Asia

"Control over energy resources [of the former Soviet Union] and export routes out of the Eurasian hinterland is quickly becoming one of the central issues in post-Cold War politics. Like the "Great Game" of the early 20th century, in which the geopolitical interests of the British Empire and Russia clashed over the Caucasus region and Central Asia, today's struggle between Russia and the West may turn on who controls the oil reserves in Eurasia."

"As the war in Afghanistan becomes a mopping-up operation, the US has stepped up troop deployments in the region, in what Russia and China fear is an effort to secure dominant influence over their backyards, a region rich in oil and gas reserves. In the past weeks, diplomats and generals from all three countries have streamed into Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The war on terrorism has turned the Central Asian republics from backwaters into prizes overnight. In a letter to the New York Times last week, former Iraq arms inspector Richard Butler warned that the "Great Game" between Britain and Russia over the Indian sub-continent in the nineteenth century may now be replayed, with Russia and the US as the dominant players. "Now the prize is oil – getting it and transporting it – and Afghanistan is again the contested territory," Butler wrote."

"The Great Game is no fun anymore. The term "Great Game" was used by nineteenth-century British imperialists to describe the British-Russian struggle for position on the chessboard of Afghanistan and Central Asia – a contest with a few players, mostly limited to intelligence forays and short wars fought on horseback with rifles, and with those living on the chessboard largely bystanders or victims. More than a century later, the game continues. But now, the number of players has exploded, those living on the chessboard have become involved, and the intensity of the violence and the threats it produces affect the entire globe."

"It is now clear that with the renewed great game, there are more players and more rivalry than it was during the game being played out between Britain and Russia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In that game there was one winner and one loser. The stakes for which the game is now being played are global supremacy, energy, geo-political security, religion and financial control."

"Some commentators see the desperate search by countries to acquire commodity-producing firms in other (typically poor, developing) countries as a repeat of the Great Game – the tussle among powers like Britain and Russia for influence in the Middle East and Central Asia during the 19th century. In this view, those that acquire the greatest share of commodity producers early on will enjoy the greatest economic security in the future, as growth in China, India, and other populous developing countries creates shortages of commodity resources. Economic security is the new justification for purchases, such as minority stakes in opaque companies in poorly governed countries, that would otherwise make little business sense."

"What the U.S. is up to is the 21st century’s version of the "Great Game," the competition that pitted 19th century imperial powers against one another in a bid to control Central Asia and the Middle East. The move to surround Russia and hinder China’s access to energy is part of the Bush Administration’s 2002 "West Point Doctrine," a strategic posture aimed at preventing the rise of any economic or military competitors."

"China is engaged in an anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons drive that has profound implications for future U.S. military strategy in the Pacific. This Chinese ASAT build-up, notable for its assertive testing regime and unexpectedly rapid development as well as its broad scale, has already triggered a cascade of events in terms of U.S. The notion that the U.S. could be caught off-guard in a "space Pearl Harbor" and quickly reduced from an information-age military juggernaut into a disadvantaged industrial-age power in any conflict with China is being taken very seriously by U.S. war planners. As a result, while China’s already impressive ASAT program continues to mature and expand, the U.S. is evolving its own counter-ASAT deterrent as well as its next generation space technology to meet the challenge, and this is leading to a "great game" style competition in outer space."

"Much copy has been written about the parallels between present geopolitical rivalry in Central Asia and Kipling's "Great Game" between Britain and Russia in the nineteenth century. But it is vital to remember that Britain was interested in the region not for reasons of world hegemony but only because it was ruler of India. Britain's concern was purely defensive, motivated not by a desire to conquer Central Asia but by the fear that Russia would employ the region as a base from which to attack India or to march through Persia to the Gulf to threaten British lines of communication. The same fear lay behind Britain's support for Turkey against Russia, which led to its participation in the Crimean War. No Russian attack on the subcontinent is currently in prospect."

"Although Russia, China, and the United States substantially affect regional security issues, they cannot dictate outcomes the way imperial governments frequently did a century ago. Concerns about a renewed great game are thus exaggerated."

"Asian development cannot in any way be reduced to a uniform category, left over after the canons of European evolution have been established... It is merely in the night of our own ignorance that all alien shapes take on the same hue."

"There's a rise of terror and radicalization. There's a growing essential highway of trafficking going on of people and weapons and money from ISIS-controlled areas throughout parts of Southeast Asia. And this is something that has to be stopped"

"Rapidly rising temperatures are melting the glaciers that had provided the water that is the lifeblood of Central Asia, depressing the GDPs of the countries there and threatening to make large swaths of the region uninhabitable deserts by the end of this century if current trends continue, experts say."

"Asia is one. The Himalayas divide, only to accentuate, two mighty civilisations, the Chinese with its communism of Confucius, and the Indian with its individualism of the Vedas. But not even the snowy barriers can interrupt for one moment that broad expanse of love for the Ultimate and Universal, which is the common thought-inheritance of every Asiatic race, enabling them to produce all the great religions of the world, and distinguishing them from those maritime peoples of the Mediterranean and the Baltic, who love to dwell on the Particular, and to search out the means, not the end, of life."

"When will the West understand, or try to understand, the East? We Asiatics are often appalled by the curious web of facts and fancies which has been woven concerning us. We are pictured as living on the perfume of the lotus, if not on mice and cockroaches. It is either impotent fanaticism or else abject voluptuousness. Indian spirituality has been derided as ignorance, Chinese sobriety as stupidity, Japanese patriotism as the result of fatalism."

"The question of where Europe ends and Asia begins has troubled many people over the years, but here's a rule of thumb: if someone can pose as an expert on the country in question without knowledge of the relevant language, it's part of Asia."

"On this visit to Asia, I have been concerned that while many of the countries in which I have travelled are deeply aware of the threat of Communist expansion and the spectre of the third world war, they are also apprehensive that the mounting interest of the United States in this area may be just another phase of imperialism…I can say without equivocation: the United States firmly supports the orderly progress towards self-government throughout the world. The United States has no imperialistic ambitions whatsoever in Asia or in any other part of the globe."

"We are seeing the power of economic freedom spreading around the world. Places such as the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Taiwan have vaulted into the technological era, barely pausing in the industrial age along the way. Low-tax agricultural policies in the subcontinent mean that in some years India is now a net exporter of food. Perhaps most exciting are the winds of change that are blowing over the People's Republic of China, where one-quarter of the world's population is now getting its first taste of economic freedom. At the same time, the growth of democracy has become one of the most powerful political movements of our age. In Latin America in the 1970s, only a third of the population lived under democratic government; today over 90 percent does. In the Philippines, in the Republic of Korea, free, contested, democratic elections are the order of the day. Throughout the world, free markets are the model for growth. Democracy is the standard by which governments are measured."

"I cannot but bring to your mind those days when the whole of Eastern Asia, from Burma to Japan was united with India in the closest ties of friendship..."

""Fool!" cried the hunchback. "You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is 'Never get involved in a land war in Asia,' but only slightly less well known is this: 'Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.'" He was quite cheery until the iocane powder took effect."

"Having been through hot and cold wars, hardship and tribulations, people in Asia deeply cherish the value of peace and understand that development gains do not come easily. Over the past decades, Asia has enjoyed overall stability and sustained rapid growth, making possible the Asian Miracle. When Asia fares well, the whole world benefits. Therefore, we need to continue developing and strengthening Asia, demonstrate Asia's resilience, wisdom and strength and make Asia an anchor for world peace, a powerhouse for global growth and a new pacesetter for international cooperation."

"I personally have great skepticism about the theories extolling the wonders of "Asian values." They are often based on badly researched generalizations and frequently uttered by governmental spokesmen countering accusations of authoritarianism and violations of human rights (as happened spectacularly at the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993)."

"Mr Abdullah, you want that India should defend Kashmir. You wish India should protect your borders, she should build roads in your area, she should supply you food grains, and Kashmir should get equal status as India, but you don’t want India and any citizen of India to have any rights in Kashmir and Government of India should have only limited powers. To give consent to this proposal would be a treacherous thing against the interests of India, and I, as the Law Minister of India, will never do so. I cannot betray the interests of my country."

"Whenever a VIP visit to Kashmir was planned, like that of the prime minister, a hundred messages would fly around saying, ‘Usko ura dena, uski baja dena, safed ghar khatam ho jana chahiye.’ ['finish this fellow', 'beat that guy', 'demolish that house', etc.]"

"The Yunkang caves in China, the wall paintings from several sites in Inner Asia, especially Qizil and Tun-huang, the paintings from the cache at Tun-huang, and some iconographic manuscripts from Japan, for example, should be evaluated with Kaśmīr in mind as a possible source."

"The good country of Kashmira is adorned by the vedas with their six angas, and the vedantas, and the well arranged siddhantas, by logic and grammar, by the puranas, by the mantras, and by the six schools of philosophy ; by the followers of Shiva and of Vishnu, by the worshippers of the sun, by the Buddhists with their paintings and viharas and mathas ; by the vine, and the saffron, the grains, and the shali rice, and by fragrant flowers; by the puranas, and the shrutis and the tarkashastras; by the Brahmana worahippers of fire, and by the Brahmanas devoted to contemplation, austerities, prayers, and anxious for ablution and worship ; by kotis of nagas, by Hari and Hara ; and by the Gandharvvas and the Vidyadharas. Here the water is cool like the amrita of heaven."

"In Kashmir, rights relating to life, liberty, dignity of the people, and freedom of expression guaranteed by the Constitution, embodied in the fundamental covenants and enforceable by courts of law, have been gravely violated."

"If woman can make the worst wilderness dear, Think, think what a Heaven she must make of Cashmere!"

"I’ve never seen anywhere in the world as beautiful as Kashmir. It has something to do with the fact that the valley is very small and the mountains are very big, so you have this miniature countryside surrounded by the Himalayas, and it’s just spectacular. And it’s true, the people are very beautiful too. Kashmir is quite prosperous. The soil is very rich, so the crops are plentiful. It’s lush, not like much of India, in which there’s great scarcity. But of course all that’s gone now, and there is great hardship.The main industry of Kashmir was tourism. Not foreign tourism, Indian tourism. If you look at Indian movies, every time they wanted an exotic locale, they would have a dance number in Kashmir. Kashmir was India’s fairyland. Indians went there because in a hot country you go to a cold place. People would be entranced by the sight of snow. You’d see people at the airport where there’s dirty, slushy snow piled up by the sides of the roads, standing there as if they’d found a diamond mine. It had that feeling of an enchanted space. That’s all gone now, and even if there’s a peace treaty tomorrow it’s not coming back, because the thing that was smashed, which is what I tried to write about, is the tolerant, mingled culture of Kashmir. After the way the Hindus were driven out, and the way the Muslims have been radicalized and tormented, you can’t put it back together again. I wanted to say: It’s not just a story about mountain people five or six thousand miles away. It’s our story, too."

