indologists

"H. Kern in his book Over het woord Zarathushtra (1867) states, “the Bactrian (i.e. Avestan) is so (greatly) related to the Old- Indian language (Vedic), and in particular, that of the Vedas, that without exaggeration it can be called a dialect thereof.”"

"Peter von Bohlen claimed in 1835, the historian of the Orient must treat all people equally: ‘... he must learn to regard the wonders, which belong to the very spirit of the ancient legends, as an inviolable national inheritance, neither setting them aside by forced interpretations, nor proscribing them as the offspring of pure imagination or intentional deception, but simply endeavoring to discover the original nucleus of fact... .”” Moreover, he continued, the historical critic must strive, “unbiased by preconceived opinion, fully to understand and fairly to estimate the individual character of every people, according to their own standard of perfection, their peculiar turn of thought and their mode of action... .”"

"German orientalists, A.W. Schlegel claimed in 1819, were not suited to be missionaries or colonizers: “... on the other hand, they are all the more ideally suited to appreciate the world-historical, philological and philosophical insights the study of Indian monuments can offer. For the kinds of research that sharpen the eye for these sorts of perspectives on the unknown, prehistorical world are already deeply rooted in Germany, and foreign scholars cannot even imagine many of the concepts which the Germans already thoroughly comprehend.’"

"The connections of Book 5 with Books 1 and 8 and not with the other clan books (2-4, 6-7) is interesting, since it seems to belong to the core RV collection (Oldenberg [1888a]; Witzel [1997])."

"We need not rely exclusively on the Anukramaṇī to affirm that there were important interactions between the priestly groups represented in Books 1, 5 and 8. As Oldenberg [1888b:213-215] has shown, evidence from the hymns themselves supports this conclusion."

"the clan book composers, except those from Book 5, are not well represented among the pavamāna composers of Book 9."

"the pavamāna collection consists primarily of late authors, those from Books 1, 5, 8 and in a limited number of cases, 10."

"the breakdown of the strict separation of the ritual poetry of different clans and the preservation of that poetry together in a single collection began with the Kāṇva, Ātreya and Āngirasa poets of Books 1, 5 and 8."

"The formation of the ṛksamhita [....] appears to have been carried out in three stages. First, the ‗clan books‘ 2-7 were collected and ordered [....] At a later stage, Books 1 and 8 were added to the case like book ends. It was likely at this stage that Book 9 was added as well. Lastly, the heterogenous material in Book 10 was appended to the entire collection."

"These circles are represented by the Kāṇva, Ātreya and Āngirasa authors from Books 1, 5 and 8, as well as by descendants of these authors."

"At intermediate points along the way, individual verses and entire hymns were inserted into the RV collection."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"He had to learn to sing, readily and accurately, all the tunes that were used in the many distinct Soma-sacrifices, and he had also to know which strophes were required for each sacrifice and in what order they were sung. Therefore, that the young priest might master all the tunes thoroughly and have any one at command at any moment, each was connected with a single stanza of the right metre, and the teacher made his pupils sing it over and over again, until tune and stanza were firmly imprinted, in indissoluble association, in the memory."

"It seems to be a general rule that a people which invaded a foreign country, to some degree adopted the pronunciation of its new home, partly as a result of the influence of climate, and partly also on account of the intermixture with the old inhabitants. This has also generally been supposed to have been the case in India. Thus there has been a long discussion as to whether the Aryans have adopted the cerebral letters from the Dravidas or have developed them independently. Good reasons have been adduced for both suppositions, and the question has not as yet been decided. The Indo-European languages do not seem to have possessed those letters. They had a series of dentals which were not, however, pronounced as pure dentals by putting the tongue between the teeth, but probably as alveolars, the tongue being pressed against the root of the upper teeth [as, for instance, in pronouncing the English -t- and -d-]. It is a well known fact that these sounds have in India partly become dentals and partly cerebrals. The cerebrals are in most cases derived from compound letters where the old dentals were preceded by an -l-. Similar changes also occur in other Indo-European languages, and it is therefore quite possible that the Indo-Aryan cerebrals have been developed quite independently. The cerebral letters, however, form an essential feature of the Dravidian phonology , and it therefore seems probable that Dravidian influence has been at work and at least given strength to a tendency which can, it is true , have taken its origin among the Aryans themselves."

