMap Pro in conjunction with Pancang2, that the statements in zatapatha brAhmaNa (later Vedic document) about the kRttikAs never swerving from east and about saptarSis rising in the north point to events that could have been observed around 3000 BC.[34]. For arguments against the date of 3000 BC see Vedic Pleiades, or Hindu Astronomy.

He also states that archaeoastronomical evidence points to the Mahabharata war (later Vedic document) occurring in 3067 BC, long before mainstream linguistic estimates.[35]

OIT proponents argue that this shows presence of Aryan in India and composition of Vedic literature well before the mainstream date of 1500 BC.

[edit] Archaeology

Ancient Lothal, dating 2400 BCE, as envisaged by the Archaeological Survey of India. The OIT suggests that the Indo-Aryans had built this advanced city.
Ancient Lothal, dating 2400 BCE, as envisaged by the Archaeological Survey of India. The OIT suggests that the Indo-Aryans had built this advanced city. [36]

The opinion of the majority of professional archaeologists interviewed seems to be that there is no archaeological evidence to support external Indo-Aryan origins. Bryant 2001, p. 231

According to one archaeologist, J.M. Kenoyer:

"Although the overall socioeconomic organization changed, continuities in technology, subsistence practices, settlement organization, and some regional symbols show that the indigenous population was not displaced by invading hordes of Indo-Aryan speaking people. For many years, the ‘invasions’ or ‘migrations’ of these Indo-Aryan-speaking Vedic/Aryan tribes explained the decline of the Indus civilization and the sudden rise of urbanization in the Ganga-Yamuna valley. This was based on simplistic models of culture change and an uncritical reading of Vedic texts..."[37]

The examination of 300 skeletons from the Indus Valley Civilization and comparison of those skeletons with modern-day Indians by Kenneth Kennedy has also been a supporting argument for the OIT. Kennedy claims that the Harappan inhabitants of the Indus Valley Civilization are no different from the inhabitants of India in the following millennia.[38] However, this does not rule out one version of the Aryan Migration Hypothesis which suggests that the only "migration" was one of languages as opposed to a complete displacement of the indigenous population.

[edit] Archaeogenetics

Main article: Genetics and Archaeogenetics of South Asia

Recent studies in genetics have also been in support of the Out of India theory. The University of Massachusetts has not only found that modern Indian people trace their origin to nowhere other than the Indian subcontinent, but also determined that a movement of people out of India towards Europe is a more likely model. This was proposed by two of the leading researchers in the field: Dr. V. K. Kashyap and Dr. Peter Underhill of Stanford University. [39]

Other geneticists have carried out studies amongst varying castes of India. Dr. Vijendra Kashyap carried out a study of 936 Y chromosomes and determined that people living in India 10,000 years ago carry the same genetic traits as those living in India in modern times. However, this does not necessarily rules out one model for Indo-Aryan migration which proposes that instead of an influx of migrants from Central Asia, the Indo-European languages travelled via a small group of people who carried their languages and cultures throughout Asia.[40]