"Oh, pilot of the storm who leaves no trace Like thoughts inside a dream. Heed the path that led me to that place, Yellow desert stream. My Shangri-La beneath the summer moon Will return again. Sure as the dust that floats b'hind you When movin' through Kashmir."

"He traversed five mountains, six mountains, seven mountains. He lifted his eyes as he approached Aratta. He stepped joyfully into the courtyard of Aratta, he made known the authority of his king. Openly he spoke out the words in his heart. The messenger transmitted the message to the lord of Aratta."

"Lest I make the people fly off from that city like a wild dove from its tree, lest I make them fly around like a bird over its well-founded nest."

"If my city becomes a ruin mound, then I will be a potsherd of it, but I will never submit to the lord of Unug, the lord of Kulaba."

"When the city was only a double-hour distant, the armies of Unug and Kulaba encamped by the posts and ditches that surrounded Aratta. From the city it rained down javelins as if from the clouds, slingstones numerous as the raindrops falling in a whole year whizzed down loudly from Aratta's walls. The days passed, the months became long, the year turned full circle. A yellow harvest grew beneath the sky. They looked askance at the fields. Unease came over them. Slingstones numerous as the raindrops falling in a whole year landed on the road. They were hemmed in by the barrier of mountain thornbushes thronged with dragons. No one knew how to go back to the city, no was rushing to go back to Kulaba. In their midst Enmerkar son of Utu was afraid, was troubled, was disturbed by this upset."

"Aratta's battlements are of green lapis lazuli, its walls and its towering brickwork are bright red, their brick clay is made of tinstone dug out in the mountains where the cypress grows."

"Enmerkar son of Utu prepared an expedition against Aratta, the mountain of the holy divine powers. He was going to set off to destroy the rebel land; the lord began a mobilization of his city."

"The West inclines to exclusivism, the East to syncretism. The view that salvation is only possible within the visible Church – a view expressly rejected by the Catholic Church – has been sustained by missionaries and eminent theologians even today; such blindness for the spiritual riches of the East, for its mystical depth and intuition of the transparence of the cosmos to higher Realities, such blindness always implies a blindness for some basic aspects of Christianity itself. The East is tempted by the opposite extreme, syncretism; it consists in wrongly equating biblical values with Eastern religious categories. Such universalism is undoubtedly more tolerant, less violent than Western Exclusivism, but equally blind to the specific inner visage of Christianity and other biblical spiritualities."

"Simply because scientific thought realized a spectacular breakthrough in the West, people speak of "rational Western" and "non-rational Eastern", as if great strides in scientific thought (even in material sciences) had not been made in India and China, as if the sobre scientific approach was not far more developed in Eastern spiritual methods, and as if the dominant religion of the West were not intrinsically irrational in its basic assumptions."

"Following such fractured leadership, Europe’s oldest dividing line, roughly east and west of the Elbe/Danube, is re-emerging. The nations to its east are drifting away from the liberal values entrenched in half a century of union, and are moving in the direction of nationalism and autocracy. Relations with Putin’s Russia have reverted to the belligerence and rhetoric of the cold war. It seems Europe never learns."

"Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, border, nor breed, nor birth, When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!"

"Now it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan brown, For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the Christian down; And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, with the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear: "A fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.""

"Whoever has done or willed too much, let him drink from this deep cup a long draught of life and youth … Everything is narrow in the West—Greece is small and I stifle; Judea is dry and I pant. Let me look a toward lofty Asia, the profound East for a little while. There lies my great poem. [The Ramayana] as vast as the Indian Ocean, blessed, gilded with the sun, the book of divine harmony wherein is no dissonance. A serene peace reigns there, and in the midst of conflict an infinite sweetness, a boundless fraternity, which spreads over all living things, an ocean without bottom or bound, of love, of pity, of clemency."

"Characteristic of the Semitic religions are features such as a historically attested teacher or prophet, a sacred book, a geographically identifiable location for its beginnings, an ecclesiastical infrastructure and the conversion of large numbers of people to the religion-all characteristics which are largely irrelevant to the various manifestations of Hinduism until recent times. Thus instead of emphasizing the fact that the religious experience of Indian civilization and of religious sects which are bunched together under the label of ‘Hindu’ are distinctively different from that of the Semitic, attempts are being made to find parallels with the Semitic religions as if these parallels are necessary to the future of Hinduism. (…)"

"The dharmic traditions do not transmit knowledge, values and experience by cultivating a collective and absolute historical identity in the Judeo-Christian sense. Instead, the aspirant is free to start afresh and tap into his potential for discovering the ultimate reality in the here and now. .... The Abrahamic traditions tend to focus outward; the dharmic ones, inward. The difference between observing historical mandates and discovering the structures of consciousness is stark. ... The history-centric worldview results in synthetic unity, not integral unity."

"...that the gods determined that the place where a man who makes a sacrifice is to be found is the east. Such a man, the text says directly, is in the east, but verse 4 says that in the west is a miser who lets nothing come of it and a rich man who gives no gifts. ... "In the west are the ill-wishers whose horses are badly harnessed; in the east are those who are here for giving, who give a variety of gifts," i.e. the misers who have given bad horses are to be in the extreme west, the region of the sunset, thus of darkness and therefore of raksas, while the generous are to be in the east, the region of the sunrise, thus in the eternal light, which is what 10, 107,2 says. So 7,6,3 is to be translated quite literally: "He (Agni), the Eastern One, has made those who do not make sacrifices into Westerners," i.e. he, the bright one, has plunged them into deep darkness."

"The decay of the Soviet experiment should come as no surprise to us. Wherever the comparisons have been made between free and closed societies -- West Germany and East Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, Malaysia and Vietnam -- it is the democratic countries what are prosperous and responsive to the needs of their people. And one of the simple but overwhelming facts of our time is this: Of all the millions of refugees we've seen in the modern world, their flight is always away from, not toward the Communist world. Today on the NATO line, our military forces face east to prevent a possible invasion. On the other side of the line, the Soviet forces also face east to prevent their people from leaving."

"India seen as a mirror image of the West appears otherworldly, fatalistic, non-egalitarian. It is as though we would be less ourselves, less this-worldly, masterful, egalitarian and individualistic if Indians were less what they are."

"And East and West, without a breath, Mixt their dim lights, like life and death, To broaden into boundless day."

"… The deepest opposition [between the West and India] rests on the fact that the fundamental evidence of the West, whether Christian or atheist, is death, whatever meaning the West gives to it, whereas India’s fundamental evidence is the infinite of life in the infinite of time: “Who could kill immortality?”"

"By the law of contraries, I look for an irresistible taste for Orientalism in Britain. For a self-conceited modish life, made up of trifles, clinging to a corporeal civilization, hating ideas, there is no remedy like the Oriental largeness. That astonishes and disconcerts English decorum. For once, there is thunder it never heard, light it never saw, and power which trifles with time and space. I am not surprised to find an Englishman like Warren Hastings, who had been struck with the grand style of thinking in the Indian writings, deprecating the prejudices of his countrymen while offering them a translation of the Bhagavat Gita."

"Oriental studies have never been so intensive.... In the century of Louis XIV one was a Hellenist, today one is an Orientalist.... The Orient has become a sort of general preoccupation.... We shall see great things. The old Asiatic barbarism may not be as devoid of higher men as our civilization would like to believe."

"Although our countries have been changed by the hegemonizing influences of both Iran and Saudi Arabia, the headlines in the Western media have always reduced matters of extraordinary depth and complexity to a mere snapshot, which more often than not has catered to an orientalist audience that regards Arab or Muslim cultures as backward and to security-focused policymakers. Over time, those two groups have worked to reinforce each other, merging to such an extent that everything was viewed through the prism of the security of the West, especially after 9/11. Even now, as cities like Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria struggle to overcome the emotional and physical destruction wrought by ISIS, even as whole communities like the Yazidis, a Kurdish ethnic minority, have been decimated by genocide and rape at the hands of ISIS militants, even as Bashar al-Assad continues to kill, torture, and bomb his people, the headlines in the Western media seem focused almost exclusively on the Europeans and Americans who joined the ranks of the militants, on whether they should be allowed back home or stripped of citizenship and what should happen to their wives and children."

"Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient—dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient."

"The Orient that appears in Orientalism, then, is a system of representations framed by a whole set of forces that brought the Orient into Western learning, Western consciousness, and later, Western empire. ... The Orient is the stage on which the whole East is confined. On this stage will appear the figures whose role it is to represent the larger whole from which they emanate. The Orient then seems to be, not an unlimited extension beyond the familiar European world, but rather a closed field, a theatrical stage affixed to Europe."

"What is Europe really but a sterile trunk which owes everything to oriental grafts?"

"With the accomplishment of the imperialist enterprise and the general confidence that space, people and nature could be successfully dominated, Western Europeans acquired the ultimate certainty of their superiority over the rest of the world. It is no wonder, then, that the Romantic and Orientalist enthusiasm, omnipresent in the first half of the century, was quickly annihilated. Dismissing previous attempts to proclaim the originality of ‘Oriental’ science and consolidating the integrity of ‘Western’ science was, indeed, a major characteristic of scholarship in the history of science during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The views became increasingly and consensually Helleno- and Eurocentrist, not in the ingenuous and instinctive manner of previous generations, but in systematic and dogmatic ways. (Charette 2012: 292)"

"Another observation that needs to be pointed out is that a number of scholars are prepared to consider that the Bactria Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC), which will be discussed in the next chapter, is an Indo-Aryan culture. The horse has been evidenced in this culture in the form of representations in grave goods. However, no horse bones have been found despite the availability of a large number of animal bones. This again underscores the point that lack of horse bones does not equal the absence of horse. Nor, at least in the opinion of those who subscribe to the Indo-Aryan identification of the BMAC, does this lack equal the absence of Indo-Aryans. Therefore, anyone prepared to associate the BMAC culture with the Indo-Aryans cannot then turn around and reject such an identification for the Indus Valley on the grounds of lack of horse bones in the latter."