"Although the river below the confluence [with the Ghaggar] is marked in our maps as Gaggar, it was formerly the Saraswatī; that name is still known amongst the people."

"The first person who attempted to correlate the textual descriptions of Sarasvati with empirical paleogeology was C. F. Oldham, in 1874. He surmised that "the waters of the Sarasvati [are] continuous with the dry bed of a great river [Hakra], which, as local legends assert, once flowed through the desert to the sea"."

"the Sutlej ‘flowed southwards from the Himalāya . . . and onwards, through Sind, to the sea’—until, for some reason, a prince-turned-ascetic named Puran, a hero of many Punjabi legends, cursed the river to leave its bed and move westward. ‘The stream, in consequence, changed its course more and more towards the west, until, six hundred and fifty years ago, it entered the Beas valley . . .’, which would take us to the thirteenth century CE; but leaving aside the date, the consequence was ‘a terrible drought and famine in the country on the banks of the Hakra, where [large] numbers of men and cattle perished. The survivors then migrated to the banks of the Indus, and the country has ever since been desert’... ‘the traditions of all the tribes bordering upon it [the Rann of Kachchh] agree that this expanse of salt and sand was once an estuary’... The course of the ‘lost river’ has now been traced from the Himalaya to the Rann of Kach . . . We have also seen that the Vedic description of the waters of the Saraswatī flowing onward to the ocean, and that given in the Mahabharata, of the sacred river losing itself in the sands, were probably both of them correct at the periods to which they referred."

"(the Rig Veda in one of its hymns clearly places the river) ‘between the Yamuna and the Satudri [Sutlej] which is its present position’. ... ‘it was formerly [known as] the Saraswatī; that name is still known amongst the people . . .’ Its ancient course is contiguous with the dry bed of a great river which, as local legends assert, once flowed through the desert to the sea. In confirmation of these traditions, the channel referred to, which is called Hakra or Sotra, can be traced through the Bikanir and Bhawulpur [Bahawalpur] States into Sind, and thence onwards to the Rann of Kach. The existence of this river at no very remote period, and the truth of the legends which assert the ancient fertility of the lands through which it flowed, are attested by the ruins which everywhere overspread what is now an arid sandy waste. Throughout this tract are scattered mounds, marking the sites of cities and towns. And there are strongholds still remaining, in a very decayed state, which were places of importance at the time of the early Mahommedan invasions. Amongst these ruins are found not only the huge bricks used by the Hindus in the remote past, but others of a much later make. All this seems to show that the country must have been fertile for a long period . . . Freshwater shells, exactly similar to those now seen in the Panjab rivers, are to be found in this old riverbed and upon its banks... ... ‘great changes in the course of the Sutlej have occurred in comparatively recent times. Indeed, only a century ago [that is, in the late eighteenth century], the river deserted its bed under the fort of Ludiana, which is five miles from its present course’... the ‘old riverbed generally known as Narra. This channel, which bears also the names of Hakra or Sagara, Wahind, and Dahan, is to be traced onward to the Rann of Kach59 . . . The name Hakra . . . is also applied to the Narra, as far as the Rann of Kach, so that the whole channel is known by this name, from Bhatnair [Hanumangarh] to the sea’...."

"But it is clear that, on this point, my attitude owes a lot to acquired habits and to the fact that, for one hundred and fifty years, hundreds of European and American scientists, sometimes very brilliant, have established as a principle of interpretation of all the facts that PIE was, geographically speaking, a European language. I have no doubt that such an effort would make it possible to reinterpret all the data in a sense compatible with the thesis of the Indian origin of the PIE. The resulting diagram would undoubtedly be more complex than the diagram traditionally taught in Europe, but we know that the simplest interpretations are not necessarily those which best reflect the reality of the facts."

