Analysis of

1
Analysis of The ARYAN INVASION THEORY Part 1
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Map of central asia
3
Versions of Ancient Indian history
THERE ARE TWO VERSIONS OF ANCIENT INDIAN HISTORY
BCE

• The official version (taught in history books and
  text books)
• Traditional version found in the texts known as
  the Puranas

• PERIODS OF HISTORY ACCORDING TO OFFICIAL VERSION

• PERIODS OF HISTORY ACCORDING TO TRADITIONAL
  VERSION

• 1. The Indus Civilization (3500-1900 BCE or so).
• 2. The Aryan Invasion and the subsequent Vedic
  period (1500-600 BCE or so).
• 3. Post-Vedic and Buddhist India (600 BCE or so
  onwards).

• 1. Pre-Mahabharata (past tense)
• 2. Post-Mahabharata (future tense)

• It is only in respect of the history of the third
  part, post-600 BCE, that there is broad agreement
  between the two versions
• For the period before 600 BCE, the two accounts
  diverge
• the Puranas give a continuous history of
  traditional India going back into the mists of
  time
• Text book version commences this traditional
  history from a point around 1500 BCE when a race
  of foreign invaders called Aryans are alleged to
  have entered India from the northwest bringing
  with them the Sanskrit language and Vedic culture

4
Indias Traditional History

• The Puranas state that a period of 1015 or 1050
  years elapsed between the birth of Parikshit,
  born during the 18 day Mahabharata war, and the
  coronation of Mahapadma Nanda, which, as Greek
  records indirectly testify, took place in 378 or
  382 BCE.
• (This places the date of the war in the fifteenth
  century BCE)
• The Puranas record the names of over 90
  generations of kings who ruled different parts of
  northern India before the Mahabharata war right
  back to the time of the reign of the first king
  Manu Vaivasvata, thus taking this continuous
  history back into the third or fourth millennium
  BCE. There are also references to even earlier
  pre-Manu dynasties and kings.

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Traditional vs Official history

• Why is this traditional history recorded in the
  Puranas accepted by modern historians only for
  the period after 600 BCE, but not for the period
  before 600 BCE?
• The answer is that, for the period after 600 BCE,
  the Puranic accounts are broadly corroborated and
  confirmed by various new and independent sources
  like
• the Buddhist and Jain texts within India,
• and detailed accounts or incidental references in
  dated Greek, Persian and Chinese texts and
  records.
• We also have the first readable and datable
  inscriptions in India in the third century BCE in
  the form of the rock and pillar inscriptions of
  Ashoka, one of which names five contemporaneous
  kings of West Asia.
• The Puranic accounts for the period before 600
  BCE, for both the pre-Mahabharata as well as the
  post-Mahabharata periods, are rejected simply
  because
• they have no similar independent sources to
  confirm them
• and because they contradict the Aryan invasion
  theory which is treated as an irrefutable fact.
  

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Indian History prior to 600 BCE

• The traditional history recorded in the Puranas
  knows nothing about any Aryan invasion of India
  around 1500 BCE which brought the Sanskrit
  language and Vedic culture into India, nor about
  any pre-Aryan and pre-Vedic civilization in the
  Indus Valley area.
• So where did these ideas of an Aryan invasion and
  a pre-Aryan Indus civilization come from?
• The idea of an Aryan invasion of India around
  1500 BCE originated in the eighteenth century as
  a result of studies in comparative linguistics,
  when European scholars discovered that the
  languages of northern India were related to the
  languages of Central Asia, Iran and Europe. These
  languages were named Aryan or Indo-European
  languages. Linguists speculated that these
  languages originated in South Russia. This became
  the sole basis for the idea that these Aryans
  must have entered India from outside via the
  northwest. The oldest Sanskrit text, the Rigveda,
  was therefore analysed from the point of view of
  this alleged Aryan invasion.
• The archaeological discovery in the early
  twentieth century of the Harappan sites, which
  were dated well before 1500 BCE, automatically
  made this a non-Aryan or pre-Aryan civilization.
  

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The Crucial Nature of This Theory

• The basis for this entire history of India before
  600 BCE, as taught in modern history books, is
  the Aryan Invasion theory which was formulated by
  European scholars in the last 300 years during
  the days of the British rule in India. Before
  this, the idea of any Aryan language or
  historical Aryan people simply did not exist at
  all.
• This theory is based wholly and solely on the
  speculations following the discovery of the
  linguistic relations between the languages of
  India, Iran, Central Asia and Europe.
• It has no actual basis whatsoever either in any
  recorded historical text or tradition anywhere in
  the world or in any evidence discovered from any
  archaeological excavations within or outside
  India.
• The correctness or otherwise of this entire
  pre-600 BCE history of India as taught in history
  books therefore wholly and solely hinges on the
  correctness or otherwise of this theory.
• Therefore it is essential to first understand the
  basic postulates of this theory, and to
  understand which of these postulates are based on
  facts and which are based on speculation, and
  then to examine the postulates based on
  speculation to find out how far they fit in with
  the facts.