"In contemporary Bactria, for instance, the horse is well documented through depictions in grave goods, yet no horse bones have been found. 'This again underscores the point that lack of horse bones does not equal the absence of horse', observes Edwin Bryant."

"But, crucially, it is proofs of a southward migration toward India and Iran that are lacking. At the start of the second millennium, a powerful and prosperous proto-urban civilization known as the “Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex” (BMAC; also known as the Oxus civilization) flourished in the southern oases of Central Asia. Excavations carried out over the past thirty years have revealed hundreds of sites, the most notable of which, if we ignore the older excavations at Namazga and Altyn Depe, are Gonur Depe (sometimes interpreted as a capital), Togolok, Kelleli, Taip, Djarkutan, Dashly Depe, and Sapalli Depe.51 This is a true urban civilization, with mud-brick fortifications, temples, and palaces, founded on a prosperous agricultural economy (which involved the use of irrigation) and control over networks of neighboring villages. The graves of the elite contain high-value bronze and copper objects. Indeed, the region is rich in precious mineral resources: gold, copper, lead, silver, tin, turquoise, and lapis-lazuli. Craftsmanship was highly developed, and most of the pottery is wheel-thrown. The existence of seals attests to the degree of economic complexity, as do long-distance exchanges of luxury goods. The BMAC is therefore truly part of this urban belt of semi-arid South West Asia—stretching from Mesopotamia, through Iran (with the Elam and Jiroft cultures) to the Indus civilization in the east—which prospered during the second half of the third millennium and the early second millennium BCE. The objects exchanged also attest to contacts between the inhabitants of these cities and members of the vast Andronovo steppic culture situated immediately to the north."

"...Just as the cultures of the steppes have various historical origins and not solely Pontic, similarly, the BMAC has predecessors which are archaeologically visible in the material culture, both within its home area and further west, when the Neolithic way of life was being established. It is therefore very difficult to assign it a steppic origin. Incidentally, this is confirmed by biological anthropology, with all its limitations, which shows the permanency of physical characteristics within the BMAC and the very limited extent of mixing with steppic populations.57"

"At least one thing is sure: the collapse of both these urban civilizations (i.e., those of the BMAC and the Indus) was not caused by attacks by Andronovan barbarians from the steppes. In fact, it was the result of the slow breakdown of centralized authoritarian power, which did not leave behind a wasteland but rather gave way to more modest, village-type settlements. There are no traces of Andronovan objects south of the BMAC, and the same is true in the Hindu Kush mountain passes that lead to India. As we have seen, there are no traces either in the Indus Valley. But since the current languages spoken in Northern India indeed belong to the Indo-European group, there is only one solution left to save the invasionist model, or at least the concept of an “arrival of the Indo-Iranians”: invisible migrations."

"...The currently irresolvable contradictions that mar the many attempts made to reconcile the linguistic and archaeological evidence (and indeed biological anthropological evidence) for the “arrival of the Aryans in India” do not mean that the supposed “original Indo-European People” emerged in India (this would pose the same problems, but in reverse), nor do they mean that “invisible migrations” did not exist in the past. It simply means that, in the current state of knowledge, none of the hypotheses forwarded can be seriously demonstrated. Given the stakes involved, extreme caution needs to be exercised when attempting to solve this issue."

"The problematic therefore becomes obvious: Which of the two peoples are the Indo-Iranians, the Andronovo people or the BMAC people, keeping in mind that their material cultures, as well as their economic systems, were radically different? Both answers have, of course, been proposed, each with acceptable arguments, and we will not even attempt to sum up the highly technical debates—ongoing and nowhere near resolution—between the proponents of the BMAC option52 (incidentally, this is where Adolphe Pictet located the original Cradle in 1859) and proponents of the steppic option.53 In reality, the archaeological arguments needed to certify the “Indo-Iranian-ness” of a given site are highly debatable.54 Reference is made to the existence of a “fire cult,” to the crushing of plants to obtain an inebriating drink (the soma of the Indians and the haoma of the Iranians—of which we know nothing), the exposure and defleshing of corpses, and, in contrast, their cremation, etc. However, these activities do not leave unequivocal and specific traces within the archaeological record. Cremation occurs no earlier on the steppes than in the BMAC area, and, in any case, it is not a particularly strong marker of ethnicity, regardless of the period in question.55 The iconography found on luxury goods associated with the BMAC does not share any themes with the ancient Indo-Iranian texts. We encounter a goddess, a bird of prey hero, a dragon, and an ibex-god, which evoke both a shared Eurasian background and clear influences from Elam; only a small number of silver vessels bear scenes that, according to Henri-Paul Francfort, might potentially find comparisons in Indo-Iranian mythologies.56"

"Of course we must remain open to new interpretations and new findings. In this field, confident assertions can be overruled the same day by new discoveries. But if Sergent himself, all while advocating an Indo-Aryan interpretation of the known Bactrian findings, is giving us so many hints that their identity is uncertain at best, and otherwise more likely Iranian than Indo-Aryan, we should have no reason to disbelieve him. On the strength of the data he offers, the safest bet is that the Bactrian Bronze Age culture was the centre of Iranian culture.... Not being an archaeologist, I do not want to evaluate the status quaestionis of the archaeological search for IE origins. All I can do is note that the archaeologists themselves don’t seem to have mapped out the trail of the early Indo-Europeans in South and Central Asia with a convincing amount of detail. Asko Parpola and Bernard Sergent have made a valiant attempt, and invasionists are hopeful that if pursued further, these efforts should lead to the definitive proof of the AIT. However, we have seen that the interpretation which Parpola and Sergent give to the crucial Bactrian Bronze Age culture as Indo-Aryan is uncertain, and that their own data could better support the identification of that culture as Iranian. More importantly, we have seen that they have not succeeded in getting the Bactrians into India, i.e. in proving an actual migration of people and of a culture into India."

"This great uncertainty, which may seem surprising, is due to the fact that no trace of an invasion is noted on the ground, that no cultural transformation is marked by the presence of archaeological material whose origin could be assigned to peripheral regions. Expressions like elite dominance or infiltration, despite their great evocative power, are only rhetorical devices. They do not succeed in masking our current incapacity to account for a supposed historical phenomenon... In neither of the two regions, steppe and oasis, do we find archaeological material which can be without discussion attributed to Indo-Iranians, or to Indo-Aryans, or to Iranians."

"In the two categories of hypotheses, the link between the Oxus Civilization and the Indo-Aryans is made... Unfortunately, this hypothesis is not tenable because this material, which ranges from a few tombs in Makran or Quetta (and very different) to sites like Mehrgarh VIII or Sibri, is disparate. Then, these relationships are for the most part predating 1800-1600 BCE and they could be of a diplomatic-commercial type or mark transfers of prestigious goods, without indicating the slightest migration... Finally, Baluchistan may as well be considered at this time as an eccentric southeastern part of Central Asia and the Iranian plateau (Quetta region), or as a part of the Indus Valley world... These finds therefore do not demonstrate the arrival of the Indo-Aryans in India."

"That speakers of, among others, Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Aryan and Iranian languages participated in such movements towards the Oxus Civilization is entirely possible, but the archaeological record cannot demonstrate this."

"In short, the Iranians perhaps (if they did not penetrate into Iran through the Caucasus), the Proto-Indo-Aryans certainly crossed the territories of the Oxus civilization without having left any traces and, it seems, without having been influenced by this sedentary and proto-urban civilization."

"Any acceptance that all this was the handiwork of Indo-Aryans will entail abandoning certain stereotypes such as that the Indo-Aryans knew no urban centers or temples and that the failure of archaeologists to uncover horse bones equals the real-life absence of horses in a society. Hiebert and Lamberg-Karlovsky disagree with Sarianidi concerning the external origin (from southeastern Iran) of the BMAC, preferring to consider it "the development of a new type of social structure within an ongoing culture, rather than migration or invasion" (Hiebert 1995, 200). This position has been accepted by Tosi (1988), albeit in conjunction with a "massive immigration of external elements" (62). Hiebert and Lamberg-Karlovsky note that there is no site in southeastern Iran providing any evidence for such a claim, and that any BMAC material found on sites from that area is intrusive in nature. In other words, if there is a movement, it is from east to west. These scholars are prepared to consider, however, that the BMAC culture is Indo-Aryan. Of particular relevance is the intrusion of burial assemblages with artifacts typical of the BMAC culture into the Iranian plateau and the western borders of the Indus Valley in the sites of Mehrgarh VII and Sibri in Baluchistan, which "may be correlated with the introduction of the Indo-European language" (Hiebert and Lamberg-Karlovsky 1992, 1)."

"[A very recent study, not on crude skull types but on the far more precise genetic traits, confirms the absence of an immigration from Central Asia in the second millennium BC. Brian E. Hemphill and Alexander F. Christensen report on their study of the migration of genetic traits (with reference to AIT advocate Asko Parpola):] “Parpola’s suggestion of movement of Proto-Rg-Vedic Aryan speakers into the Indus Valley by 1800 BC is not supported by our data. Gene flow from Bactria occurs much later, and does not impact Indus Valley gene pools until the dawn of the Christian era.”"

"In search of another candidate, Narasimhan et al. (2019) sought out samples from the Oxus (or ‘BMAC’) civilisation, but again effectively drew a blank: no significant Steppe ancestry, but largely Iranian continuity instead. What the main BMAC culture site at Gonur Depe does host, however, already by 4250 BP, is a burial of a horse and wagon with bronze wheel rims, and perhaps even soma (or haoma) preparation — supposedly good markers of early Indo-Iranic, for example, but genetically not from the Steppe. Indeed while their ultimate origins would lie in the Caucasus/Zagros homeland, there is no strong case for excluding that the long evolution into the distinctly Iranic branch proceeded in or near what is now Iran, and the distinctly Indic branch on the Indus, spreading then also along the Ganges."

