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The Indo-Aryan Controversy
For the first time in a single volume, this book presents the various arguments in the Indo-Aryan controversy. It also provides a template for the basic issues addressing four major areas: archaeological research, linguistic issues, the interpretation of Vedic texts in their historical contexts, and ideological roots. The volume ends with a plea for a return to civility in the debates which have become increasingly, and unproductively, politicized, and suggests a program of research and inquiry upon which scholars from all sides of the debate might embark.
534 pages, Paperback
First published June 30, 2004
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May 6, 2024
Like Thomas Trautmann (The Aryan Debate), Edwin E. Bryant and Laurie L. Patton give voice to the different points of view in the fierce controversy about the earliest history of the Indian subcontinent. The question is whether the proto-Hindu civilization only took shape in the course of the 2nd and 1st millennium bce , after the arrival of Indo-Aryan speakers, or earlier under what is known as the Harappan-Indus civilization, in the 3rd millennium bce. Or, in other words, whether the latter was already Indo-Aryan-speaking. As I explained in my reviews of the books of Andrew Robinson and Thomas Trautman, that question is a sensitive one, especially among today's Hindu nationalists. Because they do not want to hear that their culture has an external origin. Bryan and Patton do not really take a stand themselves, and argue for respect and dialogue. They see their book as an attempt to find common ground, to get away from polemic. That's commendable, but not without risk. More about that in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
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October 21, 2024For the main features of the unsavory Aryan debate, see my earlier review of Thomas Trautmann's book ( here). As with Trautmann, this is also a sometimes very specialized book, especially in the contributions that delve deeply into linguistic evolutions. But unlike Trautmann, Bryan and Patton also allow slightly more controversial voices to speak in their collection. For example, that of Satya Swarup Misra, who claims that the Rigveda, one of the earliest scriptures of Hinduism, originated around 5,000 BCE. Also the somewhat eccentric Belgian India specialist Koenraad Elst has a contribution. In contrast to the many non-professional speakers in this debate, these are academically trained opponents of the 'standard view'. But in including them in this reader (and thus putting them on a par with established science) Bryan and Patton provide a forum for people who consciously place themselves outside of the scientific consensus, and that is a risk (just think of the climate debate or the debate about vaccines in the corona approach). I'm not going deeper into the tricky sides of this issue. Instead I would like to focus on possible remedies to get out of the polemic.
The first is included in almost all publications: it's the (hopefully) future decipherment of the Indus script, the script used during the time of the Harappan/Indus civilization (2600-1900 bce). Hundreds of attempts have already been made to read it, but so far there has been no breakthrough. But if it comes to pass, one of the essential topics in the Aryan Debate could be debunked, namely whether the Harappan/Indus civilization itself was Indo-Aryan or not. The majority of academic linguists have long been convinced it was not: Indo-Aryan only entered the area after 1900 BCE; there is still some debate about how this happened and how Indo-Aryan was subsequently mixed with other language families in the area (especially Dravidian and Munda). But this is challenged in the most diverse ways by opponents who claim that all the Harappa/Indus inhabitants already spoke Indo-Aryan; some of them even maintain that Indo-Aryan, and especially Sanskrit, itself is the basis of the Indo-European language family, which thus spread north and west from the Indian subcontinent itself (this is called the ‘Out-of-India-theory’). As mentioned, the decipherment of the Indus script could put an end to this sometimes acrimonious discussion.