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The Four Postulates of The AIT

1. The languages of northern India, Iran, Central
   Asia and Europe are related to each other as
   members of a language family. This family has
   been named Aryan or Indo-European (as distinct
   from other language families like Dravidian,
   Semito-Hamitic, Austric, Sino-Tibetan, etc.) by
   linguists
2. All these languages must therefore be descended
   from a common ancestral language, which has been
   reconstructed by linguists and named
   proto-Indo-European.
3. This ancestral language must have been spoken in
   one particular area, the Indo-European homeland,
   from where dialects of this language spread out
   all over India, Iran, Central Asia and Europe
4. This Indo-European homeland must have been in
   some central area like South Russia, and not in
   India. If so, the Aryan languages spoken in India
   are not indigenous, but were brought into the
   area from outside by Aryan invaders or immigrants.

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The Indo-European Language Family

• Indians opposed to the AIT often reject the very
  first postulate that there is such a thing at
  all as an Aryan or Indo-European language family.
  
• This is wrong because it is clear from even a
  cursory study of the phonology, grammar and
  vocabulary of Sanskrit and the oldest European
  languages that they are indeed related to each
  other, and also that the other language families
  in India (Dravidian, etc.) are distinct families.
• The second postulate (that these Indo-European
  languages must be descended from a common
  ancestral language as reconstructed by the
  linguists) is also opposed by many Indians who
  insist that the ancestral language must be
  Sanskrit itself.
• This is also wrong because it is clear that
  Sanskrit itself was constantly evolving even
  within the Rigvedic period itself, and Vedic
  Sanskrit is also different from Classical
  Sanskrit. So obviously, the pre-Rigvedic forms of
  the language must also have been progressively
  more and more different from Vedic Sanskrit, to a
  point where at one stage it may have been
  something like the reconstructed
  Proto-Indo-European language.
• The third postulate, of a common homeland,
  follows naturally as a corollary to the first two
  postulates, and is equally valid.

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The Original Homeland

• However, the fourth postulate (the original
  homeland is in South Russia or somewhere else
  outside India) is based on speculations and
  dubious arguments, and not on empirical facts,
  data and logic.
• The AIT is based on this postulate alone.
• It must be remembered that
• 1. The AIT is a totally new theory formulated
  only in the last 300 years purely and solely on
  the basis of speculations and arguments about the
  location of the original homeland.
• 2. It has no basis or support in any traditional,
  textual or inscriptional source in India or
  anywhere else in the world.
• 3. It is not based on or supported by any data or
  evidence from any archaeological excavation
  anywhere in the world No trace of the
  proto-Indo-European language has been found in
  any part of the world, no archaeological trace of
  the invading Aryans entering or on the way to
  India has been found anywhere, and the language
  of the Indus Civilization is still unknown and
  there is no evidence whatsoever that it is
  non-Aryan.
• Therefore these arguments which form the sole
  basis of the AIT must be examined in detail.

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The AIT arguments

• The AIT arguments fall in two categories
• 1. Firstly we have the linguistic arguments on
  the basis of which it was decided that the
  location of the homeland of the Indo-European
  language family could not have been in India, but
  must have been somewhere in the west (most
  probably in South Russia).
• 2. Once it was decided that the Aryan or
  Indo-European languages did not originate in
  India, it became necessary to try to find
  evidence for this from the Vedic texts,
  particularly from the Rigveda, which is the
  oldest text not only in India but in any
  Indo-European language anywhere in the world.
  Hence we have the textual arguments based on the
  Rigveda, which try to find evidence from the
  Rigveda to show that it was composed by the
  invading Aryans after 1500 BCE in the early days
  of their arrival and settlement in the north
  western parts of the country.
• It must be noted again that the AIT is based
  wholly and solely on these arguments alone, and
  the validity of the AIT depends solely on the
  validity of these arguments.

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The Linguistic Arguments - 1

• AIT Argument
• The ancestral Indo-European language is not
  Sanskrit, but a reconstructed PIE language.
• Historical background
• When the relationship between the north Indian
  languages and the languages of Europe was first
  discovered, all the early western theories
  postulated Sanskrit as the ancestral language and
  therefore India as the original homeland.
• But studies in comparative linguistics made it
  clear that Vedic Sanskrit itself was evolved from
  an earlier PIE (Proto-Indo-European) language
  (reconstructed by linguists), which was also the
  ancestor of all the other Indo-European
  languages. This triggered an opposite reaction,
  and the idea that Sanskrit was not the ancestral
  language was automatically treated as indicating
  that India was not the original homeland.
• Hence all the theories concentrated on locating
  the original homeland in some central area such
  as South Russia, eastern Europe or Anatolia.
  Indian scholars reacted to this either by
  insisting that Sanskrit itself was the original
  language, or by rejecting the whole Indo-European
  linguistic paradigm.

