Madhav M. Deshpande

"While The Mitanni documents, the Old Persian documents and the Asokan edicts, coming from inscriptions as they do, are frozen in time, that is not the case with the Rgveda or the Avestan texts. These have been subject to a long oral tradition before they were codified, and the texts available to us represent a state of affairs at the end of this long oral transmission, rather than at the starting point of their creation.... the time gap between the composers of the hymns and the collectors, editors and collators was quite large. This gap must have been quite enough to lead to a kind of homogenisation."

"Normally, looking at the Ramayana story externally, we would be tempted to call the Vanaras and Raksasas Anaryas. However, the Ramayana depicts situations where members of these societies use the term 'Arya' to refer to each other."

"There was a branch of Indo-Aryan which, like the parent Indo-European, had retained the distinction between r and l, [and that this branch entered India] before the migrations of the standard Indo-Aryan branch... Where did they come from? Did they reach India via Iran? If so, did they leave any trace of themselves in Iran? Were the speakers of the r-and-l dialect of pre-Vedic Indo-Aryan a totally different branch from the Indo- Iranian? These are difficult questions. [...] Anyway, one would still have to assume the entry of r-and-l dialects of Indo-Aryan into India before the arrival of the Ṛgvedic Aryans to account for the fact that r-and-l dialects in India were more easterly in relation to the Ṛgvedic dialect."