Secondly: the new science of archaeogenetics, which is the study of the DNA material of ancient remains, or the reconstruction of very old relationships based on current DNA material. That research only really started in 2010, so it is still quite recent. But it has already produced spectacular results, especially for regions with a temperate climate, where DNA can be extracted relatively easily from ancient remains (and we are talking up to about 100,000 years ago). Numerous studies have already been carried out for Europe, for example, and this has thoroughly adjusted our picture of the period 10,000-2,000 BCE in particular. Archeogenetics could therefore potentially also provide a definitive answer to the Aryan debate. And a number of studies have already been published that announce with much fanfare that the DNA material now makes it clear that a substantial migration from the Central Asian steppe region to the Indian subcontinent is indeed noticeable in the period after 1900 BCE. The change in the DNA pattern would even have happened in such a short time that there is talk of an invasion again (see, for example, the chapter on India in David Reich's book Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past). Right, you think, debate closed. Only: if you take a closer look at those studies, it turns out that they are generally based on very limited ancient DNA material, and that in the case of research on recent DNA, going back 150 generations, there’s a lot of statistical probability involved (depending very much on how you interpret the concept of generation). Moreover, the research for Europe shows that since the beginning of archaeogenetics, scientists have had to adjust or nuance their findings several times (and of course that is a normal scientific process). From all this, common sense would conclude that it is better to remain a bit cautious (although caution appears to be of no use to some archaeo-geneticists, just like to some archaeologists or linguists).
In short: we are not there yet, but I am confident that sooner or later the fog will lift. But sometimes it pays to be patient.
The first is included in almost all publications: it's the (hopefully) future decipherment of the Indus script, the script used during the time of the Harappan/Indus civilization (2600-1900 bce). Hundreds of attempts have already been made to read it, but so far there has been no breakthrough. But if it comes to pass, one of the essential topics in the Aryan Debate could be debunked, namely whether the Harappan/Indus civilization itself was Indo-Aryan or not. The majority of academic linguists have long been convinced it was not: Indo-Aryan only entered the area after 1900 BCE; there is still some debate about how this happened and how Indo-Aryan was subsequently mixed with other language families in the area (especially Dravidian and Munda). But this is challenged in the most diverse ways by opponents who claim that all the Harappa/Indus inhabitants already spoke Indo-Aryan; some of them even maintain that Indo-Aryan, and especially Sanskrit, itself is the basis of the Indo-European language family, which thus spread north and west from the Indian subcontinent itself (this is called the ‘Out-of-India-theory’). As mentioned, the decipherment of the Indus script could put an end to this sometimes acrimonious discussion.
Secondly: the new science of archaeogenetics, which is the study of the DNA material of ancient remains, or the reconstruction of very old relationships based on current DNA material. That research only really started in 2010, so it is still quite recent. But it has already produced spectacular results, especially for regions with a temperate climate, where DNA can be extracted relatively easily from ancient remains (and we are talking up to about 100,000 years ago). Numerous studies have already been carried out for Europe, for example, and this has thoroughly adjusted our picture of the period 10,000-2,000 BCE in particular. Archeogenetics could therefore potentially also provide a definitive answer to the Aryan debate. And a number of studies have already been published that announce with much fanfare that the DNA material now makes it clear that a substantial migration from the Central Asian steppe region to the Indian subcontinent is indeed noticeable in the period after 1900 BCE. The change in the DNA pattern would even have happened in such a short time that there is talk of an invasion again (see, for example, the chapter on India in David Reich's book Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past). Right, you think, debate closed. Only: if you take a closer look at those studies, it turns out that they are generally based on very limited ancient DNA material, and that in the case of research on recent DNA, going back 150 generations, there’s a lot of statistical probability involved (depending very much on how you interpret the concept of generation). Moreover, the research for Europe shows that since the beginning of archaeogenetics, scientists have had to adjust or nuance their findings several times (and of course that is a normal scientific process). From all this, common sense would conclude that it is better to remain a bit cautious (although caution appears to be of no use to some archaeo-geneticists, just like to some archaeologists or linguists).
In short: we are not there yet, but I am confident that sooner or later the fog will lift. But sometimes it pays to be patient.
November 21, 2021
Book: The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History
Author: Edwin F. Bryant (Editor), Laurie L. Patton (Editor)
Publisher: Routledge; 1st edition (26 July 2005)
Language: English
Paperback: 536 pages
Item Weight: 748 g
Dimensions: 15.6 x 3.07 x 23.39 cm
Price: 6999/-
In recent times, it has been pointed out that Indological studies exists in an era where one's use of proof is inexorably suspect of being linked to nationalist, colonialist, or cultural agendas. If one is “Western,” one is suspect of neocolonialism or Orientalism.