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The Linguistic Arguments - 1

• Flaw
• Both sides ignore the fact that just as Vedic
  Sanskrit is different from the reconstructed
  ancestor, so is every other known or
  reconstructed language, and much more so than
  Vedic Sanskrit especially the Slavic languages
  of South Russia.
• Facts
• In fact, the Vedic language is still much closer
  to the proto-Indo-European language than any
  other Indo-European language.
• Childe gives a list of 72 basic cognate
  proto-Indo-European words Sanskrit has 70, Greek
  48, Germanic 46, Latin 40, Celtic 25, Baltic 23,
  Slavic 16, Armenian 15 and Tocharian 8.
• Grammatically, Lockwood points out that Sanskrit
  with its three genders, three numbers and eight
  cases presents the fullest representation of
  the Indo-European system. The same is the case
  in the matter of the system of tonal or pitch
  accents.
• As Griffith puts it, in the Vedic language we
  see the roots and shoots of the languages of
  Greek and Latin, of Kelt, Teuton and Slavonian.
  This is so far as language is concerned.

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The Linguistic Arguments - 1

• Griffith further points out that the deities,
  the myths, and the religious beliefs and
  practices of the Veda throw a flood of light upon
  the religions of all European countries before
  the introduction of Christianity.
• This is so total that
• 1. All the European mythologies (as well as those
  of Hittite and Tocharian) have numerous elements
  in common with Vedic mythology, but very few in
  common with each other (and these few are also
  common with Vedic mythology). Iranian mythology
  has common elements only with Vedic mythology.
• 2. Many of the common elements in other
  mythologies can be connected only through the
  Vedic myths (e.g. Greek Hermes/ Pan with the
  Germanic Vanir, through Vedic Sarama/ Pani).
• 3.Vedic myths are clearly close to the original
  forms while the European myths are very much
  evolved versions Macdonell points out that the
  Vedic gods are nearer to the physical phenomena
  which they represent than the gods of any other
  Indo-European mythology.

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The Linguistic Arguments - 1

• Vedic language and mythology clearly represent
  forms closest to the original and the primitive
  forms in sharp contrast to the other
  Indo-European languages and mythologies.
• This fits in with a picture where the original
  homeland has to be either identical with the area
  of composition of the Rigveda, or close enough to
  that area for the Rigveda to have been composed
  reasonably soon after the Indo-Aryans separated
  from the other Indo-European branches.
• Incompatibility of facts with the theory
  However, does this fit in with the AIT account of
  the history of the composition of the Rigveda?
  According to the theory
• 1. The ancestral proto-Indo-European language was
  spoken in or around South Russia. This language
  developed into different dialects which
  ultimately became the twelve known branches of
  Indo-European Anatolian, Tocharian, Italic,
  Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Albanian,
  Greek, Armenian, Iranian and Indo-Aryan.

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The Linguistic Arguments - 1

• 2. Speakers of two of these Indo-European
  dialects, Iranian and Indo-Aryan, separated from
  the others and started migrating eastwards
  towards Central Asia.
• During this centuries long migration, they
  underwent radical changes. In Hocks words, they
  migrated slowlyfrom one habitable area to the
  next, settling for a while and, in the process,
  assimilating to the local population in terms of
  phenotype, culture, and perhaps also religion.
• They settled among various different cultures
  including the Andronovo culture in the
  Pontic-Caspian area and the Afanasevo culture to
  the north of Central Asia.
• Everywhere they underwent ethnic, cultural and
  religious changes as they mixed with different
  local populations.

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The Linguistic Arguments - 1

• 3. These racially and culturally much-mixed
  speakers of Indo-Aryan and Iranian migrated into
  the Bactria Margiana areas of southern Central
  Asia, and, in Witzels words, completely
  Aryanized a local population to the extent
  that the local Bactrians would have appeared as
  a typically Vedic people with a Vedic
  civilization.
• In short, these pre-Rigvedic Aryans in Central
  Asia were Aryanized local Central Asians,
  ethnically a completely different race from the
  original Indo-Aryan speakers who had set out from
  South Russia.

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The Linguistic Arguments - 1

• 4. These Aryanized ethnic Central Asians later,
  in Witzels words, moved into the Panjab,
  assimilating (Aryanizing) the local
  population. Note the implausible circumstances
• (a) These immigrants were small groups of
  relatively primitive nomadic tribes who
  completely Aryanized the teeming multitudes of
  civilized people of the Indus Harappan
  civilization.
• (b) This transformation was so complete that it
  resulted in, as Witzel puts it, the absorption
  of not only new languages but also of an entire
  complex of material and spiritual culture ranging
  from chariotry and horsemanship to Indo-Iranian
  poetry whose complicated conventions are still
  actively used in the Rgveda. The old Indo-Iranian
  religion, centred on the opposition of Devas and
  Asuras, was also adopted, along with
  Indo-European systems of ancestor worship.
• (c) This whole transformation left absolutely no
  trace in the archaeological or ethnic record, or
  in traditional memory.

