Book Review: An Update on AIT (Part 1)

[George Thompson]

Dear List,

I would like to apologize for the sloppy post that I sent to the list the
other day.  I am dealing with a new e-mail program which seems to
automatically send mails that I have previously saved. My response to the
Rajaram book review thus was sent accidentally. I had intended to proofread
it the following morning, and also to tone it down if it seemed to be too
abrasive.  Perhaps it was Dominik who once recommended that participants in
heated disputes should restrain themselves from sending off rapid-fire posts
to the list. That is good advice which I am trying to observe.

Now we encounter another flurry of posts from Mr Agarwal, which I suppose I
am partially responsible for.  I apologize for that too.

I am not going to participate in this round of the endless AIT debate,
because it seems utterly, hopelessly, intractable.

I am aware of a new collective effort to respond to the indigenous Aryan
theorists, which should soon be published.  I was invited to particiapte in
that joint effort.  But I declined to do so, because, frankly, I take much
more pleasure in reading Vedic than I do in visiting the websites of Rajaram,
Kalyanaraman et al [and I *have* taken the trouble to visit them].

Presently I am working on Vedic and Avestan material suggesting that mutual
knowledge existed between these two communities. The effort involves close
examination of many passages in both traditions.  This is the kind of work
that I prefer to do, and which I think will result in a better understanding
of the precise relationship between the two. I also believe that it is
through such work alone [not just by philologists but archaeologists as well,
of course] that speculations about prehistory can gain some degree of
credibility.

So, best wishes to Mr. Agarwal, whose industriousness I admire.

George Thompson