If one is “Indian,” one is suspect of nationalism or Marxism. If one is the incorrect tint, and takes the erroneous approach, one is suspect of being co-opted by the counterfeit perception of the other side.
No question is more expounding of this bottleneck than the dispute about Aryan origins.
Until recently, publications by Indo-Europeanists and Indigenous Aryanists have continued on with very little conversation between the opponents, and great opportunity for creating straw men on both sides.
This volume presents an assortment of sides of the arguments in their own voices, as well as provides a kind of template for the basic issues involved.
The tome has been divided into four parts. Part I, entitled “Archaeology” addresses some of the recent findings and arguments in these areas.
Part II, entitled “Archaeology and Linguistics,” takes on some of the linguistic issues in the question, predominantly those of linguistic borrowing and parent languages.
Part III, entitled “Philology and Linguistics,” takes up the related concerns of explanation of texts and their historical frameworks.
Part IV, entitled “Historiography,” includes articles that give both histories of the debates, as well as assessments of the state of the current arguments and their ideological roots.
Mark Kenoyer inaugurates Part I with his chapter, “Culture Change during the Late Harappan period at Harappa: New Insights on Vedic Aryan Issues.”
He argues that, on the strength of new archaeological research, there is confirmation for cultural change in the Late Harappan period (1900–1700 BCE). Kenoyer is lucid that there is no proof for the use of the horse by the inhabitants of the Late Harappan cities and towns.
In “Aryan Invasion of India: Perpetuation of a Myth,” B. B. Lal instigates by tracing first the intellectual history of the idea of an Aryan invasion, beginning with William Jones and moving through Max Mueller and Mortimer Wheeler. He harps that there is no substantiation of attacks on the citadels of the Harappan cities, which would be the first structures to be destroyed in the case of an attack.
Here is the substance of Lal’s premise:
1) He goes on to say that, as early as 1951, and then more believably in the 1980s, studies have pointed to data of steady evolution from the 7th millennium onward in Baluchistan.
2) This fruition moved from Neolithic to Chalcolithic culture to Bronze Age culture.
3) This area distinguishes itself from Western Asian culture by a meticulous stress on ‘barley’ (and not as much wheat) and on ‘cattle’ (and not as much sheep and goats).
4) Metal tools replaced stone, granaries emerged (4500 BCE), and the mature Harappan civilization (3000 BCE) included street designs and characteristic pottery.
5) Seals and script emerged in 2600 BCE. By the 2nd millennium BCE, a deterioration due to climate change, agricultural over extension, a downslide in trade, and the drying of the Sarasvati began to force the civilization into decline.
6) Lal says that Hemphill et al. (1991) provide biological evidence in the stability of cranial structure of skeletons in this area, with communication between Iran and the South Asian subcontinent.
7) Despite the strength of the verification, Lal argues that some historians yet adhere to the invasion theory, “in disguised” apparel, as migration or as contacts between pastoral herders.
In “South Asian Archaeology and the Myth of Indo-Aryan Invasions,” Jim Shaffer and Diane Lichtenstein portray the essential ways in which archaeologists begin building their cases: basic potsherds, pots in situ, stone tools, flora and fauna remains, and human remains. Stratigraphic chronology is measured against carbon dating. Given the collective of these basic building blocks, they dispute that the migration/invasion hypothesis of people needs to be assessed against newer archaeological data.
Part II titled “Archaeology and Linguistics,” starts with Asko Parpola and Christian Carpelan's chapter “The Cultural Counterparts to Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Yralic and Proto-Aryan.”