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The Linguistic Arguments - 1

• Summing up
• Firstly, the Vedic Aryan inhabitants of the
  Indus Valley or the Greater Punjab region who
  composed the Rigveda bore only a slight ethnic
  relationship to the Central Asians who
  Aryanized them, and almost none to the racially
  much-mixed people who had Aryanized the Central
  Asians, and none at all to the original
  Indo-Aryans who had migrated from distant South
  Russia many centuries earlier.
• Secondly, as Kuiper points out, a very long
  period elapsed between the arrival of the Aryans
  and the formation of the oldest hymns of the
  Rigveda, in fact so long that
• The locals had became completely Aryanized.
• They retained not even the faintest memories
  either of any indigenous pre-Aryan past or of any
  extra-Indian Aryan past.
• Conclusion
• It is clearly impossible that these Vedic Aryan
  inhabitants of the Indus Valley, so far removed
  in time, place, memory and ethnic identity from
  any supposed original Indo-Aryans in South Russia
  could have composed a text, the Rigveda, whose
  language and culture, even in its latest parts,
  is so very uniquely close to the roots and
  shoots of the supposed original
  proto-Indo-European language and culture in South
  Russia. In this clash between facts and theory,
  clearly the theory is wrong.

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The Linguistic Arguments - 1

• OIT Argument
• The locus of the original PIE must lie close to
  the Vedic area
• Basis
• It is clear from the language, religion and
  mythology of the Rigveda that it is impossible
  that this text could have been composed by anyone
  other than by
• people who were either actually living in the
  original homeland OR
• people who were just hot out of it.
• Neither alternative fits in with the above
  migration schedule from South Russia. Therefore,
  the original PIE language has to have been spoken
  in or around the historical Vedic area.
• In fact, the eminent linguist Hock points out
  that
• the OIT (Out-of-India theory) can be of two
  kinds, the Sanskrit-origin theory and the
  PIE-in-India theory.
• While the first is linguistically untenable,
• the PIE-in-India hypothesis is not as easily
  refuted as the Sanskrit-origin hypothesis,
  since it is not based on hard-core linguistic
  evidence such as sound changes, which can be
  subjected to critical and definitive analysis.
• That is, arguments against it can not be
  arguments based on hard-core linguistic
  evidence, but can only be arguments based on
  plausibility and simplicity.
• As we will see, every single argument against our
  PIE-in-India hypothesis is based not on hard-core
  linguistic evidence, but on subjective ideas of
  plausibility and simplicity to the extent that
  they are all naïve, simplistic and utterly devoid
  of logic

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The Linguistic Arguments - 2

• AIT Argument
• It would be considerably simpler to envisage
  only one migration into India (of Indo-Aryan)
  rather than a whole series of migrations out of
  India (of all the other languages) - Hock
• Flaw
• This argument trickily compares the AIT with the
  OIT, when the comparison should be between other
  homeland theories and the Indian homeland theory.
  In any homeland theory, there will be a whole
  series of migrations out of that homeland of all
  the languages other than the one which
  historically remained there.
• Logistical Requirements
• In fact, as per linguistic analysts, Albanian,
  Greek, Armenian, Iranian and Indo-Aryan were the
  last to remain in the homeland.
• If South Russia is the homeland, it would mean
  absolutely all the branches migrated out of the
  homeland, and one branch, Slavic, later returned
  back!
• Surely, a homeland in the historical areas of
  Albanian, Greek, Armenian, Iranian or Indo-Aryan
  is simpler to envisage than a homeland in South
  Russia.

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The Linguistic Arguments - 3

• AIT Argument
• The distribution of the different branches
  indicates a homeland in the west rather than in
  India or the east. As per Ghosh quite a large
  number of them are crowded together within the
  comparatively small space of Europe, whereas
  only a few are found scattered outside Europe.
• Historical Background
• Formerly, it was also argued that both Satem and
  Kentum branches are found in Europe but only
  Satem branches in Asia. Hence, the PIE homeland
  is in Europe.
• But this argument became invalid after the
  discovery of
• The extinct Tocharian language to the north of
  Tibet, which is a Kentum branch
• Traces of Kentum elements in the oldest layer of
  the Bangani language in Uttarakhand
• Flaw
• The arguments about the distribution of the
  branches were based on simplistic perceptions and
  naïve ideas.