"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."

"This is not the place to dwell on these debates, as important as they are. We will find a good overview in the very well informed and very balanced book by Edwin Bryant which, moreover, demonstrates that, all things considered, no scientific argument allows us to choose between the theses of Indian or extra-Indian origin of the Āryas and, consequently, of the Indo-Europeans... To anyone who doubts the fact that the commonly accepted opinion in the West on the origin of i-e language peoples is based primarily on an intuition that is difficult to demonstrate, I would recommend reading E. Bryant's book. We can clearly see that the debate resurfaces from generation to generation."

"A. Parpola is an abundant writer, but not very rational."

"The dates (2200–1500 BCE) and location of the Andronovo culture are consistent with the attribution of this culture to the undivided Indo-Iranians. But we will notice that the traces attested today stop in Bactria... No Andronovian burial has yet been found south of the Oxus.... They are very thin: a few shards. 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. Furthermore, one of the markers of the Scythian civilization and – for the majority of archaeologists – of the p-i-e and i-ir habitat in the 4th and 3rd millennia BC is the existence of tombs covered with a tumulus (known as kurgan/ kurgan)... So in Sintashta. However, this type of burial was considered an abomination both in Vedic India and in Mazdaean Iran. Clearly, it is very difficult to find a marker for the i-ir group."

"The sacrifice of horses, in fact, is in no way specific to Vedic India: only the ritual of this sacrifice is, very different from that of the funerary ritual of Sintashta. The Indian aśvamedha is in no way a funeral ritual."

"Nevertheless, since the beginning of the 19th century, Westerners have agreed to place the habitat of the p-i-e-speaking people(s) in central or eastern Europe, more rarely in Scandinavia, in any case not in Iran, nor in India... European historians, who all considered it proven that the existence of languages of indo-european origin in India resulted from a movement of peoples from the North, could be content to draw large arrows on the maps representing the archaeologically empty territories where they had necessarily passed before crossing the Hindu-Kush barrier and penetrating into North-West India. It now appears that these territories were populated, urbanized and linked together by a complex network of commercial and cultural relations. Archaeologists then find themselves faced with the classic problem of having to correlate a material culture and a language."

"The sacrifice of horses, in fact, is in no way specific to Vedic India: only the ritual of this sacrifice is, very different from that of the funerary ritual of Sintashta. The Indian aśvamedha is in no way a funeral ritual. Likewise, that the i-e name (?) of the chariot (ratha) is only attested in the i-ir languages does not mean that it is an i-ir invention, because, like so many others words, its equivalent may have disappeared from other languages i-e and because having a word to designate the war chariot does not mean that they invented it."

"Unfortunately, E. E. Kuzmina, whose archaeological knowledge is very vast, uses Indian sources in very outdated translations and knows neither how to criticize them nor how to scale them over time: Indian civilization is not immutable."

"It is perhaps worth emphasizing that the enormous academic literature devoted in Europe, over the past one hundred and fifty years, to the Indo-European question, even disregarding pan-Germanist and Nazi rantings, often contains preconceptions and paralogisms which are equivalent to those of Indian semi-scientists. 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."

"The scene of traditional history opens in India [and it comprises] the whole of Northern India extending in the east upto Orissa... [There is a] total absence of extraterritorial memory in the Rig Veda... It really cannot be proved that the Vedic Aryans retained any memory of their extra-Indian associations."

"No trace either of the skillful turned pottery of the Oxus civilization: the vases used by the Vedic priests are made of wood or unturned ceramic. The black ceramics from Swat attributed to the Āryas, the gray ceramics (PGW, Painted Gray Ware), which Indian archaeologists consider as the best marker of their presence in the Indus and Ganges valleys, do not in any way recall what is found in Togolok or Gonur."

"It is absurd to suppose that the elaborate royal genealogies were all merely figments of imagination or a tissue of falsehoods."