"There is absolutely no doubt, as amply documented by Pierre Amiet (1984), of the existence of BMAC material remains recovered from Susa, Shahdad, and Tepe Yahya. There is, however, every reason to doubt that because these parallels exist that the BMAC originates in south- eastern Iran. This is extremely unlikely for the BMAC materials are intrusive in each of the sites on the Iranian Plateau as they are also on sites of the Arabian Peninsula (Potts 1994)."

"There is scant evidence to support the notion of an extensive migration from Syro-Anatolia to Bactria-Margiana at any point in the archaeological record. Architectural similarities are exceedingly generalized and where parallels are drawn they pay little attention to time/space systematics... One gets the impression that Sarianidi chose the Syro-Anatolian region as the homeland of the BMAC in order to situate it within the geographical region in which the first Indo-Aryan texts, discussed earlier, were recovered. This presumably strengthens his Indo-Aryan claim for the BMAC (1999). His book Myths is devoted to convincing the reader that the BMAC seals derive their thematic inspiration and style from the Syro-Anatolian region."

"The wide scatter of a limited number of BMAC artifacts does not privilege any area as a “homeland” for the BMAC. An extremely limited number of parallels between the BMAC and Syro-Anatolia signify the unsurprising fact that, at the end of the third and begin- ning of the early second millennium, interregional contacts in the Near East brought people from the Indus to Mesopotamia and from Egypt to the Aegean into contact."

"A distant BMAC “homeland,” followed by an expansive migration to Central Asia, is difficult, if not impossible, to maintain. Nevertheless, the origins of the BMAC remains a fundamental issue. Although some scholars advance the notion that the BMAC has indigenous roots, the fact remains that the material culture of the BMAC is not easily derived from the preceding Namazga IV culture, thus suggesting its intrusive nature. The wide scatter of BMAC materials from south- eastern Iran to Baluchistan and Afghanistan suggests that the beginnings of the BMAC could lie in this direction, an area of enormous size and an archaeological terra nullius. In fact, the BMAC of Central Asia may turn out to be its most northern extension while its heartland might be found in the vast areas of unexplored Baluchistan and Afghanistan."

"The BMAC and the Andronovo are contemporary but their archaeological cultures and environmental settings are vastly different. Passages from the Avesta and the Rigveda are quoted by dif- ferent authors to support the Indo-Iranian identity of both the BMAC and the Andronovo. The passages are sufficiently general as to permit the Plains Indians of North America an Indo-Iranian identity! Furthermore, archaeology offers vir- tually no evidence for BMAC influence on the steppe and only scant evidence for an Andronovo presence within the settlement of the BMAC. There is little archaeological evidence within the settlements to support the notion that the Andronovo and the BMAC experienced a significant and/or sustained contact. Yet, settlement surveys indicate that the distinctive communities were close neighbors, exploit- ing the same environment. There is certainly no evidence to support the notion that the BMAC and the Andronovo shared a common ancestor. To date the horse has not been identified in the BMAC and the very diagnostic metal inventories that characterize both cultures are entirely absent in the other. There is simply no compelling archaeological evidence to support, or for that matter to deny, the notion that either one, both, or neither are Indo-Iranians."

"One conclusion can be readily stated: there is not a single artifact of Andronovo type that has been identified in Iran or in northern India. The same cannot be said of the BMAC. There is ample evidence for the presence of BMAC materials on the Iranian Plateau and Baluchistan: Susa, Shahdad, Yahya, Khurab, Sibri, Miri Qalat, Deh Morasi Ghundai, Nousharo, etc. It is impossible, however, to trace the continuity of the BMAC material culture into the first millennium and relate it to the known cultures of Iranian speakers – the Medes or the Achaemenids (or their presumed Iron Age ancestors, see Young 1967; Ghirshman 1977). Within the entirety of the second millennium the only intrusive archaeological culture that directly influences Iran and northern India is the BMAC. However, it remains impossible to link the BMAC with the development of later second and first millennium archaeological cultures on the Iranian Plateau."

"Mallory (1998) feels comfortable enough ascribing some form of Indo-Iranian identity to the Andronovo culture but admits that, "on the other hand, we find it extraordinarily difficult to make a case for expansions from this northern region to northern India . . . where we would presume Indo-Aryans had settled by the mid-second millennium BCE" (191). Referring to the attempts at connecting the Indo-Aryans to such sites as the Bishkent and Vakhsh cultures, he remarks that "this type of explanation only gets the Indo-Iranian to Central Asia, but not as far as the seats of the Medes, Persians or Indo-Aryans" (192). He points out that suggesting an Indo-Aryan identity for the BMAC requires a presumption that this culture was dominated by steppe tribes. However, "while there is no doubt that there was a steppe presence on BMAC sites, . . . this is very far from demonstrating the adoption of an Indo-Iranian language by the Central Asia urban population" (192)."

"Several kinds of evidence for the PIE locus have been presented here. Ancient loanwords point to a locus along the desert trajectory, not particularly close to Mesopotamia and probably far out in the eastern hinterlands. The structure of the family tree, the accumulation of genetic diversity at the western periphery of the range, the location of Tocharian and its implications for early dialect geography, the early attestation of Anatolian in Asia Minor, and the geography of the centum-satem split all point in the same direction: a locus in western central Asia. Evidence presented in Volume II supports the same conclusion: the long-standing westward trajectories of languages point to an eastward locus, and the spread of IE along all three trajectories points to a locus well to the east of the Caspian Sea. The satem shift also spread from a locus to the south-east of the Caspian, with satem languages showing up as later entrants along all three trajectory terminals. (The satem shift is a post-PIE but very early IE development.) The locus of the IE spread was therefore somewhere in the vicinity of ancient Bactria-Sogdiana. This locus resembles those of the three known post-IE spreads: those of Indo-Iranian (from a locus close to that of PIE), Turkic (from a locus near north-western Mongolia), and Mongolian (from north-eastern Mongolia)... Thus in regard to its locus, as in other respects, the PIE spread was no singularity but was absolutely ordinary for its geography and its time-frame. ... The reason that dialect divisions arising in the locus show up along more than one trajectory is that the Caspian Sea divides westward spreads into steppe versus desert trajectories quite close to the locus and hence quite early in the spread. In contrast, developments that occurred farther west, as the split of Slavic from Baltic in the middle Volga may have, continue to spread along only one trajectory. This is why the Pontic steppe is an unlikely locus for the PIE spread. ...Thus the structure of the IE family tree, the distribution of IE genetic diversity over the map, and what can be inferred of the geographical distribution of dialectal diversity in early IE all point to a locus in western central Asia"

"Approximately every two millennia, then, there has occurred a spread of a language family from a locus in the eastern part of the central Eurasian spread zone to cover the steppe and central Asia, extending partially or intermittently to the Danube plain, Anatolia, and northern Mesopotamia. The loci of the historically attested spreads are near the edge of the spread zone rather than in the centre of it: the piedmont to the south (Bactria-Sogdiana) for Iranian, the north of Mongolia for Turkic and Mongolian. The trajectories of language spread run east to west along the steppe and through the desert to the Near East as shown .... To take clear and historically well-attested examples, the locus, trajectories, and range of IE must have been much like those of Iranian or Turkic. ... The placement of the locus specifically in the vicinity of Bactria-Sogdiana is justified in .... A homeland reconstructed as locus, trajectory and range removes the dilemma: a locus in the vicinity of Bactria-Sogdiana implies a spread beginning at the frontier of ancient Near Eastern civilization and a range throughout the steppe and central Asia, following the east-to-west trajectory, with occasional or periodic spreads into the Danube plain and Anatolia."

"Sergent notes a peculiarity of the Bronze Age Bactrian culture: “in contrast with all the neighbouring cultures, the settlements of this culture are characterized by a very feeble accumulation: they were constructed in haste, apparently on the basis of a pre-established plan, and have not been occupied for very long”. That such makeshift settlements have produced such “brilliant” culture, indicates to me that they already had a brilliant cultural heritage to start with. And isn’t precisely the Harappan culture known for its proficiency in urban planning?"

"[the Harappan-Bactrian similarities are due to] “influence of northwestern India on Bactria by means of a migration of Indus people to Central Asia after the end of their civilization”."

"Indo-European research has, in many ways, been an attempt to write the origin narrative of the bourgeois class — a narrative that, by talking about how things originally were, has sanctioned a certain kind of behavior, idealized a certain type of person, and affirmed certain feelings. Certainly, there have been some scholars who have not identified themselves with the Proto-Indo-Europeans, but they are few."

"[T]here is no direct evidence for the culture of the Indo-Europeans, with the result that researchers have used their imagination to a very high degree. It is only with the help of methodologically problematic linguistic and archaeological theories that they have been able to chisel an Indo-European culture into being."

"These prehistoric peoples have preoccupied people in modern times primarily because they were, to use the words of Claude Lévi-Strauss, “good to think with," rather than because they were meaningful historical actors."

"The discourse about the Indo-Europeans was also dependent on the most powerful movement of the nineteenth century, imperialism. To an even greater extent than concerned the view of Semites, racism was present in the scholars' depictions of how the Indo-European colonizers in ancient times conquered a dark, primitive original population. The Indo-Europeans were presented as humanity's cultural heroes, who, undefeated throughout history, spread knowledge and ruled over lower peoples, and who therefore seemed predestined to remain rulers even in the future."

"The scholarship about the Indo-Europeans, their culture, and their religion has been an attempt to create new categories of thought, new identities, and thereby a future different from the one that seemed to be prescribed."

"It is important to realize, however, that the exaltation of the Indo-Europeans or the Aryans—especially during the nineteenth century, but also later, for example, for the socialist Gordon Childe—was a song of praise for the modern citizen with a scientific outlook, liberal values, and humanistic ideals. In the nineteenth century, the Indo-Europeans were mainly models for a progressive bourgeois ideology, and the attacks on Jewish and Semitic religiosity (which sometimes included Christianity) aimed to form a worldview that fitted modern society and was not necessarily connected to any racial ideology."

"'Germanism' arose amidst the peculiar political condition of nineteenth century Germany. . . . it has become the political shibboleth of the occidental nations."

"Among the Western scholars who take part today in the debates on the Indo-Europeans, I know some whose erudition is not enough to compensate for the falsity of mind and others whose outdated erudition serves to perpetuate theses the lightness or impossibility of which they have been shown a hundred times."