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The Linguistic Arguments - 3

• Facts
• Actually, as per advanced linguistic study, the
  distribution of the European branches vis-à-vis
  the Asian branches actually shows that the
  European branches moved westwards from a
  geographical epicentre located in Central Asia.
• A very prestigious linguistic study carried out
  by Johanna Nichols and others, and published in
  two detailed volumes in 1997, analyses all the
  pertinent linguistic factors and arrives at the
  conclusion that the family structure and
  distribution of the Indo-European branches (among
  other factors that we will see later) shows that
  the European branches migrated westwards from an
  epicentre in Central Asia to the north of
  Afghanistan.
• As Nichols puts it 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 The
  locus of the IE spread was therefore somewhere in
  the vicinity of ancient Bactria-Sogdiana.

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The Linguistic Arguments - 4

• AIT Argument
• Presence of non-IE languages in India.
• Ghosh argues the strongest single argument
  against the Indian homeland hypothesis is the
  fact that the whole of South India, and some
  parts of north India too, are to this day
  non-Aryan in speech.
• Flaw
• Other languages being spoken in other adjacent
  parts within any proposed homeland is no logical
  objection to that area being the homeland.
• Britain is the homeland of the English language
  (spoken all over North America, Australia, New
  Zealand) in spite of non-English languages
  (Irish, Welsh, Cornish, Scots-Gaelic) still being
  spoken in parts of the British isles.
• South Russia has Uralic, Altaic and Caucasian
  languages in the vicinity.
• A related Historical Argument now obsolete
• Earlier, Brahui, a Dravidian language found in a
  small area in Baluchistan, was treated as
  evidence of an original Dravidian population in
  the area
• but not any more its presence has now been
  explained by a late migration that took place
  within this millennium (Elfenbeim 1987)
  (Witzel). Hock (197587-8) among others, has
  noted that the current locations of Brahuimay be
  recent (Southworth).

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The Linguistic Arguments - 4

• OIT Argument
• The presence of any other language or language
  family in the vicinity of any IE language area
  can not be evidence of that other language or
  language family having been spoken in that IE
  language area before the IE language in question.
  The real testimony to that effect can only be
  derived from the evidence of place names, and
  more particularly of river names. Witzel refers
  to the well known conservatism of river names
  which helps to identify earlier inhabitants.
• Facts
• Thus, in America, we find many Red Indian place
  names e.g. Massachussetts, Idaho, Chicago, Ohio,
  Iowa, Missouri. In England, all place names
  ending in -don, -chester, -ton, -ham, ey, -wick,
  etc. are pre-English names. The old place names
  in the historical areas of all the oldest
  recorded IE branches are non-IE, e.g. in
  Anatolia, Greece, Italy, Armenia.
• But not in the case of India. As Witzel admits
  In South Asia, relatively few pre-Indo-Aryan
  names survive in the North however, many more in
  central and southern India. But he trickily says
  relatively few when he should say no and
  omits to mention that by central and southern
  India he refers not to the proper Indo-Aryan
  areas but to the present and former areas of
  Austric and Dravidian in central and southern
  India!

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The Linguistic Arguments - 4

• In the case of river names, the evidence is even
  more devastating
• In Europe, river names were found to reflect the
  languages spoken before the influx of
  Indo-European speaking populations. They are thus
  older than c.4500-2500 B.C. (depending on the
  date of the spread of Indo-European languages in
  various parts of Europe)in northern India rivers
  in general have early Sanskrit names from the
  Vedic period, and names derived from the daughter
  languages of Sanskrit later onThis is especially
  surprising in the area once occupied by the Indus
  Civilization where one would have expected the
  survival of older names, as has been the case in
  Europe and the Near East (Witzel).
• Thus, European river names are even today non-IE
  names which have survived for over 4500 years,
  while even in the Rigveda, which is at the very
  least over 3000 years old, all the river names
  for the rivers in the Indus/Vedic area are IE
  (Indo-Aryan) names with no trace or memory of any
  earlier non-IE names.
• Conclusion
• Therefore the evidence is totally against the
  very idea of the Indus/Vedic area ever having
  been non-IE in speech.

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The Linguistic Arguments - 5

• AIT Argument
• Based on close contacts between Indo-Iranian
  languages and other language families found far
  to the west, specifically the Uralic or
  Finno-Ugrian languages to the east of Europe, as
  testified by Indo-Iranian borrowings in the
  Uralic languages The earliest layer of
  Indo-Iranian borrowing consists of common
  Indo-Iranian, Proto-Indo-Aryan and Proto-Iranian
  words relating to three cultural spheres
  economic production, social relations and
  religious beliefs
• domestic animals (sheep, ram, Bactrian camel,
  stallion, colt, piglet, calf),
• pastoral processes and products (udder, skin,
  wool, cloth, spinner),
• farming (grain, awn, beer, sickle),tools (awl,
  whip, horn, hammer or mace),
• metal (ore) ladder (or bridge)
• social relations (man, sister, orphan, name)
• Indo-Iranian terms like dasa and
  asuraheaventhe nether world god/happiness
  vajradead/mortalkidneyecstatic drinks used by
  Iranian priests as well as Finno-Ugric shamans
  honey, hemp and fly-agaric (Kuzmina)..