Their contribution is to draft out a situation in which the archaeological data matches the cultural and linguistic data in the hypotheses of Indo-European expansion. They argue first through etymological data, and then through archaeological discussion, that Indo-European and Uralic proto-languages were both spoken in the archaeological cultures of Eastern Europe. Building on the work of David Anthony (1995, 1998), they also effort to associate Indo-European and Uralic linguistic groups with archaeological cultures.
C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky's chapter, “Archaeology and Language: The Case of the Bronze Age Indo-Europeans,” also addresses the theories of the last few decades about Androvono (which Parpola and Carpelan call the Sintashta-Arkaim) culture, as well as the Bactrian Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC).
This article is predominantly concerned with the likelihood of either culture being identified as completely Indo-Iranian speaking. Unlike Parpola and Carpelan, C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky is interested not in creating potential scenarios of links between archaeological and linguistic cultures, but on showing the absence of proof for most of them.
Satya Swarup Misra's (posthumously published) article, “The Date of the Ṛgveda and the Aryan Migration: Fresh Linguistic Evidence,” begins Part III, “Philology and Linguistics.”
Mishra argues for an early linguistic date of 5000 BCE for the Ṛgveda, matching the linguistic archaism of Sanskrit. He hypothesizes that, since no other Indo-European language can be traced to such an early date, India might well be the original home of Aryans.
Mishra introduces the evidence of the ‘Gypsy languages’, which originated in India, as further evidence in this regard, arguing that the sound changes they display are in agreement with earlier sound changes differentiating Sanskrit (which he holds to be the Indo-European language closest to the proto-language), from the other Indo-European languages.
Koenraad Elst's chapter, “Linguistic Aspects of the Aryan Non-Invasion Theory,” argues that, while the evidence is full of loopholes, the ‘Out of India Theory’ deserves a hearing.
Like Misra, Elst's essay is rooted in approval of the linguistic paradigms of the academic guild.
Elst argues that immigration theory must have involved some kind of military conquest, but points out that Shaffer and Litchenstein (1999) following Rao and Lal, dispute that there is no archeological indication of Aryan immigration post Harappa.
Hans Hock's article, “Philology and the Historical Interpretation of the Vedic Texts,” starts the related section on philology and interpretation. Hock also takes up the question of internal Vedic evidence. He examines five different cases of Vedic interpretation and a related case of Avestan interpretation concerned with the dilemma of Aryan origins.
In “Vedic astronomy and Early Indian Chronology,” Subhash Kak argues that astronomical evidence (jyotiṣa) can be used for dating Vedic chronology, along with philological measures and standards.
This is what Kak avers: -
1) After establishing the presence of jyotiṣa in the Vedas, Kak goes on to demonstrate that altars were used as symbolic depictions of knowledge.
2) Using Frankfort's date of 1900 BCE for the drying up of the Sarasvati River, he argues that the Vedic references to this phenomenon should place the Ṛgveda as at least that old.
3) Vedic ritual was based on times for the full and the new moon, the solstices and the equinoxes. The Vedic year was divided into lunar year of 358 days, or 360 and 5 days.
4) Lists of nakṣatras (lunar asterisms) were also present in the Vedic works, and served as the names of the months.
5) According to Kak, dates can be calculated backwards on the basis of the months shifting about 2000 years per nakṣatra. The changes in the lists of nakṣatras in Vedic texts can help us date the Veda.
Shrikant Talageri's chapter, “The Textual Evidence: The Ṛgveda as a Source of Indo-European History,” also argues for an earlier date of the Ṛgveda.
Talageri's contribution in this volume is a summary of his book, in which he argues that the exclusively prehistoric and representative character of Vedic mythology is completely mismatched with a theory which treats the Ṛgveda as the end-product of long and complete events and circumstances.
In his chapter, “Indocentrism: Autochthonous Visions of Ancient India,” Michael Witzel begins by examining the positive evidence for the scholarly views currently agreed upon by Indo-Europeanists.
The Ṛgveda does not know of large cities but only ruins and forts; thus we can argue that the text is later than the disintegration of the cities. He further argues that the Ṛgveda is earlier than the appearance of iron in 1200–1000 BCE, as Ṛgveda does not know iron, but only copper/bronze metal.