"Skepticism in scholarly circles grew rapidly after 1880. The obvious impossibility of actually locating the Aryan homeland; the increasing complexity of the problem with every addition to our knowledge of prehistoric cultures; the even more remote possibility of ever learning anything conclusive regarding the traits of the mythical "original Aryans"; the increasing realization that all the historical peoples were much mixed in blood and that the role of a particular race in a great melange of races, though easy to exaggerate, is impossible to determine, the ridiculous and humiliating spectacle of eminent scholars subordinating their interests in truth to the inflation of racial and national pride—all these and many other reasons led scholars to declare either that the Aryan doctrine was a figment of the professional imagination or that it was incapable of clarification because the crucial evidence was lost, apparently forever."

"We should not be misled by this into thinking that these scholars were anti-racist. They did not have to rely on a theory of race as such, for they had their own global theory that was fully able to inferiorize the languages (and by implication the cultures) of the other purely on linguistic grounds. Max Müller's linguistic taxonomy was a Hegelian hierarchy in which . . . cultural geography [becomes] the same as world history."

"The difficulties besetting the larger IE issue are due, I think, to the fact that linguists continue to arrogate to themselves the competence of these other disciplines. Just as experts from other sciences do not intervene in linguistics, so linguists should not tell historians, archaeologists et al what to do or how to do it just because the latter’s finds are at variance with linguistic wishes."

"To be sure, neither Jones nor anyone else was wrong to perceive strong and systematic similarities among Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, and the rest. The question is what one makes of these similarities, and one steps onto a slippery slope whenever analysis moves from the descriptive to the historic plane of linguistics. In specific, reconstructing a "protolanguage" is an exercise that invites one to imagine speakers of that protolanguage, a community of such people, then a place for that community, a time in history, distinguishing characteristics, and a set of contrastive relations with other protocommunities where other protolanguages were spoken. For all of this, need it be said, there is no sound evidentiary warrant."

"Indo-European: a term borrowed from comparative linguistics and most usually used to designate the blond North-European race (Homo europaeus), but which may provoke confusion since in most of these regions, originally settled by the North-Europeans, race and language have not overlapped for some time due to the bastardization (Bastardierung) of the Northern European speakers of Indo-European languages."

"There is nothing in Iran in the second millennium that is related to Andronovo, something which one would expect if the cradle of the Indo-Iranians were to be found in this territory."

"The most serious, obvious, and oft-cited objection against the northern Andronovo course is that the steppe culture does not intrude into the South Asian borderlands (not to speak of the heartland). Why, then, should one accept it as representing Indo-Aryan speakers intruding into South Asia?"

"There are no traces of Andronovan objects south of the BMAC, and the same is true in the Hindu Kush mountain passes that lead to India. As we have seen, there are no traces either in the Indus Valley. But since the current languages spoken in Northern India indeed belong to the Indo-European group, there is only one solution left to save the invasionist model, or at least the concept of an “arrival of the Indo-Iranians”: invisible migrations."

"Nothing allows us to dismiss the possibility that the Andronovians of Tazabagjab are the Indo-Iranians as much as the fact that they vanish on the fringes of sedentary Central Asia and do not appear as the ephemeral invaders of India at the feet of the Hindu Kush."

"In the same way that the Oxus Civilization disappears upon contact with India, the culture of the Andronovo steppes vanishes upon contact with the Oxus Civilization and never crosses towards the south the line which extends from Kopet Dagh to Pamir-Karakorum, which poses serious problems for historically translating the Indo-Aryans towards the South."

"We will notice that the traces attested today stop in Bactria... No Andronovian burial has yet been found south of the Oxus.... It should therefore be assumed that the Indo-Iranians, Proto-Iranians or Proto-Indo-Aryans got rid of this culture just as they entered Iran and India. The hypothesis is possible since, to arrive in these territories, they had necessarily crossed sedentary zones belonging to the Oxus civilization, whose material culture was much superior. The curious thing is that they seem not to have borrowed anything from the latter either... Clearly, it is very difficult to find a marker for the Indo-Iranian group."

"The hypothesis proposing a steppe origin for the Indo-Iranians is... internally contradictory. Its prolonged acceptance may be explained by the absence of critical scrutiny, much like the scenario realized by the child in Andersen’s fairy tale about the Naked King. Notably, all Russian archaeologists are well aware that Andronovo materials are absent in the south, yet most remain convinced of this southward migration. Some Western researchers have repeatedly criticised the steppe migration hypothesis, particularly the Kulturkugel model, and have noted the absence of Andronovo sites in the south. These findings are not obscure."

"The notion of nomads from the north as the original Iranians is unsupported by the detailed archaeological sequence available."

"It is this evidence concerning the western contribution which persuaded workers to advocate the view that the Andronovo culture area was the original home of the Indo-Iranians, from where they marched into Iran and India as two separate groups by the end of the 2nd millennium B.C. or the beginning of the 1st millennium B.C.. The Andronovo hypothesis was nevertheless faced with a serious shortcoming from the very beginning. The cultures of the Timber-frame Andronovo circle took shape in the 16th or 17th century B.C., whereas the Aryans already appeared in the Near-East not latter than the 15th to 16th century B.C.... These regions contain nothing reminiscent of Timber-frame Andronovo materials; in fact, the latter could not have been there at so early a date."

"To this day no traces of such stock breeders have been detected south of the Hindukush."

"Although there is a consensus among archaeologists working on the steppes that the Andronovo culture is in the right place at the right time, and thus is to be considered Indo-Iranian, there is neither textual, ethnohistoric, nor archaeological evidence, individually or in combination, that offers a clinching argument for this consensus. Kuzmina’s carefully constructed methodology simply cannot be applied to the Andronovo culture. The Andronovo culture is well over a thousand years distant from any textual tradition, making any linguistic and/or ethnohistoric attribution extremely tenuous."

"There is absolutely no archaeological evidence for any variant of the Andronovo culture either reaching or influencing the cultures of Iran or northern India in the second millennium. Not a single artifact of identifiable Andronovo type has been recovered from the Iranian Plateau, northern India, or Pakistan."

"With the recognition of Andronovo subcultures the identification of specific ones as Indo-Iranian has become an industry. Needless to say there is no consensus on the ethnicity of any single Andronovo subculture."

"Parallels between the material culture and the environment of the Andronovo are compared to commentaries in the Rigveda and Avesta and are taken to confirm the Indo-Iranian identity of the Andronovo. The parallels are far too general to offer confidence in these correlations."

"There is a tendency to treat the Andronovo as a single monolithic entity, ignoring the chronological and cultural variations."

"One conclusion can be readily stated: there is not a single artifact of Andronovo type that has been identified in Iran or in northern India."

"Passages from the Avesta and the Rigveda are quoted by different authors to support the Indo-Iranian identity of both the BMAC and the Andronovo. The passages are sufficiently general to permit the Plains Indians of North America an Indo-Iranian identity."

"Russian and Central Asian scholars working on the contemporary but very different Andronovo and Bactrian Margiana archaeological complexes of the 2d millennium b.c. have identified both as Indo-Iranian, and particular sites so identified are being used for nationalist purposes. There is, however, no compelling archaeological evidence that they had a common ancestor or that either is Indo-Iranian. Ethnicity and language are not easily linked with an archaeological signature, and the identity of the Indo-Iranians remains elusive."

"We find it extraordinarily difficult to make a case for expansions from this northern region to northern India . . . where we would presume Indo-Aryans had settled by the mid-second millennium BCE."

"In the history of Southern Siberia the Andronovo culture was of special importance. Its most southerly monuments are to be found in the foothills of the Altai; the most northerly ones are in the Ob region in the zones between the forest and the steppe."

"It should be indicated that the available direct archaeological data contradict the theory, suggested long ago, concerning the intensive penetration of the steppe Andronovo-type tribes into traditional agricultural areas. Direct archaeological data from Bactria and Margiana show without any shade of doubt that Andronovo tribes penetrated to a minimum extent into Bactria and Margianian oases, not exceeding the limits of normal contacts so natural for tribes with different economical structures, living in the borderlands of steppe and agricultural oases."

"The classification "the Indo-European branch of humanity" could be defined either as the group of people who spoke some Indo-European language (Latin, Sanskrit, French, Swedish, Persian, and so forth) or as the group of Aryans, who were typically imagined as tall, blond, and blue-eyed specimens of homo sapiens."

"Our knowledge of these migrations [that broke PIE unity] is very limited. On a linguistic basis, little can be said about them."

"The role of the Indo-European peoples in the ancient world has been portrayed too often as the incarnation of northern virility sweeping down in massed chariots to bring new vigour to a decadent south."

"In the current state of knowledge, none of the hypotheses forwarded can be seriously demonstrated... There is in fact no evidence for the gradual progression of an entire material culture from the shores of the Black Sea to those of the Atlantic or the Ganges—unless, of course, we drastically force the data."

"It is presumptuous to say the least to claim that the migratory routes traveled by the Indo-Europeans from their original Homeland have now been clearly traced."

"We do not find any evidence for the diffusion of the entire material culture of the steppes to those regions where historically attested Indo-European languages were spoken"

"The biological situation among the speakers of modern Indo-European languages can only be explained through a transfer of languages like a baton, as it were, in a relay race, but not by several thousand miles’ migration of the tribes themselves."

"But in the period 3100-2900 BC came a clear and dramatic infusion of Yamna [= Pontic] cultural practice, including burials, into Eastern Hungary and along the lower Danube. With this we are able to witness the beginnings of the Indo-Europeanization of Europe."

"The archaeological correlates become some sort of labels or tags that one may employ in order to trace the supposed Indo-European populations. But, in fact, very little of the illustrative archaeological material actually exhibits specific Indo-European or Indo-Iranian traits; a question therefore arises: what is the relevance of archaeological material if any sort of assemblage present at the expected or supposed time/space spot can function as the tag of a linguistic group?"