[edit] Criticism

  • Postulating the PIE homeland in northern India requires positing a larger number of migrations over longer distances than it would do if it were postulated to be near the center of linguistic diversity within the family. That is: A homeland in central asia is the simpler theory (as per Occams razor)( Dyen 1965, p. 15 cited in Bryant 2001, p. 142)Mallory (1989)
OIT proponents argue that Occams razor also rejects Kurgan hypothesis as that requires Hittite and Tocharian to be the earliest emigrants in two different and opposite directions, and Indo-Iranian, Armenian and Greek to be the last emigrants, again, in three different and opposite directions.
  • The distribution of linguistic isoglosses within the PIE family does not support northern india as the center of expansion (the archaic shared features are centered in central asia)
For OIT response please see The Evidence of Linguistic Isoglosses
  • Indic PIE languages show influence from contact with Dravidian and Munda - if PIE were spoken close to Dravidian and Munda all PIE languages would show these features. That is the contact between Indic and Dravidian/Munda must have occurred after the split of PIE meaning that proto-Indic speakers would have moved into contact with Dravidians and Mundans(Parpola 2005).[41]. (Mallory 1989)[page # needed].[42]
For OIT response please see Dravidian Substrata
  • To postulate the migration of PIE speakers out of India necessitates an earlier dating of the Rigveda than is normally accepted by Vedic scholars in order to make a deep enough period of migration to allow for the longest migrations to be completed.(Mallory 1989)
OIT proponents argue that mainstream date for Rigveda is incorrect and propose that bulk of Rigveda was composed prior to Indus Valley Civilization. See Philology above.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e The RigVeda - A Historical Analysis by Shrikant G. Talageri
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate by Koenraad Elst
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i A new date for the Rgveda by N Kazanas published in Philosophy and Chronology, 2000, ed G C Pande & D Krishna, special issue of Journal of Indian Coucil of Philosophical Research (June, 2001)
  4. ^ a b Indo-European Deities and the Rgveda JIES vol 29 (2001), 257-93; Indigenous Indoaryans and the Rgveda JIES vol 30 (2002), 275-334; Final Reply JIES vol 31 (2003), 187-240.
  5. ^ a b Archaeology and Language, Vol. I: Theoretical and Methodological Orientations edited by Roger Blench and Matthew Spriggs, Routledge, London and New York, 1997. Ch. 7: 100-116.
  6. ^ Friedrich von Schlegel: Ueber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (1808)
  7. ^ Dyen 1965, p. 15 cited in Bryant 2001, p. 142
  8. ^ Bryant 2001, p. 143
  9. ^ a b c d The Aryan Non-Invasionist Model by Koenraad Elst
  10. ^ In dismissing Colin Renfrew’s Anatolian homeland theory, Winn states for all practical purposes, Renfrew’s hypothesis disregards Tocharian and Indo-Iranian.” Supporters of Renfrew’s theory, Winn points out, “have tried to render the Indo-Iranian problem moot. They argue that the Indo-Iranian branch was somehow divided from the main body of Proto-Indo-European before the colonists brought agriculture to the Balkans. Greek and Indic are thus separated by millenniums of linguistic change - despite the close grammatical correspondences between them.
  11. ^ (1999) ‘Out of India? The linguistic evidence’ in Bronkhorst J & Deshpande M(eds) Aryan & Non-Aryan in South Asia... HOS Opera Minora vol 3, Camb Mass. - On p 14 he gives Fig 1, the genetic table of the IE branches. On p 15 is Fig 2, the isoglosses - an area full of quick-sand uncertainties. On p 16 he states that if the model in Fig 1 is accepted, then the hypothesis of an Out-of-India migration would be "relatively easy to maintain"
  12. ^ http://users.primushost.com/~india/ejvs/ejvs0501/ejvs0501article.pdf | Substrate Languages in Old Indo-Aryan (Rgvedic, Middle and Late Vedic)] by Michael Witzel EJVS VOL. 5 (1999), ISSUE 1 (September) page 6
  13. ^ Published volume (1995) of the papers presented during a conference on Archaeological and Linguistic Approaches to Ethnicity in Ancient South Asia, held in Toronto on 4th-6th October 1991