With this rich background in place, Part IV continues with the historiography of the contemporary debates themselves.
In his “Aryan Origins: Arguments from Nineteenth-century Maharashtra,” Madhav Deshpande uses little known details to scrutinize the history of the debate about Aryan origins in 19th century Maharashtra.
The final article in this collection is Lars Martin Fosse's “Aryan Past and Post-Colonial Present: The Polemics and Politics of Indigenous Aryanism.” Fosse takes on four theorists of the Indigenous Aryan school, and, like Deshpande, examines their political perspectives.
Fosse concludes with a view that the ideological aspects of indigenous Aryanism come to full force with a challenge to the cultural and political Left in India – particularly its inability to give India the proper cohesion it needs in a post-colonial environment. He views it as a complex movement, partly motivated by caste and political interests, but also by a legitimate need to resist the colonial distortions that began in the nineteenth century. He argues that many of the movement's legitimate questions and challenges to Indo-European hypotheses are undermined by its political rhetoric.
What did I learn from this book? I learnt the following points –
1) Barring any new discoveries, neither internal evidence from the Veda, nor archaeological evidence, nor linguistic substrata alone can make the turning point in any given hypothesis.
2) This situation should be the most persuasive case of all for scholars to allow the questions to unite them in interdependence, rather than suspicions to divide them in monistic theory-making.
3) It is far too early for scholars to begin taking positions and constructing scenarios as if they were truths. Rather, it is time for scholars to rewrite and then share a set of common questions, such as the ones articulated earlier.
4) Then, a lack of conclusive evidence can be a spur for further research, rather than a political bludgeon which wastes precious intellectual resources.
You might either concur or differ with one / all of the articles collated in this tome – but they make an attractive read nonetheless.
Author: Edwin F. Bryant (Editor), Laurie L. Patton (Editor)
Publisher: Routledge; 1st edition (26 July 2005)
Language: English
Paperback: 536 pages
Item Weight: 748 g
Dimensions: 15.6 x 3.07 x 23.39 cm
Price: 6999/-
In recent times, it has been pointed out that Indological studies exists in an era where one's use of proof is inexorably suspect of being linked to nationalist, colonialist, or cultural agendas. If one is “Western,” one is suspect of neocolonialism or Orientalism.
If one is “Indian,” one is suspect of nationalism or Marxism. If one is the incorrect tint, and takes the erroneous approach, one is suspect of being co-opted by the counterfeit perception of the other side.
No question is more expounding of this bottleneck than the dispute about Aryan origins.
Until recently, publications by Indo-Europeanists and Indigenous Aryanists have continued on with very little conversation between the opponents, and great opportunity for creating straw men on both sides.
This volume presents an assortment of sides of the arguments in their own voices, as well as provides a kind of template for the basic issues involved.
The tome has been divided into four parts. Part I, entitled “Archaeology” addresses some of the recent findings and arguments in these areas.
Part II, entitled “Archaeology and Linguistics,” takes on some of the linguistic issues in the question, predominantly those of linguistic borrowing and parent languages.
Part III, entitled “Philology and Linguistics,” takes up the related concerns of explanation of texts and their historical frameworks.
Part IV, entitled “Historiography,” includes articles that give both histories of the debates, as well as assessments of the state of the current arguments and their ideological roots.
Mark Kenoyer inaugurates Part I with his chapter, “Culture Change during the Late Harappan period at Harappa: New Insights on Vedic Aryan Issues.”
He argues that, on the strength of new archaeological research, there is confirmation for cultural change in the Late Harappan period (1900–1700 BCE). Kenoyer is lucid that there is no proof for the use of the horse by the inhabitants of the Late Harappan cities and towns.