"They alone contain something like a continuous historical narrative, and it is absurd to suppose that the elaborate royal genealogies were all merely figments of imagination or a tissue of falsehoods."

"Post-cremation burials have been discovered ... distributed among strata of all periods [at Mohenjo Daro.]"

"That age [of the Rigveda] is not known with even an approximate degree of certainty."

"We may join to their statements Pusalker's comment on the claims staked for several potteries that they belong to the supposed Vedic Aryan invaders: "There is... no positive evidence to connect the Vedic Aryans with the excavated Cultures subsequent to those of the Indus Valley... So far archaeological excavation has yielded nothing of the nature of sacrificial implements or other ritual paraphernalia that can definitely be called Aryan and associated with the Vedic Aryans, though it must be admitted that the Painted Grey Ware culture has been found at all excavated sites connected with the Bharata War. ""

"Without such an understanding, we could often end up blaming the Vedic poets for indulging in hopelessly mixed metaphors (after Bergaigne (1936: 61), who complained of “the cacophony of the [hymns’] discordant metaphors”): what is this “ship” in which the A‹vins are invoked to take the supplicants to the “far shore”, while at the same time they are asked to keep their chariot yoked and ready to cross? (1.46.7–8) Are they supposed to load their chariot onto a ferry, perhaps? But it is, says the hymn, the “ship of our prayers” (1.46.7) (or hymns or beliefs), and the only way to the yonder shore is the “path of the truth” again (1.46.11)."

"The words Panik or Vanik, Panya and Vipani, found in Sanskrit, suggest that the Panis were merchants par excellence of the Rigvedic age [even though] greedy like the wolf, niggardly, of cruel speech."

"We reiterate that there is no indication in the Rigveda of the Arya‘s memory of any ancestral home, and by extension, of migrations. Given the pains taken to create a distinct identity for themselves, it would be surprising if the Aryas neglected such an obvious emotive bond in reinforcing their group cohesion. Thus their silence on the subject of migrations is taken here to indicate that by the time of composition of the Rigveda, any memory of migrations, should they have taken place at all, had been erased from their consciousness."

"[Burrow] suggests that Saraswati was a proto-Indoaryan term, originally applied to the present Haraxvaiti when the proto-Indoaryans still lived in northeastern Iran.... It would be just as plausible to assume that Saraswati was a Sanskrit term indigenous to India and was later imported by the speakers of Avestan into Iran. The fact that the Zend Avesta is aware of areas outside the Iranian plateau while the Rigveda is ignorant of anything west of the Indus basin would certainly support such an assertion."

"The traditional view, that iron was brought into the subcontinent by invading 'Aryans' (Banerjee 1965), is wrong on two counts: there is no evidence of any knowledge of iron in the earliest Vedic texts (Pleiner 1971), where ayas stands either for copper or for metals in general, and the idea that the aryas of the Rigveda were invaders has become just as questionable. Wheeler's assertion that iron only spread to India with the eastward extension of Achaemenid rule (Wheeler 1962) is even more untenable in the face of radiocarbon dates from early iron-bearing levels."

"Indeed, if one accepts that the migrations of Indo-Aryan speakers into South Asia already entered the realm of mythology at the time of the Rgvedic hymns, and that the latter were composed from ca. the 15th century B.C. onwards, the chronology suggested by the archaeological evidence already makes perfect sense."

"The alternative thesis (Chakrabarti 1977), that iron smelting was developed in the subcontinent, rests on two principal arguments. First, iron ore is found across the length and the breadth of India, outside alluvial plains, in quantities that were certainly viable for exploitation by the primitive methods observable even in this century (Ball 1881; Elwin 1942). Ample opportunities thus existed for experimentation, although given the complexity or iron smelting this is not a conclusive point. The second argument, that the earliest evidence for iron comes from the peninsula and not from the northwest, is much more persuasive, even if better examples than quoted by Chakrabarti can be adduced in support of it. Briefly, while the dating of Phase II of Nagda (the earliest iron bearing level) depends on ceramic analogies, and the stratigraphy of Ahar (another site which is claimed to have produced evidence for iron) is hopelessly muddled, the testimony of radiocarbon dates is instructive."