"What does this prove? That proto-Indo-Iranian broke away before proto-Anatolian, since the latter family has the PIE term for lion and wine while the former did not? Or does it prove my Leophobic Secondary Pontic Steppe-Anatolian Sequential Dispersion theory, according to which, Anatolian speakers broke away from PIE due to the sheer monotonous boredom of the Steppes and moved through the Balkans to Anatolia, where they encountered lions (note that Luwian includes the root for ‘lion’). When the rump of PIE subsequently broke up because even the excitement of a slow moving, non-steerable cart was no match for the tedium of the Steppes, the non-drinking, killjoy proto-Indo-Iranians went east into the deserts of Central Asia and only lightened up after they discovered soma, while the remainder of PIE went on vacation to Anatolia to visit their long-lost relatives who introduced them to lions, albeit with this proving such a traumatic experience that they immediately fled to Europe and never went back. You may consider the above to be unsubstantiated ‘just-so’ balderdash, and you would be welcome to think so, but I would point out that it is no more simple-minded than the following: “they might have moved several times, perhaps by sea, from the Western Pontic steppes to south-eastern Europe to western Anatolia to Greece, making their trail hard to find”, which constitutes Anthony’s own double hand-waving non-explanation of how Greek spread from the ‘wrong’ side of the Pontic Steppes to Greece. Once you adopt his ‘se non è vero è ben trovato’ standard of empirical evidence based on duff linguistic archaeology you can argue for just about anything."

"Although the Brahmans of India belong to the same family, the Aryan or Indo-European family, which civilized the whole of Europe, the two great branches of that primitive race were kept asunder for centuries after their first separation. The mainstream of the Aryan nations has always flowed towards the northwest. No historian can tell us by what impulse those adventurous Nomads were driven on through Asia towards the isles and shores of Europe. The first start of this world-wide migration belongs to a period far beyond the reach of documentary history; to times when the soil of Europe had not been trodden by either Celts, Germans, Slavonians, Romans, or Greeks."

"Europeans today are a mixture of three very different ancestral populations: hunter-gatherers, first farmers, and a population with eastern affinities that was not yet present in Europe at the time of the first farmers. It was unclear when and how this eastern component arrived in Europe... ‘When we first looked at the new data, it was a Eureka moment’ ... ‘The eastern ancestry was present in every single sample starting at around 4,500 years ago, and absent in every single one before that time.’"

"The Commercial Revolution of Columbus’ time cleared the routes and prepared the way for the Industrial Revolution. Discoverers refound old lands, opened up new ports, and brought to the ancient cultures the novel products and ideas of the West. Early in the sixteenth century the adventurous Portuguese, having established themselves in India, captured Malacca, sailed around the Malay Peninsula, and arrived with their picturesque ships and terrible guns at Canton (1517). “Truculent and lawless, regarding all Eastern peoples as legitimate prey, they were little if any better than . . . pirates”; and the natives treated them as such. Their representatives were imprisoned, their demands for free trade were refused, and their settlements were periodically cleansed with massacres by the frightened and infuriated Chinese."

"In reality, however, it was a 'white peril' that menaced Asia - and indeed the rest of the world. In all history, there had never been a mass movement of peoples to compare with the exodus from Europe between 1850 and 1914… However, a rising proportion of European emigrants were now heading eastward. Scotsmen and Irishmen in particular were flocking to Australia and New Zealand; by the eve of the First World War, nearly one in five British emigrants was bound for Australasia; by the middle of the century it would be one in two. Settlers from Britain, Holland and France were also busily establishing themselves as planters in Malaya, the East Indies and Indo-China. Meanwhile, a growing number of Central and East European Jews, inspired by Zionist leaders like Theodor Herzl, were moving to Palestine in the hope of establishing a Jewish state there. Finally, as we shall see, a very large number of Russians were also heading east, to Central Asia, Siberia and beyond. All this movement was in large measure voluntary, unlike the enforced shipment of millions of Africans to American and Caribbean plantations that had taken place in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. However, comparable numbers of indentured labourers from India and China were also on the move in 1900, their condition only marginally better than slavery, to work in plantations and mines owned and managed by Europeans. Asians would have preferred to migrate in larger numbers to America and Australasia, but were prevented from doing so by restrictions imposed on Japanese and Chinese immigration in the late nineteenth century."

"And I thought something else. I thought about the Church of England. My mind went back to Buckingham Palace, and I said that this is the symbol of a dying system. There was a day that the queens and kings of England could boast that the sun never sets on the British Empire. A day when she occupied the greater portion of Australia, the greater portion of Canada. There was a day when she ruled most of China, most of Africa, and all of India. I started thinking about this empire. I started thinking about the fact that she ruled over India one day. Mahatma Gandhi stood there at every hand, trying to get the freedom of his people. And they never bowed to it. They never, they decided that they were going to stand up and hold India in humiliation and in colonialism many, many years. I remember we passed by 10 Downing Street. That’s the place where the prime minister of England lives. And I remember that a few years ago a man lived there by the name of Winston Churchill. One day he stood up before the world and said, “I did not become his Majesty’s First Minister to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.” And I thought about the fact that a few weeks ago a man by the name of Anthony Eden lived there. And out of all of his knowledge of the Middle East, he decided to rise up and march his armies with the forces of Israel and France into Egypt. And there they confronted their doom, because they were revolting against world opinion. Egypt, a little country. Egypt, a country with no military power. They could have easily defeated Egypt. But they did not realize that they were fighting more than Egypt. They were attacking world opinion, they were fighting the whole Asian-African bloc, which is the bloc that now thinks and moves and determines the course of the history of the world."

"Truculent and lawless, regarding all Eastern peoples as legitimate prey, they were little if any better than . . . pirates."

"The history of European colonialism covers many centuries and takes diverse forms, but whereas the European explorers and conquerors of the Americas, Africa, and Oceania usually took it for granted that the local inhabitants could be enslaved or butchered or driven into the hinterland at the whim of the invaders, the literate nations of Asia were initially treated as peoples toward whom the courtesies of European diplomacy should be applied. At the end of the day these Asian civilizations were likewise mostly subdued by force of arms, but such conquest needed some kind of moral justification, a mythical charter. The Rig Veda as interpreted by Max Müller and his contemporaries provided just such a myth."

"The treaty clauses, in fact, wrote the ultimate doom of Christian activity in China. To have believed that a religion which grew up under the protection of foreign powers, especially under humiliating conditions, following defeat, would be tolerated when the nation recovered its authority, showed extreme shortsightedness. The fact is that the missionaries, like other Europeans, felt convinced in the nineteenth century that their political supremacy was permanent, and they never imagined that China would regain a position when the history of the past might be brought up against them and their converts. `The Church', as Latourette has pointed out, `had become a partner in Western imperialism.' When that imperialism was finally destroyed, the Church could not escape the fate of its patron and ally."

"Till the end of European domination the fact that rights existed for Asians against Europeans was conceded only with considerable mental reservation. In countries under direct British occupation, like India, Burma and Ceylon, there were equal rights established by law, but that as against Europeans the law was not enforced very rigorously was known and recognized. In China, under extra‑territorial jurisdiction, Europeans were protected against the operation of Chinese laws. In fact, except in Japan this doctrine of different rights persisted to the very end and was a prime cause of Europe’s ultimate failure in Asia."

"In the century that they have lived together, Central Asia and Russia have united through many economic bonds. But in spirit, these countries are alien to us. You can see this in their rising nationalistic impulses today. There has even been an international conference held on the need to form a single great Islamic state stretching from Alma-Ata to the Turkish shores of the Mediterranean. And this plan is by no means just a fantasy! I regard Russia's conquest of Central Asia in the 19th century as a mistake. Today I don't see any future for Russians living there and consider the government's top priority to be helping the refugees to resettle in Russia. Russia made a similar mistake, going back to the time of Boris Godunov, when she took on the responsibility of helping out Georgia and Armenia in the Trans-Caucasus, and thus got entangled in the interminable Caucasian war of the 19th century. We have no business being in the Trans-Caucasus, and we should be bringing Russian refugees out of there."

"Take education from America, Military science from Germany, Shipbuilding from England, Jurisprudence from France."

"The island of Bali in the East Indies (Indonesia) was a source of Hindu slaves for the Muslim world... India was also a source of slaves, for example with girls taken to Afghanistan and the Middle East and, from the mid-seventeenth century, forced labour moved to plantations in the Dutch-ruled coastlands of Sri Lanka."

"One Chinese reported that the people of Melaka "say that it is better to have slaves than to have land, because slaves are a protection to their masters""

"At Achim [Aceh] every one is for selling himself. Some of the chief lords have not less than a thousand slaves, all principal merchants, who have a great number of slaves themselves. …This is the true and rational origin of that mild law of slavery which obtains in some countries: and mild it ought to be, as founded on the free choice a man makes of a master, for his own benefit; which forms a mutual convention between the two parties."

"There was no free wage labour to be had, except occasionally among either Chinese or other foreigners temporarily in port. Indigenous labour could only be rented from the owners, who evidently charged heavily for it. "It is their custom to rent slaves. They pay the slave a sum of money, which he gives to his master, and then they use the slave that day for whatever work they wish". The Undang-undang Melaka contains many provisions for what happens when people "hire" (mengupah) or "borrow" (ineminjam} slaves, but none for wage contracts. Even the offer of high wages did not attract "freemen" to do the job because manual labour was associated with servitude. "You will not find a native Malay, however poor he be, who will lift on his own back his own things or those of another, however much he be paid for it. All their work is done by slaves"."

"Although indigenous conceptions of bondage did not include a sharp antithesis between the categories of slave and free, the conditions of the age of commerce may have encouraged movement in that direction.... The constant influx of new captives and imports created a market situation which needed to be regulated. Moreover, many members of the slave-owning merchant class had strong roots in the Islamic world, which had a clear body of law on slaves as property. The legal codes drawn up in Southeast Asian cities therefore paid considerable attention to slaves. Malay codes of law typically devoted about a quarter of their total attention to questions of slavery."

"…the Kremlin leader may have convinced himself that the use of North Korean slave labor is one of the best ways he can defend [the Russian Far East] from the neo-imperialism of China whose government also is quite prepared to make use of this modern form of slavery."