In “Aryan Invasion of India: Perpetuation of a Myth,” B. B. Lal instigates by tracing first the intellectual history of the idea of an Aryan invasion, beginning with William Jones and moving through Max Mueller and Mortimer Wheeler. He harps that there is no substantiation of attacks on the citadels of the Harappan cities, which would be the first structures to be destroyed in the case of an attack.
Here is the substance of Lal’s premise:
1) He goes on to say that, as early as 1951, and then more believably in the 1980s, studies have pointed to data of steady evolution from the 7th millennium onward in Baluchistan.
2) This fruition moved from Neolithic to Chalcolithic culture to Bronze Age culture.
3) This area distinguishes itself from Western Asian culture by a meticulous stress on ‘barley’ (and not as much wheat) and on ‘cattle’ (and not as much sheep and goats).
4) Metal tools replaced stone, granaries emerged (4500 BCE), and the mature Harappan civilization (3000 BCE) included street designs and characteristic pottery.
5) Seals and script emerged in 2600 BCE. By the 2nd millennium BCE, a deterioration due to climate change, agricultural over extension, a downslide in trade, and the drying of the Sarasvati began to force the civilization into decline.
6) Lal says that Hemphill et al. (1991) provide biological evidence in the stability of cranial structure of skeletons in this area, with communication between Iran and the South Asian subcontinent.
7) Despite the strength of the verification, Lal argues that some historians yet adhere to the invasion theory, “in disguised” apparel, as migration or as contacts between pastoral herders.
In “South Asian Archaeology and the Myth of Indo-Aryan Invasions,” Jim Shaffer and Diane Lichtenstein portray the essential ways in which archaeologists begin building their cases: basic potsherds, pots in situ, stone tools, flora and fauna remains, and human remains. Stratigraphic chronology is measured against carbon dating. Given the collective of these basic building blocks, they dispute that the migration/invasion hypothesis of people needs to be assessed against newer archaeological data.
Part II titled “Archaeology and Linguistics,” starts with Asko Parpola and Christian Carpelan's chapter “The Cultural Counterparts to Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Yralic and Proto-Aryan.”
Their contribution is to draft out a situation in which the archaeological data matches the cultural and linguistic data in the hypotheses of Indo-European expansion. They argue first through etymological data, and then through archaeological discussion, that Indo-European and Uralic proto-languages were both spoken in the archaeological cultures of Eastern Europe. Building on the work of David Anthony (1995, 1998), they also effort to associate Indo-European and Uralic linguistic groups with archaeological cultures.
C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky's chapter, “Archaeology and Language: The Case of the Bronze Age Indo-Europeans,” also addresses the theories of the last few decades about Androvono (which Parpola and Carpelan call the Sintashta-Arkaim) culture, as well as the Bactrian Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC).
This article is predominantly concerned with the likelihood of either culture being identified as completely Indo-Iranian speaking. Unlike Parpola and Carpelan, C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky is interested not in creating potential scenarios of links between archaeological and linguistic cultures, but on showing the absence of proof for most of them.
Satya Swarup Misra's (posthumously published) article, “The Date of the Ṛgveda and the Aryan Migration: Fresh Linguistic Evidence,” begins Part III, “Philology and Linguistics.”
Mishra argues for an early linguistic date of 5000 BCE for the Ṛgveda, matching the linguistic archaism of Sanskrit. He hypothesizes that, since no other Indo-European language can be traced to such an early date, India might well be the original home of Aryans.
Mishra introduces the evidence of the ‘Gypsy languages’, which originated in India, as further evidence in this regard, arguing that the sound changes they display are in agreement with earlier sound changes differentiating Sanskrit (which he holds to be the Indo-European language closest to the proto-language), from the other Indo-European languages.
Koenraad Elst's chapter, “Linguistic Aspects of the Aryan Non-Invasion Theory,” argues that, while the evidence is full of loopholes, the ‘Out of India Theory’ deserves a hearing.
Like Misra, Elst's essay is rooted in approval of the linguistic paradigms of the academic guild.