  14. ^ BEEKES, R.S.P., 1990: Vergelijkende Taalwetenschap. Tussen Sanskrit en Neder­lands, Het Spectrum, Utrecht, "The distribution [of the two stems as/s for "to be"] in Sanskrit is the oldest one" (Beekes 1990:37); "PIE had 8 cases, which Sanskrit still has" (Beekes 1990:122); "PIE had no definite article. That is also true for Sanskrit and Latin, and still for Russian. Other languages developed one" (Beekes 1990:125); "[For the declensions] we ought to reconstr­uct the Proto-Indo-Iranian first,... But we will do with the Sanskrit because we know that it has preserved the essential information of the Proto-Indo-Iranian" (Beekes 1990:148); "While the accentuation systems of the other languages indicate a total rupture, Sanskrit, and to a lesser extent Greek, seem to continue the original IE situation" (Beekes 1990:187); "The root aorist... is still frequent in Indo-Iranian, appears sporadically in Greek and Armenian, and has disappeared elsewhe­re" (Beekes 1990:279)
  15. ^ Burrow T, 1973, The Sanskrit Language, rev ed, Faber - “Vedic is a language which in most respects is more archaic and less altered from original Indo-European than any other member of the family” (Burrow 1973:34); he also states that root nouns, “very much in decline in the earliest recorded Indo-European languages”, are preserved better in Sanskrit, and later adds, “Chiefly owing to its antiquity the Sanskrit language is more readily analysable, and its roots more easily separable from accretionary elements than … any other IE language” (Burrow 1973:123, 289).
  16. ^ The story of Max Müller’s chronology and its impact is told by N.S Rajaram: The Politics of History, Voice of India, Delhi 1995, ch.3.
  17. ^ M. Winternitz: History of Indian Literature (1907, reprint by Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi 1987), vol. 1, p.288.
  18. ^ BBC India's miracle river
  19. ^ Rao 1991: 77-9
  20. ^ Feuerstein et al 1995: 87-90
  21. ^ Elst 1993: 70
  22. ^ Allchins 1997: 117
  23. ^ Bernard Sergent: Genèse de l’Inde, 1997 p.118
  24. ^ Ralph Griffith uses “sword” twice in his translation The Hymns of the Rg-Veda, p.25 (1:37:2) and p.544 (10:20:6), both already in the younger part of the Rg-Veda, but in the index on p.702 he corrects himself, specifying that “knife” or “dagger” would be more appropriate. Likewise, the core stories of ,the Ramayana and Mahabharata, the ones most likely to stay close to the original versions even in their material details (unlike the many sideshows woven into these epics, often narrating much more recent events), feature only primitive weapons: Rama’s bow and arrow, Hanuman’s club.
  25. ^ Bernard Sergent: Genèse de l'Inde, 1997, p.113
  26. ^ Cardona 2002: 33-35; Cardona, George. The Indo-Aryan languages, RoutledgeCurzon; 2002 ISBN 0-7007-1130-9
  27. ^ ibid.,p. 160 pp.166-67 - The earliest mention of Iranians in historical sources is, paradoxically, of those settled on the Iranian plateau, not those still in Central Asia, their ancestral homeland. ‘Persians’ are first mentioned in the 9th century BC Assyrian annals. There are no literary sources for Iranians in Central Asia before the Old Persian inscriptions (Darius’s Bisotun inscription, 521-519 BC, ed. Schmitt) and Herodotus’ Histories (ca. 470 BC).
  28. ^ ibid., p.163
  29. ^ Zoroaster’s Time and Homeland: A Study on the Origins of Mazdeism and Related Problems by Gherardo Gnoli, Instituto Universitario Orientale, Seminario di Studi Asiatici, (Series Minor VII), Naples, 1980., p.45.
  30. ^ Indo-Iranian Studies: by J.C. Tavadia, ViSva Bharati, Santiniketan, 1950, pp.3-4- Not only in grammatical structure and vocabulary, but also in literary form, in certain metres like the TriSTubh and in a way GAyatrI, there is resemblance between the Avesta and the Rgveda. The fact is usually mentioned in good manuals. But there is a peculiarity about these points of resemblance which is not so commonly known: It is the eighth MaNDala which bears the most striking similarity to the Avesta. There and there only (and of course partly in the related first MaNDala) do some common words like uSTra and the strophic structure called pragAtha occur. … Further research in this direction is sure to be fruitful.