"Similarly, the Malay population of the coastal low- lands of Malaya, Sumatra, and Borneo gradually absorbed animist hill peoples during the five centuries before 1900, by a mixture of raiding, tribute, and purchase, especially of children... . Around 1500 Java was the largest single exporter of slaves, perhaps as a result of the divisive wars of Islamization. Through the still Hindu ports of Sunda Kelapa and Balambangan, Java supplied much of the urban working class of the Malay cities. Islamization created a major change in the nature of slave trading, since the shari'a law forbade the sale or enslavement of fellow Muslims. Once Islam completed its conquest of Java in the sixteenth century, that island ceased to export its people. The major Muslim cities were thenceforth supplied with slaves from beyond the frontier of Islam. Aceh obtained its servile labour from Nias, southern India, and Arakan; Banten and Makassar from the Moluccas and Lesser Sunda Islands; Patani from Cambodia, Champa, and Borneo. Certain small sultanates, notably Sulu, Buton, and Tidore, began to make a profitable business of raiding for slaves in eastern Indonesia or the Philippines and marketing the human victims to the wealthy cities-or to the expanding seventeenth-century pepper estates of southern Borneo."

"South Asian slaves were significant at an earlier date in Inner Asia and Persia. The conquest of Sind in 712-13 yielded 60,000, and the Ghaznavids of eleventh-century Afghanistan drove hundreds of thousands home. The servile population of West Turkistan included many South Asians from at least 1326, and Indian slaves were routinely exchanged for Inner Asian horses. In the late fourteenth-century, Timur the Lame killed a hundred thousand Indians captured before reaching Delhi, but still brought thousands back to West Turkistan.' As many as 200,000 Indian rebels were supposedly taken in 1619-20, for sale in Iran. Indian slaves in East Turkistan raised diplomatic problems in the nineteenth-century. Slaves were copious in India itself, but distinguishing Muslim from non-Muslim owners is difficult. Sultan Alauddin Khalji (r. 1296- 1316) possessed 120,000 personal slaves in North India, while his fourteenth-century successor, Sultan Firoz Tughluq, claimed to have 180,000. Muslims owned many of the estimated 8,000,000 to . 9,000,000 bondsmen in 1841, of whom about half were in the Bengal Presidency. However, most of these helots were probably Dalit castes in Hindu hands."

"The archbishop of Manila claimed in 1637 that Moro raiders from the south had seized an average of 10,000 Catholic Filipinos a year over the previous 30 years. Descriptive materials indicate fairly steady raiding, which might thus have yielded a total booty of some two million slaves in the first two centuries of Spanish rule after 1565. A shipping capacity calculation suggests that between 200,000 and 300,000 captives entered the Sulu sultanate from 1770-1870, lower than contemporary European estimates. However, Spanish and Dutch naval patrols became more effective from the 1840s, leading Moros to seize unquantified numbers of Animists in inland Mindanao."

"Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, Muslims enslaved Hindus and Animists, and even fellow Muslims, from the thirteenth-century. Bali exported around 100,000 Hindu slaves from 1620 to 1830, and South Sulawesi exported another 100,000 between 1660 and 1810, mainly Muslims. Quite a few were acquired by Europeans and Chinese. Supplies of Animists from Nias Island to Aceh from 1790 to 1900 may have amounted to around 50,000, while some 12,000 Toraja Animists were obtained in South Sulawesi from 1880 to 1905. There are no figures for similar local trades from Animist uplands to Muslim lowlands, notably in Sumatra, Malaya, and Borneo. The proportion of slaves in nineteenth-century Muslim societies varied widely. Rare in Java in the 1810s, they accounted for 6 per cent in an 1879 census of the Malay sultanate of Perak, about a third in villages on the eastern edge of West Sumatra in the 1860s, 30 per cent in the Muslim zone of North Sulawesi, and two thirds or more in part of North Borneo in the 1880s."

"There are no statistics on the overall number of slaves imported into Jolo in the period under consideration, except the estimates of European observers. These range from 750 to as high as 4,000 captives a year for the Philippines alone from 1775 to 1848. .... Slave imports to the Sulu Sultanate during the first sixty-five years probably averaged between 2,000 and 3,000 a year. The steepest rise in the number of slaves annually brought to Sulu, between 3,000 and 4,000, occurred in the period 1836-48, during which foreign trade was most intense at Sulu. The trade reached its apex in 1848 and slackened considerably in the next two decades, with imports ranging between 1,200 and 2,000 slaves a year until it collapsed in the 1870s.' The figures appear to show that between 200,000 and 300,000 slaves were moved in Iranun and Samal vessels to the Sulu Sultanate in the period 1770-1870."

"From early on in the history of Islam, South Asian slaves were plentiful in Central Asia and Persia. The conquest of Sind in 712–13 yielded 60,000, and the Ghaznavids of eleventh-century Afghanistan drove home hundreds of thousands from India. The servile population of West Turkistan included many South Asians from at least 1326, and Indian slaves were routinely exchanged for inner Asian horses. In the late fourteenth century, the Samarkand- based Timur the Lame killed 100,000 Indians captured before reaching Delhi, but still brought thousands back to West Turkistan. As many as 200,000 Indian rebels were supposedly taken in 1619–20, for sale in Iran., […] By the sixteenth century the southern neighbours of the Eurasian heartland became ‘gunpowder empires’, stabilizing Islamic power. Their armies or those of their projecting allies, the Turkmens, Tatars and Maghreb corsair states extracted infidel captives on a grand scale from India to South-east Asia. … The Mughals expanded further into southern India than any previous Muslim power, inundating Central Asia with Hindu captives. Nevertheless, these advances obscured structural flaws: newly conquered Christians and Hindus often refused to convert."

"The birth of Bangladesh has raised fundamental questions about the concept of nationhood in South Asian subcontinent. The emergence of Bangladesh reveals that South Asia does not contain one or two nations but many nations. Bangladesh may not, therefore, be the last hidden nation to surface in this subcontinent. The relationship between the "parts" and "whole" in South Asia may not be a settled issue, their respective roles may have to be renegotiated in the future."

"I have mentioned earlier the reason for Delhi's headache regarding Bengali nationalism. They feared that with the establishment of a secular and independent Bangladesh, the wave of this nationalism would reach all Bengali-speaking regions of India, including the states of West Bengal and Tripura, and would also create cracks in the unity of the remaining undivided India...India prefers to have a weak Muslim state as its eastern neighbor—a state towards which the non-Muslim Bengalis of West Bengal or Tripura would feel no affinity or loyalty; rather, they would fear associating with Muslim nationality and Muslim majority, recalling the memories of Pakistani rule. Moreover, although this country would nominally be a Muslim state, it would be almost entirely surrounded by India and fragmented on the basis of religious national unity, making it easy to use this weak country to tilt the balance of power and influence in South Asian politics in India's favor. Additionally, India's big businesses would have the opportunity to establish a monopoly market there without hindrance. It turns out that, despite the differences and hostilities between Delhi and Islamabad regarding Bangladesh's independence, their attitudes towards a secular Bangladesh and secular Bengali nationalism are almost identical."

"As a minority, no sooner do you learn to polish and cherish one chip on your shoulder, it’s taken off you and swapped out for another. The jewellery of your struggles is forever on loan, like the . You are intermittently handed this necklace of labels to hang around your neck."

"The "South Asia scholars" wanted to systematically replace "ancient India" with "South Asia". Yet, the name "India" itself is ancient, and was used by the Greeks. Moreover, names are freely projected into the past elsewhere, e.g. "China" did not exist prior to 230 BCE, and even later was only used by foreigners, yet we call the Xia dynasty of ca. 1800 BCE "ancient Chinese"... So, this zeal to obliterate "India" (Bharat) clearly sprang from this special anti-Hindu animus."

"Pakistani textbooks have a particular problem when defining geographical space. The terms "South Asia" and "Subcontinent" have partially helped to solve this problem of the geo-historical identity of the area formally known as British India. However, it is quite difficult for Pakistani textbook writers to ignore the land now known as India when they discuss Islamic heroes and Muslim monuments in the Subcontinent. This reticence to recognize anything of importance in India, which is almost always referred to as "Bharat" in both English and Urdu versions of the textbooks, creates a difficult dilemma for historians writing about the Mughal Dynasties."

""What happened to us?" The question haunts us in the Arab and Muslim world. We repeat it like a mantra. You will hear it from Iran to Syria, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, and in my own country of Lebanon. For us, the past is a different country, one that is not mired in the horrors of sectarian killings; a more vibrant place, without the crushing intolerance of religious zealots and seemingly endless, amorphous wars. Though the past had coups and wars too, they were contained in time and space, and the future still held much promise. “What happened to us?” The question may not occur to those too young to remember a different world, or whose parents did not tell them of a youth spent reciting poetry in Peshawar, debating Marxism late into the night in the bars of Beirut, or riding bicycles to picnic on the banks of the Tigris River in Baghdad. The question may also surprise those in the West who assume that the extremism and the bloodletting of today were always the norm."

"Thence, southward bending to the Orient, laves The Erythrean, with its ocean waves, Of all earth’s shores the fairest richest strand, And noblest tribes possess that happy land. First of all wonders, still forever soar Sweet clouds of fragrance from that breathing shore. The myrrh, the odorous cane, the cassia there, And ever-ripening incense balms the air. For in that land the all-ruling King on high Set free young Bacchus from his close-bound thigh; Broke odors from each tree at that fair birth, And one unbounded fragrance filled the earth. ’Neath golden fleeces stooped the o’er-laden flocks, And streams came bounding from the living rocks. Birds from strange isles, and many an untrod shore, With leaves of cinnamon, were flying o’er. Loose from his shoulders hung the fawn-skin down, In his fair hair was wreathed the ivy-crown: Ruddy his lips with wine. He shook his wand, Smiling, and wealth o’erflowed the gifted land. Whence still the fields with liquid incense teem, The hills with gold, with odors every stream; And in their pride her sumptuous sons enfold Their limbs in soft attire and robes of gold."

"Who are these from the strange, ineffable places, From the Topaze Mountain and Desert of Doubt, With the glow of the Yemen full on their faces, And a breath from the spices of Hadramaut?Travel-apprentices, travel-indenturers, Young men, old men, black hair, white, Names to conjure with, wild adventurers, From the noonday furnace and purple night.Burckhardt, Halévy, Niebuhr, Slater, Seventeenth, eighteenth-century bays, Seetzen, Sadleir, Struys, and later Down to the long Victorian days.A thousand miles at the back of Aden, There they had time to think of things; In the outer silence and burnt air laden With the shadow of death and a vulture’s wings.There they remembered the last house in Samna, Last of the plane-trees, last shepherd and flock, Prayed for the heavens to rain down manna, Prayed for a Moses to strike the rock.Famine and fever flagged their forces Till they died in a dream of ice and fruit, In the long-forgotten watercourses By the edge of Queen Zobëide’s route.They have left the hope of the green oases, The fear of the bleaching bones and the pest, They have found the more ineffable places— Allah has given them rest."