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The Linguistic Arguments - 5

• Flaw
• This massive evidence of contacts between the
  Indo-Iranian and the Uralic languages is treated
  as evidence that the Indo-Iranians stayed for
  some time in the Uralic areas east of Europe on
  their way to Central Asia (thence to India and
  Iran). But in fact it is the strongest possible
  evidence to the exact opposite!
• OIT Arguments
• 1. All the borrowings are from Indo-Aryan and
  Iranian to Uralic linguists have not been able
  to locate a single borrowing from Uralic in
  either Indo-Aryan or Iranian. This goes against
  all linguistic logic.
• Borrowings always take place in both directions.
  Sanskrit itself is known to have borrowed or
  absorbed foreign words in every situation.
• This is so even in the case of powerful immigrant
  groups in a colonial situation thus, e.g.
  English words entered languages all over the
  world, but English as spoken by English
  colonialists in different parts of the world also
  borrowed heavily from local languages, and, since
  these colonialists were still part of England,
  and even produced popular literature in England,
  many of these words entered the English language
  as written and spoken within England.

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The Linguistic Arguments - 5

• The only situation where such borrowed words do
  not make it into one of any two languages in
  contact, thus giving the impression of one-way
  borrowing, is when immigrant groups do not
  transmit the borrowed local words back to the
  language in the mother country, and often even
  get submerged into the local population in the
  course of time e.g. medieval Arabic and Turkish
  invaders and immigrants in India 18th century
  Indian immigrants into Fiji, Mauritius and
  Surinam first millennium AD Sanskrit immigrants
  in south-east Asia, etc.
• The one-way borrowing of Indo-Aryan words into
  Uralic is therefore conclusive evidence of
  migration of Indo-Aryan groups from India to the
  Uralic areas east of Europe.
• 2. The clinching evidence is that The name and
  cult of the Bactrian camel were borrowed by the
  Finno-Ugric speakers from the Indo-Iranians in
  ancient times (Kuzmina). The name of the
  Bactrian camel could obviously only have been
  borrowed from Indo-Iranians moving from Bactria
  to the West.

30
The Linguistic Arguments - 6

• AIT Argument
• based on the common proto-IE geographical
  environment as reconstructed on the basis of
  words common to different branches Generally,
  the PIE plants and animals are those of the
  temperate climate.
• Witzel argues that in Indo-Aryan, words such as
  wolf and snow rather indicate linguistic
  memories of a colder climate. At the same time,
  he argues In an OIT scenario, one would expect
  emigrant Indian words such as those for lion,
  tiger, elephant, leopard, lotus, bamboo, or some
  local Indian trees, even if some of them would
  have been preserved, not for the original item,
  but for a similar one, but we find them neither
  in the closely related old Iranian, nor in
  Eastern or Western IE.
• Flaw
• This is clearly a fake set of arguments, which
  employs one rule for the AIT and the opposite
  rule for the OIT.
• The logical case is that any IE language would
  naturally preserve only those original PIE words,
  for plants and animals, and for climatic or
  geographical features of the original homeland,
  which were also found in their new environment.
  Therefore, this method of trying to locate the
  original homeland is clearly deeply flawed.

31
The Linguistic Arguments- 6

• OIT Argument
• 1) Words such as wolf and snow do not
  indicate any linguistic memories of northern
  areas outside India wolves and snow are found in
  India as well.
• Thus, in Indo-Aryan languages also we do not find
  the name of any plant, animal or geographical or
  climatic feature which is not found in India but
  is found in the west. But here, Witzel argues
  most of the IE plants and animals are not found
  in India and so their names have not been used
  any longer and have died out.
• Obviously the same rule applies for emigrant
  Indian words in the IE languages out of India!
• 2) We, in fact, have the living example of the
  Gypsy Romany language, a specifically Indo-Aryan
  language which migrated to Europe from deep
  inside Indo-Aryan India just around a thousand
  years ago, and which has not preserved a single
  name of any Indian plant, animal, or geographical
  or climatic feature peculiar to India.
• The other IE languages, on the other hand,
  migrated thousands of years ago during the
  pre-formative and formative stages of their
  ancestral speech forms, and developed their
  common IE characteristics and features just
  outside the northwest of India. So obviously, we
  can not expect them to have preserved anything
  Indian.