"Iron Age levels have yielded dates of 2970 + 105 bp (TF-570) 1255, 1240, 1221 cal. BC and 2820 + 100 bp (TF-573) 993 cal. BC from Hallur, and 2905 + 105 bp (TF-326) 1096 cal. BC and 3130 + 105 bp (TF-324) 1420 cal. BC from Eran. They are not only earlier than any date from the Ganga valley (which dates fall between 2700-2500 bp) but are also earlier than the dates from Pirak in the northwest, with the exception of an anomalous reading of 2970 + 140 (Ly-1643) 1255, 1240, 1221 cal. BC. Since the process of diffusion from the west should produce rather the opposite pattern, a strong case can be made for an indigenous origin of ion smelting, although it could do with further support given the complexity of this industrial process which by common consent renders multiple centers of innovation unlikely."

"For example, Erdosy (1995) noted that cremation was pretty common in 2000 BCE Balochistan (Penano Ghundai II, Mughal Ghundai III, Dabar Kot, Mehi, Sutkagen-dor) but very rare in Central Asia: “If anything, on present evidence, cremations appear to have originated in the Indo-Iranian Borderlands and spread northwest (and southeast) thence, against the grain of postulated movements of Indo-Aryan speakers”."

"George Erdosy, a Canadian scholar, is refreshingly perceptive: Even apparently clear indications of historical struggles between dark aborigines and Arya conquerors turn out to be misleading…. [The Dasas and Dasyus] appear to be demonic rather than human enemies…. It is a cosmic Struggle which is described in detailed accounts that are consistent with one another."

"Arya and Dasa were only horizontal divisions, denoting groups of people living in their separate territories in north-western India... [dasyus were only] a segment of Dasas...[the term paṇi was used for people who were] rich and niggardly [and possibly] usurers, [and that the group of paṇis] cross-cuts the otherwise horizontal stratification of non-Aryas, [...] and may denote either an occupation or simply a set of values attributable to anyone."

"Erdosy (1995a), who is prepared to find "some support" for small-scale migrations associated with the intrusive BMAC elements noted earlier, nonetheless states: "Several cultural traits with good Vedic and Avestan parallels have been found widely distributed between the southern Urals, Central Asia and the Indo-Iranian borderlands. However, even allowing for the uncertain chronology of Central Asian sites, few of these traits show the northwest-southeast gradient in chronology predicted by our linguistic models." Rather, in the manner of other traits commonly associated with the "Aryans" within South Asia, "they originate in different places at different times and circulate widely, undoubtedly through the extensive interaction networks built up in the mid-3rd to early 2nd millennia B.C." The main point is that "it is impossible, thus, to regard the widespread distribution of certain beliefs and rituals, which came to be adopted by Indo-Iranian speakers, as evidence of population movements" (12)."

"As for Burrow‘s thesis that some place names reflect the names of geographical features to the west, and thus preserve an ancestral home, they once again rather rely on an assumption of Arya migrations than prove it. [...] His cited equivalence of Sanskrit Saraswati and Avestan Haraxvaiti is a case in point. Burrow accepts that it is the latter term that is borrowed, undergoing the usual change of s- > h in the process, but suggests that Saraswati was a proto-Indoaryan term, originally applied to the present Haraxvaiti when the proto-Indoaryans still lived in northeastern Iran, then it was brought into India at the time of the migrations, while its original bearer had its name modified by the speakers of Avestan who assumed control of the areas vacated by proto-Indoaryans. It would be just as plausible to assume that Saraswati was a Sanskrit term indigenous to India and was later imported by the speakers of Avestan into Iran. The fact that the Zend Avesta is aware of areas outside the Iranian plateau while the Rigveda is ignorant of anything west of the Indus basin would certainly support such an assertion."