An alternative history of IE languages and the AIT.

[J.B. Sharma]

 In response to Ansuman Pandey's posting Dominik Wujastyk wrote :
 
We are going to go on getting this sort of material periodically posted
to INDOLOGY for the simple reason that the ideas are out there, being
energetically promoted by Hindu fundamentalists and others who may not
realize the sinister communalist and anti-muslim agenda that underlies
and accompanies such propaganda.
--------

 Ansuman's posting made an interesting read; The response from 
Dominik is a classic refutation by vilification. If all folks who 
read, consider and debate the origin of Indo-Aryans, it becomes anti-
muslim and sinister! HUH.... ! These sorts of accusations have been 
levelled before on whoever has the termity to bring up the topic of 
origin of Indo-Aryans. Usually it is the same people who get 
apoplectic. So if certain scholars are so certain that Aryans invaded 
India from the west, is not the call of decent academic discourse 
that they present a refutation grounded in inequivocal evidence ? It 
personally does not matter to me if Aryans came from the east or the 
west, but I am very interested in informed opinions of the learned 
sages on the net. 

  I have wondered why some folks find the notion of the eastward 
migration of Indo-Aryans so upsetting. Marita Gimbutas's work did
conclude the movement of Indo-European speaking people into europe 
aroung 5000 BC. Teutonic mythology does speak of Odin the first 
ancestor and carrier of fire coming from the east. Do not scholars 
still have to look eastwards to look ito the Aryan past ? Whereas 
these and other facts are an not absolute proof, they keep the 
possibilities open until definitive evidence is presented. 
 
 On the other side of Dominiks own statement, which due to its ad-
hominem nature has an aroma of propoganda itself, it seems to me that 
this question is a quibble over ancestors. It seem that there are 
those who subliminally carry the assumptions of Comte Gobineau and 
Stewart Chamberlain in associating the original Aryans with the 
Teutons only, which is a necessary axiom for the Aryan Invasion 
theory. I say this only because a scholarly and compelling refutaion 
can forever purge the spectre of revisionism from INDOLOGY, and and 
not vilifying with a broad brush. This is the sort of stuff that 
academics is made of; Vigorous debate fuelled by the dialectic tension 
of opposing theses. 

 In interest of academic clarity it would behoove Dominik to clarify 
the manner in which the AIT is sinisterly anti-muslim. I 
think that the original post is a matter of historical science, and 
the bounds of debate must be kept to the dissection of the ideas 
presented. A rebuttal calling the authors and readers of ideas not 
the same as ones pet theory as nasty people is (at least in my 
university) at best indicative of intellectual poverty. I do hope 
that some scholars will put together definitive rebuttals which are 
scholarly, devoid of acrimony and compellingly show amatuer 
Indologists like me which of the competing theories has more merit.

Regards,
J.B. Sharma
Asst Professor of Physics










 Jakub Cejka has a more thoughtful rebuttal where he keeps to refuting