32
The Linguistic Arguments- 6a

• AIT Sub-Argument
• Witzel adds a fraudulent argument to his fake
  one The hypothetical emigrants from the
  subcontinent would have taken with them a host of
  Indian words as the gypsies (Roma, Sinti)
  indeed have done...The gypsies, after all, have
  kept a large IA vocabulary alive, over the past
  1000 years or so, during their wanderings all
  over the Near East, North Africa and Europe (e.g.
  phral brother, pani water, karal he does).
• Thus he uses one set of words to show that the
  gypsies have preserved Indian words, and
  another to show that the other IE languages have
  not.
• But if the gypsies have preserved geographically
  neutral words like phral and pani (Punjabi
  bhra and pani), English has also preserved
  words for identical terms brother and water
  (Sanskrit bhratar and Sinhalese watura).
• If English has not preserved geographically
  Indian words such as those for lion, tiger,
  elephant, leopard, lotus, bamboo, or some local
  Indian trees, nor has the gypsy language.

33
The Linguistic Arguments- 6a

• Facts
• But ironically, however unlikely it would appear,
  western IE languages have preserved a few
  emigrant Indian words
• leopard (Skt. prdaku, Greek pardos, Hittite
  parsanas),
• ape (Skt. kapi, Greek kepos),
• elephant (Skt. ibha, Greek el-ephas, Latin ebur
  ivory),
• camel (Tokharian alpi, Old Slavic velibadu,
  Lithuanian verbliudas, Old German olbanta,
  Hittite ulupantas ox).
• Gamkrelidze takes these words as evidence for his
  Anatolian homeland. But it is clear the words
  point to India rather than to Anatolia
• 1) All these animals (except the camel) are
  native to India proper, but in Anatolia the ape
  and elephant have to be imports from Africa and
  the camel from Arabia.
• 2) The camel is obviously the camel of Bactria
  and not the camel of Arabia, since Tokharian, to
  the north-east of Bactria, also has this word.
  And Hittite, in Anatolia itself, uses the word
  with a different meaning.

34
The Linguistic Arguments - 7

• AIT Argument
• Based on the absence in the western IE languages
  (including Iranian) of linguistic features found
  in Vedic as well as other non-IE languages of
  India, such as
• cerebral sounds,
• words borrowed from Dravidian, Austric and other
  non-IE Indian languages.
• The argument If India was the homeland of the
  other IE languages, these features and such words
  should also have been found in them.
• Flaw
• But the Romany evidence alone is sufficient to
  disprove this argument.
• The gypsies left from well inside India only
  around a thousand years ago, but their basically
  Indo-Aryan language does not have cerebral
  sounds, and nor does it have a single word of
  Dravidian or Austric origin.
• The other IE languages are descended from IE
  dialects other than Indo-Aryan, which were spoken
  outside the northwestern frontiers of India to
  the west of the Rigvedic area, and migrated
  westwards thereafter (but thousands of years
  ago). So obviously we can not expect cerebral
  sounds and Dravidian or Austric words in them.
• Even the Vedic language, moreover, has hardly a
  handful of alleged Dravidian/Austric words, which
  only indicate a possible distant acquaintance
  with languages to its east and south.

35
The Linguistic Arguments - 8

• AIT Argument
• Based on the presence in the western IE languages
  (including Iranian) of linguistic archaisms
  (original proto-IE features) already missing in
  Vedic, or of certain names for plants or animals
  not found in India or in the Vedic language.
• In the first case Witzel points out that in some
  respects the Old Avest. Of Zara?uštra is
  frequently even more archaic than the RV.
• In the second, he argues some of the typical
  temperate PIE trees are not found in the South
  Asian mountains. Yet they have good Iranian and
  IE names, all with proper IE word formation.
• The argument The reconstructed proto-IE language
  has certain linguistic features and certain names
  for plants or animals which are missing in Vedic,
  but found in some of the other IE branches,
  sometimes including Iranian. This means that the
  original proto-IE language, ancestor of Vedic,
  had these linguistic features as well as these
  names for certain plants and animals, which were
  retained in Iranian but lost in the Vedic
  language after the Indo-Aryans settled in India.
  

36
The Linguistic Arguments - 8

• Flaws
• Both the seventh and eighth arguments, it will be
  seen, are actually basically directed against a
  Sanskrit-origin hypothesis where all the other IE
  languages would have to be descendants of Vedic
  Sanskrit, so that every linguistic innovation in
  the Vedic language would have to be found
  preserved in the other descendant IE branches,
  and every archaism in any other IE branch would
  also have to be found in the ancestral Vedic
  Sanskrit. Failure, in either case, is to be
  treated as evidence against the Indian homeland
  hypothesis.
• OIT Argument
• But these arguments do not hold out against the
  PIE-in-India hypothesis.
• The PIE language, spoken in India, had certain
  features. The IE family has twelve known
  branches. Obviously, each one of these twelve
  branches has preserved some archaisms and lost
  some others, so Vedic also could have lost some
  PIE archaisms preserved in some other branches,
  including Iranian.
• Further, Indo-Aryan, as the easternmost IE
  branch, could also have developed (at any stage)
  innovations with the non-IE languages to its east
  and south, not found in IE branches to its west.
• And IE branches to the west (including Iranian)
  could have developed some names (for plants or
  animals found outside the northwestern borders of
  India) and linguistic innovations among
  themselves, absent in Indo-Aryan.