"Her stature like the tall straight cedar-trees, Whose stately bulks do fame th’ Arabian groves,"

"Drops tears as fast as the Arabian trees Their medicinable gum."

"The phœnix fair which rich Arabia breeds,"

"Th’ Arabian dew besmears My uncontrollèd brow"

"[S]o sweet, so rich an air, As breathes from the Arabian grove."

"For him the Rich Arabia sweats her Gum;"

"This Casket India’s glowing Gems unlocks, And all Arabia breathes from yonder Box."

"For Adoration, incense comes From bezoar, and Arabian gums,"

"And, where the charmer treads her magic toe, On English ground Arabian odours grow;"

"In hideous conference sits the listening band, And start at each low wind, or wakeful sound; What though thy stay the pilgrim curseth oft, As all-benighted in Arabian wastes He hears the wilderness around him howl With roaming monsters,"

"O’er his wounds she sprinkled dew From flowers that in Arabia grew:"

"No Nightingale did ever chaunt More welcome notes to weary bands Of travellers in some shady haunt, Among Arabian sands:"

"With zebras striped, and sleek Arabians’ prance,"

"The wizard lights and demon play Of nights Walpurgis and Arabian!"

"Oriental studies have never been so intensive.... In the century of Louis XIV one was a Hellenist, today one is an Orientalist.... The Orient has become a sort of general preoccupation.... We shall see great things. The old Asiatic barbarism may not be as devoid of higher men as our civilization would like to believe."

"Intellectually, too, we can say that without the Reformation’s sanctioning and abetting of the idea of recovering the original meaning of God’s word, it is doubtful that many specialized orientalists would have been needed, wanted, or welcomed in European society."

"Finally, there is another cultural-political contingency. that shaped German oriental studies in its formative years, and that is, ironically, the inability, or unwillingness, of Central European states to control the spread of radical religious ideas. Had the Protestant churches been able to contain the spread of the Higher Criticism or to exert more power over university appointments, the text-threshing power of philological-historical criticism might have been broken and oriental studies might have been sidelined entirely. But the churches failed."

"Old Testament criticism was never bound by the same rules and prejudices as the study of China or of India, and vice versa."

"Hereafter, we will have to reckon again and again with Japan, indeed, with the Orient as a whole. Orientalistik will become a practical field of study, no longer what it was previously, a scrupulously avoided domain of dry as dust pedants. A chair for Japanology will soon be created [actually, the first came in 1914]. But chairs are not the only thing — and they are not the most important thing in the world. In hundreds and thousands of canals the life blood of the peoples is flowing back and forth. From now on will it circulate in a totally different, powerful way, between the Orient and Occident ... and not only will the Occident act on the Orient, but the Orient will also act on the Occident."

"...the anachronistic conception that Greece and Rome alone should be considered sources of culture for us, and that therefore they must remain for all time the focal point of historical-philological research. [Classicists] still practice that orthodox philology, which claims and possesses an influence, which it has not for a long time deserved, [and] that intolerant onesidedness which only accords the oriental sciences a hearing in so far as they are related to the history and culture of Greece, but otherwise are blind and want to be blind to the enormous field of Asian knowledge, which has brought us into contact with the modern world. [They are still beholden to] that real “unworldliness” in the scholarly sense, which takes no part in the widened historical conceptions of our day. Those are the forces with which Orientalistik has always had to struggle, and which today too block Sinology’s path ..."

"Tusa (1977) believes that "the so-called 'grave culture' is not in fact due to a sudden interruption in the life of the valley but to an appreciable, substantial change perhaps due to new contributions that are nevertheless in line with the cultural traditions of the previous period." He echoes objections that have been raised so many times by South Asian archaeologists: "The existence of contributions from the outside, for too long used to justify cultural change in the sub-Himalayan area, has in my opinion been exaggerated even though it could conceivably have been a factor in cultural change without being the only one" (690). As far as he is concerned, "to attribute a historical value to . . . the slender links with northwestern Iran and northern Afghanistan . . . is a mistake "because . . ." it could well be the spread of particular objects and, as such, objects that could circulate more easily quite apart from any real contacts" (691-692)."

"In time, the Chinese developed a taste for human meat.... T'ao Tsung-yi, a writer during the Yüan dynasty [1271–1368], remarked on the taste of human meat (hsiang jou) in his Cho Keng Lu (Records of Stopping Cultivation), in which he said that children's meat was the best food of all in taste, and next to this were women and men. Chuang Ch'ao, a Sung [960–1279] writer, was more specific about the taste of human meat in his Chi Lieh Pien (Chicken Rib Section) in which he referred to children's meat as well-boiled bone (...), which means that because of their superior tastiness children could be eaten whole, including their bones, when they were well-boiled. He also characterized women's meat as more delicious than mutton (...). Men's meat was less so, and was referred to as "jao pa huo" — the least tasty of all human meat. Generally, he referred to men and women as two-legged sheep (liang-chao yang), but he believed that both young children and beautiful women were particularly good for mutton soup (...)."

"You should know that they eat all manner of foul things and any kind of meat, including human flesh, which they devour with great relish. They will not touch someone who has died of natural causes, but if he has been stabbed to death or otherwise killed they eat him all up and consider it a great delicacy."

"One day they Liu Pei and Yüan-tê] sought shelter at a house whence a youth came out and made a low obeisance. They asked his name and he gave it as Liu An, of a well known family of hunters. Hearing who the visitor was the hunter wished to lay before him a dish of game, but though he sought for a long time nothing could be found for the table. So he came home, killed his wife and prepared a portion for his guest. While eating Liu Pei asked what flesh it was and the hunter told him "wolf." Yüan-tê knew no better and ate his fill. Next day at daylight, just as he was leaving, he went to the stables in the rear to get his horse and passing through the kitchen he saw the dead body of a woman lying on the table. The flesh of one arm had been cut away. Quite startled he asked what this meant, and then he knew what he had eaten the night before. He was deeply affected at this proof of his host's regard and the tears rained down as he mounted his steed at the gate."

"They eat man's flesh there just as we eat beef here. Yet the country in itself is excellent, and hath great store of flesh-meats, and of wheat and of rice... And merchants come to this island from far, bringing children with them to sell like cattle to those infidels, who buy them and slaughter them in the shambles and eat them."

"And when morning came with its sheen and shone, we arose and walked about the island to the right and left, till we came in sight of an inhabited house afar off. So we made towards it, and ceased not walking till we reached the door thereof when lo! a number of naked men issued from it and without saluting us or a word said, laid hold of us masterfully and carried us to their king, who signed us to sit. So we sat down and they set food before us such 36as we knew not and whose like we had never seen in all our lives. My companions ate of it, for stress of hunger, but my stomach revolted from it and I would not eat; and my refraining from it was, by Allah's favour, the cause of my being alive till now: for no sooner had my comrades tasted of it than their reason fled and their condition changed and they began to devour it like madmen possessed of an evil spirit. Then the savages gave them to drink of cocoa-nut oil and anointed them therewith; and straightway after drinking thereof, their eyes turned into their heads and they fell to eating greedily, against their wont. When I saw this, I was confounded and concerned for them, nor was I less anxious about myself, for fear of the naked folk. So I watched them narrowly, and it was not long before I discovered them to be a tribe of Magian cannibals whose King was a Ghul. All who came to their country or whoso they caught in their valleys or on their roads they brought to this King and fed them upon that food and anointed them with that oil, whereupon their stomachs dilated that they might eat largely, whilst their reason fled and they lost the power of thought and became idiots. Then they stuffed them with cocoa-nut oil and the aforesaid food, till they became fat and gross, when they slaughtered them by cutting their throats and roasted them for the King's eating; but, as for the savages themselves, they ate human flesh raw."

"1611. People are selling their daughters and sons, and eating their wives and children. When driven towards dangers, what choices do they have?"

"1622. When all the chaffs, kernels, grass, wood and wasted leather were eaten up, they ate the flesh of the dead. Later on, people were eaten alive. In the end, relatives ate each other. The troops of Yanfang and Yunqing openly butchered and sold people in a market where one jin of flesh could be exchanged for one liang of silver."

"The Shanxi poet Wang Xilun... describ[ed] in an essay how children whose starving parents had abandoned them in ditches were slaughtered and eaten by other famine victims as though they were sheep or pigs."

"Killing people is as easy as killing pigs. Children cry out for help but no one answers them. They are killed with a knife since meat has become more valuable than human life."

"In our country it would not be necessary to wash that child; he might be roasted at once."

"Qiaoxian town officials treated me to lunch. On that day, the main course was sautéed pig's liver. I tried very hard not to vomit as I swallowed two pieces. I then quickly turned away from the table.... During the previous few days, I had encountered nothing but stories about the cutting out of human livers, boiling human livers, consuming human livers, and barbecuing human livers. My tolerance had reached its limit."

"When people do not respect our [traditions], they become enemies, and we don't consider our enemies to be human any more. They become animals in our eyes. And the Dayaks eat animals."

"Over the last 20 years or so evidence has grown that the hub of ancient long-distance seafaring was Southeast and east Asia."

"A hollowed-out space in living rock is a totally different environment from a building constructed of quarried stone. The human organism responds in each case with a different kind of empathy. Buildings are fashioned in sequence by a series of uniformly repeatable elements, segment by segment, from a foundation upwards to the conjunction of walls and roof; the occupant empathizes with a visible tension between gravity and soaring tensile strength. Entering a great building is to experience an almost imperceptible tensing in the skeletal muscles in response to constructional tension. Caves, on the other hand, are scooped out by a downward plunge of the chisel from ceiling to floor in the direction of gravity; the occupant empathizes with an invisible but sensed resistance, an unrelenting pressure in the rock enveloping him; sculpted images and glowing pigments on the skin of the rock well forth from the deeps. To enter an Indian cave sanctuary is to experience a relaxation of physical tension in response to the implacable weight and density of the solid rock."