Elst argues that immigration theory must have involved some kind of military conquest, but points out that Shaffer and Litchenstein (1999) following Rao and Lal, dispute that there is no archeological indication of Aryan immigration post Harappa.
Hans Hock's article, “Philology and the Historical Interpretation of the Vedic Texts,” starts the related section on philology and interpretation. Hock also takes up the question of internal Vedic evidence. He examines five different cases of Vedic interpretation and a related case of Avestan interpretation concerned with the dilemma of Aryan origins.
In “Vedic astronomy and Early Indian Chronology,” Subhash Kak argues that astronomical evidence (jyotiṣa) can be used for dating Vedic chronology, along with philological measures and standards.
This is what Kak avers: -
1) After establishing the presence of jyotiṣa in the Vedas, Kak goes on to demonstrate that altars were used as symbolic depictions of knowledge.
2) Using Frankfort's date of 1900 BCE for the drying up of the Sarasvati River, he argues that the Vedic references to this phenomenon should place the Ṛgveda as at least that old.
3) Vedic ritual was based on times for the full and the new moon, the solstices and the equinoxes. The Vedic year was divided into lunar year of 358 days, or 360 and 5 days.
4) Lists of nakṣatras (lunar asterisms) were also present in the Vedic works, and served as the names of the months.
5) According to Kak, dates can be calculated backwards on the basis of the months shifting about 2000 years per nakṣatra. The changes in the lists of nakṣatras in Vedic texts can help us date the Veda.
Shrikant Talageri's chapter, “The Textual Evidence: The Ṛgveda as a Source of Indo-European History,” also argues for an earlier date of the Ṛgveda.
Talageri's contribution in this volume is a summary of his book, in which he argues that the exclusively prehistoric and representative character of Vedic mythology is completely mismatched with a theory which treats the Ṛgveda as the end-product of long and complete events and circumstances.
In his chapter, “Indocentrism: Autochthonous Visions of Ancient India,” Michael Witzel begins by examining the positive evidence for the scholarly views currently agreed upon by Indo-Europeanists.
The Ṛgveda does not know of large cities but only ruins and forts; thus we can argue that the text is later than the disintegration of the cities. He further argues that the Ṛgveda is earlier than the appearance of iron in 1200–1000 BCE, as Ṛgveda does not know iron, but only copper/bronze metal.
With this rich background in place, Part IV continues with the historiography of the contemporary debates themselves.
In his “Aryan Origins: Arguments from Nineteenth-century Maharashtra,” Madhav Deshpande uses little known details to scrutinize the history of the debate about Aryan origins in 19th century Maharashtra.
The final article in this collection is Lars Martin Fosse's “Aryan Past and Post-Colonial Present: The Polemics and Politics of Indigenous Aryanism.” Fosse takes on four theorists of the Indigenous Aryan school, and, like Deshpande, examines their political perspectives.
Fosse concludes with a view that the ideological aspects of indigenous Aryanism come to full force with a challenge to the cultural and political Left in India – particularly its inability to give India the proper cohesion it needs in a post-colonial environment. He views it as a complex movement, partly motivated by caste and political interests, but also by a legitimate need to resist the colonial distortions that began in the nineteenth century. He argues that many of the movement's legitimate questions and challenges to Indo-European hypotheses are undermined by its political rhetoric.
What did I learn from this book? I learnt the following points –
1) Barring any new discoveries, neither internal evidence from the Veda, nor archaeological evidence, nor linguistic substrata alone can make the turning point in any given hypothesis.
2) This situation should be the most persuasive case of all for scholars to allow the questions to unite them in interdependence, rather than suspicions to divide them in monistic theory-making.
3) It is far too early for scholars to begin taking positions and constructing scenarios as if they were truths. Rather, it is time for scholars to rewrite and then share a set of common questions, such as the ones articulated earlier.
4) Then, a lack of conclusive evidence can be a spur for further research, rather than a political bludgeon which wastes precious intellectual resources.
You might either concur or differ with one / all of the articles collated in this tome – but they make an attractive read nonetheless.
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