"Hardly any other Indological book has had such a long life as a standard work on the early history of the Do-Aryan tribes who immigrated to India as Heinrich Zimmer's habilitation thesis "Altindiisches Leben", published in 1879. This presentation by the Berlin Indo-Europeanist and Celticist on the cultural conditions of the Indian Arya is based on a meticulous evaluation of the Rgveda. For almost a century it has retained this reputation to a certain extent up to the present day. It has produced a standard judgement that still lives on today in part in the work of Indologists and historians of India and whose basic statements have only been questioned to a limited extent - despite the much more differentiated view of the cultural milieu and religion of the Rgveda and of the migration problem associated with the question of the original homeland of the Indo-Europeans that archaeological and ethnoarchaeological research in South, Middle and Central Asia has brought about over the last sixty years."