Archaeologists From France

"Jarrige (1985) specifically mentions that the existence of the Indo-Aryans has "so far only been deduced on the basis of linguistic evidence" (62; ). Otherwise, "what we see is a dynamic system of multidirectional contacts and 'influences' extending throughout a vast area from southern Central Asia to the Ganges valley and continuing from the beginning of the 2nd millennium into the 1st millennium BC" (62)."

"From the Neolithic time till almost today there has never been, in spite of spectacular changes in the course of time, a definite gap or break in the history of the subcontinent."

"‘This famous vacuum that was sometimes called Vedic night . . . has been filling up more and more thanks to numerous findings.’93 In his opinion, the considerable changes that followed the end of the Indus cities are to be understood ‘within the framework of a continuity with the preceding millennia, without any radical break of the sort too often proposed earlier’."

"Nothing, in the present state of archaeological research ... enables us to reconstruct convincingly invasions that could be clearly attributed to Aryan groups."

"To take a single example here, some scholars decided that the Pirak culture, which emerged around 1800 BCE in the plains of Baluchistan, is the best representative of the Aryan intrusion. However, Jarrige, who directed excavations in the region, found that none of the transformations happening there in the early second millennium BCE, including the introduction of summer crops such as rice and millets (especially sorghum or jowar, in addition to the traditional winter crops of wheat and barley), ‘can be explained in the context of invasions of semi-nomadic peoples coming from the [Central Asian] steppes. … How could this series of transformations be seriously attributed to Indo-Aryan invaders? … Nothing, in the present state of archaeological research … enables us to reconstruct convincingly invasions that could be clearly attributed to Aryan groups’ (Jarrige 1995, pp. 24, 21). Regrettably, such well-informed views have been brushed aside in the desperate but vain search for material traces of those ‘Aryan groups’."

"As the excavator of Pirak, the only well-preserved second millennium B.C.E. site from the area (which he dates from 1700 to 700 B.C.E.), Jarrige (1985) finds a "town" of some size with "elaborate architec- ture" and evidence of a more intense level of irrigation and cultivation than occurred in the third millennium B.C.E.: "Just the opposite of that which has been presumed on the basis of negative evidence" (46). In view of the fact that Pirak is widely accepted as her- alding the Indo-Aryans due to the discovery of the horse there, my previous remarks about Indo-Aryans and urban centers are reinforced. Those wishing to consider Pirak as evidence of nomad Indo-Aryan pastoralists must address the fact that it was "a town of some size with elaborate architecture" that increased the agricultural productivity of the area."

"Jarrige's study of continuity and change concludes that the people living in the Kachi plain during the second millennium B.C.E. undoubtedly experienced the major economic transformations of the time yet maintained significant elements of cultural continuity and conservatism from the early third millennium B.C.E. and earlier. He underscores the continuity aspect of the area by comparing the ancient ruins of residential buildings from the excavations at Pirak with the very recent ruins of a house deserted by Hindus at partition in the same district. The resemblance is striking, while the samples of cooking pots between the two periods seem almost identical. Regarding the transformations, he doubts whether every newly attested item in the Kachi archaeological record of the second millennium B.C.E. could be attributed to an influx of new peoples, "since the processes . . . are too complex to be attributed to the arrival of invaders who at the same time would have had to have introduced rice from the Ganges, sorghum from the Arabian Gulf, and camels and horses from Central Asia" (Jarrige 1983, 56)."

"Although basic similarities exist, linking Mehrgarh with comparable Levantine and Zagrosian aceramic neolithic groups, “...they are sufficiently general to discount straightforward diffusion among communities that otherwise preserved their own, highly individual characteristics” (Jarrige 1991: 40)."