37
The Linguistic Arguments 8a

• AIT Sub-Argument
• The eighth argument would have some force only if
  it could be shown that the proto-IE language,
  ancestral to Vedic, had a name for a plant or
  animal not found in India, whose name, found in
  other branches, has survived in Indo-Aryan not
  for the original item, but for a similar one
  (e.g. English red squirrel gt North American
  gray squirrel) (Witzel).
• And according to Witzel there is one such name
  the name for the beaver (an animal not found in
  India, but found in ancient Central Asia) Old
  English bebr, Latin fiber, lithuanian bebrus,
  Russian bober, and Avestan bawri, which has
  survived in India in the name for the Indian
  mongoose, babhru.
• The common name for beaver was retained by the
  Iranians because there were beavers in Central
  Asia but the Indo-Aryans, when they moved into
  India, where there were no beavers, transferred
  the name to the mongoose.
• Flaw
• However, an examination of the facts gives the
  lie to the above scenario the reconstructed
  proto-IE word for beaver, bhibher bhebher
  preserves an original meaning brown or shiny
  (Gamkrelidze), and this is the original meaning
  of the word which was later transferred to the
  beaver.

38
The Linguistic Arguments 8a

• OIT Argument
• So far as Indo-Aryan is concerned, the Rigveda
  knows only the original meaning of the word
  babhru is attested in the Rigveda in the sense
  red-brown (of horses, cows, gods, plants), and
  even in Mitannian Aryan bapru-nnu is a horse
  color (Mayrhofer 1966) (Gamkrelidze). According
  to Witzel, Mitanni is pre-Rigvedic. So the
  original meaning is quite consistent.
• The transfer of the word to different animals
  based on their color is a later development In
  later Sanskrit the term refers to a specific
  animal, the ichneumon (species of mongoose) the
  Indo-Iranian languages are split by this
  isogloss Sanskrit shows a more archaic
  situation, while Avestan displays the innovation
  (Gamkrelidze).
• Conclusion
• The logical explanation is that this innovation
  shared by a few IE branches, including Iranian,
  is an innovation which took place in the area to
  the west of the Vedic area, when these IE
  branches moving out of India were settled in and
  around Central Asia.

39
The Linguistic Arguments - Summary

• To sum up
• 1. All this represents the sum total of the
  linguistic case for the AIT or against the Indian
  homeland not based on hard-core linguistic
  evidence such as sound changes, which can be
  subjected to critical and definitive analysis,
  but only on arguments based on plausibility and
  simplicity.
• 2. The arguments in fact are actually based on
  naïve and simplistic notions rather than on
  simple logic, and examination shows that they
  actually go against all principles of
  plausibility.
• 3. In examining the arguments, all kinds of
  linguistic evidence is uncovered which in fact
  makes a strong case for an Indian homeland the
  evidence of place and river names in north India
  (especially in the greater Punjab region, which
  is the Harappan as well as Vedic region), the
  evidence of the one-way Uralic borrowings, the
  evidence of Indian and Central Asian animal names
  in the European IE languages, etc.

40
The Linguistic Arguments - Summary

• 4. The linguistic case for the AIT (or against
  the Indian homeland hypothesis) is completely
  flawed and fallacious. Yet it is on the basis of
  this fictitious case that all modern studies of
  ancient Indian texts and traditions (as well as
  all interpretations of ancient archaeological
  finds in India) have been converted into an
  exercise in trying to find evidence for the
  external origins and likely arrival in the 2nd
  millennium BC of Indo-Aryan languages
  (Erdosy).
• Erdosy, an AIT proponent, frankly admits We
  reiterate that there is no indication in the
  Rigveda of the Aryas memory of any ancestral
  home, and by extension, of migrations.
• 5. But the mesmerising effect of the fallacious
  idea that the external origin of the IE Aryans is
  linguistically well-established is so strong that
  great scholars (notably Ambedkar and Pargiter)
  who studied and examined these texts and
  traditions in detail and stated categorically
  that there was no evidence there at all for the
  external origin of the Vedic people (Pargiter
  even finds that the traditional evidence shows
  that the IEs outside India emigrated from India)
  have later capitulated to the idea that Aryans
  must have come from outside since the linguists
  say so. It is time to examine the texts with the
  knowledge that this linguistic theory is flawed
  and fallacious.