Aryan invasion debate

[Michael Witzel]

At 23:54 +0200 9/2/99, Koenraad Elst wrote:
>  Suppose Rajaram is right, the RgVeda is pre- rather than
>post-Harappan, and the dominant language in Harappa was Indo-Aryan,-- that
>would render most of the extant literature on ancient India obsolete.

Better to forget the 'supposing', as the copper/bronze age RV of the
greater Panjab has the wagon (anas, seen in anaDvaan, used for heavy loads)
which was  not inventend until c. 3000 BCE), and it also  has the horse and
the chariot which did not enter South Asia until c. +/-1700 BCE, that is
well *after* the dissolution/'localization period' of the Indus
Civilization.

Rajaram etc. would have to write a "new paradigm" of the devlopment of
wheeled transport,  wagons, chariots as well as of equid zoology  to make
their scheme work... (see last message)

(For those who see horse bones in the IVC: none of these has been found in
a good, archaeologically stratified  context and none is clearly
discernable from the local half-ass, the onager or hemiod).

>increasing number of Western skeptics (say, archaeologist Jim Shaffer whose
>spade fails to dig up any bone or artefact identifiable as invading Aryan)?

First of all, some leading indologists/linguists such as Kuiper and
Southworth have not been talking about 'invasion' for decades (when do
people catch up with present scholarship?) but of various, involved
patterns of amalgamation of various ethnic groups and languages.

Then, whether you quote Shaffer or Ratnagar (on two ends of the spectrum),
you simply do not easily find, in archaeology, 'people on the move' ;
standard example the *real* invasion of the Huns, well known from texts,
but dug up only some 15 years ago in Hungary...
Shaffer *intentionally* excludes non-archaeological materials, which is
laudable for an achaeologist. Yet, we as indologists  have to look at *all
sorts* of evidence.

> Linguistics is always invoked as proving the AIT, while a
>linguist told me that his discipline is unable to decide the matter, "but
>there is of course the archaeological evidence".

It does not matter what one archaeologist or linguist are supposed to have
said off the record. Quote a paper or book.

In addition, not single facts but cumulative evidence from various fields
of enquiry counts. All aspects of the question must fit (as L. Fosse
stressed in a slightly different way). You cannot have multiply
contradicting evidence, such as the chariot driving, copper age RV people
as pre-Indus (above).

> when the present orthodoxy is
>superseded by a new paradigm, the present-day denunciations of that new
>paradigm will look ridiculous,

There is no orthodoxy in scholarship. It is constantly "on the move" as new
evidence emerges. (Something approaching orthodoxy may be found in
newspapers, schoolbooks and encyclopedias. This list is neither.)

The arguments for a "new paradigm"  seen so far are multiply contradictory
(small example, above) and require elaborate schemes to explain away
certain facts. (Examples provided idf desired).

Occam's razor applies.




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Michael Witzel                          Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies
Harvard University                  www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs
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