"Another element of continuity between ceramics of the third millennium Baluchistan and those of the second millennium can be found in the decoration. While the geometric painted designs on pottery from Pirak may be quite different from those on Harappan pottery, they are very much in the older ‘Quetta-Amri’ tradition. In our report on Pirak we pointed out similarities which we feel are too close to be explained merely as a result of coincidence. We postulated that such traditional styles of decoration survived in regions which were at the periphery of the principal zone of Harappan influence... ...Should the origins for these transformations of the second millennium be sought in exogeneous events, in colonization of the area by new peoples, by a sudden influx of refugees bringing new crops and animals with them? Probably not, since the processes which I have briefly described are too complex to be attributed to the arrival of invaders who at the same time would have had to have introduced rice from the Ganges, sorghum from the Arabian Gulf, and camels and horses from Central Asia. It is also not likely that the newcomers, whether they be a ruling elite or refugees, would have had the impetus to change an agricultural system still capable of being intensified without the introduction of new crops and, for rice, new irrigation practices."

"“The Vedda, the Melano-Indians and the Indus people and the actual inhabitants of the northern half of India, which classical anthropology used to class as Mediterraneans, all belong to one same human ‘current’ of which they manifest the successive ‘waves’. Everything indicates, physical traits as well as geographical distribution, that the Vedda have arrived first, followed by the Melano-Indians, and then the Indus people.”... “The Italian anthropologist [Mario Cappieri] has emphasized not only that the skulls of Mohenjo Daro resemble those of today’s Sindh and those of Harappa resemble those of today’s Panjab, but even that the individual variability is identical today to what it was four thousand years ago.”"

"The present stage of research effectively permits tracing an Asian origin for the Indo-Europeans well before their dispersion."

"Shiva, Varuna, Yama, Durga-Parvati, we already said it, are deities of IE origin, the rituals concerning fire, soma and the person of the king are equally of IE if not Indo-Iranian origin. But it is now obvious that the Indo-Aryans, upon arriving in India, have amply harvested the Harappan heritage and included its ritual customs (construction of hearth-altars, rites inside buildings, use of the stellar vestment, ritual baths, fixation of feasts on the stellar equinoxes…) in their own religion."

"One of the paradoxes of India is its astonishing linguistic diversity (they speak about five hundred languages there) compared with its cultural unity."

"The Kurgan people had to originate in Central Asia."

"Indeed, from the Indus eastwards, we lose track of this Bactrian invasion. Sergent himself admits as much: “For the sequel, archaeology offers little help. The diggings in India for the 2nd millennium BC reveal a large number of regional cultures, generally rather poor, and to decree what within them represents the Indo-Aryan or the indigenous contribution would be arbitrary. If Pirak (…) represents the start of Indian culture, there is in the present state of Indian archaeology no ‘post-Pirak’ except at Pirak itself, which lasted till the 7th century BC: the site remained, along with a few very nearby ones, isolated.” So, the Bactrian invaders who arrived through the Bolan pass and established themselves in and around the border town of Pirak, never crossed the Indus."

"The course of history does not include eternal problems, problems of essences or of dialectics; it only offers valorizations that differ from one culture to another and even from one individual to another. ... What is opposed to time as well as eternity is our own valorization of the present. What does it matter that time passes and that its frontier wipes out our valorizations? No warrior has been shaken in his patriotism by the idea that, had he been born on the other side of the border, his heart would have beaten for the other side."

"L'histoire est anecdotique: elle intéresse en racontant, comme le roman."

"Mérimée hated effects and pretense; he had no mercy for writers who strove to bring together words which were surprised to find themselves in the same company, who tried to polish their periods to give weird turns to trifling thoughts merely for the effect."

"the perverted picture as seen in opera and drama may not become our permanent impression of Mérimée's Carmen. Stage versions and adaptations minimize the misery, squalor, and tragedy of the gypsy girl's life and thereby lose the tremendous force of Mérimée's story. To know both may be good, but to mistake one for the other is not. As one critic has said, "Mérimée's Carmen is a gentleman's Carmen.""

"I would willingly give Thucydides for some authentic memoirs by Aspasia or by a slave of Pericles."

"When the youthful Queen Victoria was in Paris in 1840, she said to the Queen of France, whose guest she was, 'Do you find my French accent bad?' The Queen made a polite reply, but the King, Louis-Philippe, said to Victoria playfully, 'My dear child, they say that we here in the Tuileries do not speak very good French either. Let us send for Prosper Mérimée..."

"Some good judges assert that his is the best French prose that can be found. Hugo's anagram, première prose, is apt and felicitous."