  31. ^ The Gathas of Zarathushtra and the Other Old Avestan Texts, Part I: Introduction, Texts and Translation by Helmut Humbach (in collaboration with Josef Elfenbein and P.O. Skjærvø), Carl Winter, Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg (Germany), 1991., p.23 - It must be emphasised that the process of polarisation of relations between the Ahuras and the DaEvas is already complete in the GAthAs, whereas, in the Rigveda, the reverse process of polarisation between the Devas and the Asuras, which does not begin before the later parts of the Rigveda, develops as it were before our very eyes, and is not completed until the later Vedic period. Thus, it is not at all likely that the origins of the polarisation are to be sought in the prehistorical, the Proto-Aryan period. More likely, ZarathuStra’s reform was the result of interdependent developments, when Irano-Indian contacts still persisted at the dawn of history. With their Ahura-DaEva ideology, the Mazdayasnians, guided by their prophet, deliberately dissociated themselves from the Deva-Asura concept which was being developed, or had been developed, in India, and probably also in the adjacent Iranian-speaking countries… All this suggests a synchrony between the later Vedic period and ZarathuStra’s reform in Iran.
  32. ^ Mallory 1989
  33. ^ e.g., Asko Parpola (1988), Mayrhofer (1986-1996), Benveniste (1973), Lecoq (1990), Windfuhr (1999)
  34. ^ B. N. Narahari Achar, Exploring the Vedic Sky with Modern Computer Software,EJVS, VOL. 5 (1999), ISSUE 2 (December)
  35. ^ Planetarium Software and the Date of the Mahabharata War by B. N. Narahari Achar, The University of Memphis, Memphis TN
  36. ^ Lothal
  37. ^ J. M. Kenoyer: “The Indus Valley Tradition of Pakistan and Western India”, Journal of World Prehistory, 1991/4; cited in Bryant 2001:190
  38. ^ (Hemphill, Lukacs and Kennedy 1991, see also Kenneth Kennedy 1995)
  39. ^ Scientists Collide with Linguists to Assert Indigenous origin of Indian Civilization
  40. ^ National Geographic India acquired language, not genes from West, study says Brian Handwork. January 10 2006
  41. ^ Parpola writes: "...numerous loanwords and even structural borrowings from Dravidian have been identified in Sanskrit texts composed in northwestern India at the end of the second and first half of the first millennium BCE, before any intensive contact between North and South India. External evidence thus suggests that the Harappans most probably spoke a Dravidian language."
  42. ^ "The most obvious explanation of this situation is that the Dravidian languages once occupied nearly all of the Indian subcontinent and it is the intrusion of Indo-Aryans that engulfed them in north India leaving but a few isolated enclaves." (Mallory 1989)[page # needed]

[edit] Bibliography and References

  • The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis, by Shrikant G. Talageri published by Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi in 2000 ISBN 81-7742-010-0 [1]
  • Kazanas, Nicholas (2001b). "Indigenous Indoaryans and the Rgveda". Journal of Indo-European Studies 29: 257-93. 
  • Kazanas, Nicholas (1-2 Spring/Summer 2003). "Final Reply". Journal of Indo-European Studies 31: 187-240. 
  • Kazanas, Nicholas (June, 2001). "A new date for the Rgveda" (PDF). special issue of Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research.
  • Bryant, Edwin (2001), The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture, Oxford University Press
  • Dyen, Isidore (1965), "A Lexostatistical Classification of the Austronesian Languages", International Journal of American Linguistics (suppl.) 31: 1–64
  • Mallory, JP. 1998. A European Perspective on Indo-Europeans in Asia. In: The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Peoples of Eastern and Central Asia. Ed. Mair. Washingion DC: Institue for the Study of Man.
  • Parpola, Asko (1998), "Aryan Languages, Archaeological Cultures, and Sinkiang: Where Did Proto-Iranian Come into Being and How Did It Spread?", in Mair, The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Peoples of Eastern and Central Asia, Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Study of Man

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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