"invasion"?

[Dominik Wujastyk]

On Wed, 11 Apr 2001, L.S.Cousins wrote:
> After that , everything is speculation. It used to be thought that
> there was some archaeological evidence for invasion, but that now
> seems doubtful. So we cannot rule out the possibility of a gradual
> spread as the result of peaceful immigration or trade. But it has to
> be the less likely possibility. We know of no other case in which a
> language has become so widespread in that way.

No, I'm not taking the mick, but I think I may have been being a bit
faux-naive when I said I wasn't being disingenuous.

I would agree with your para above, which is pretty much what I've come to
believe too, after a certain amount of reading.  I think I might have been
clearer if I had emphasised the word *invasion*.  I thought all that was
based mainly on Mortimer-Wheeler's identification of a battle casualty in
the Mohenjo Daro skeleton of a woman on the steps of a well.  That
skeleton, and the others around it, are now more plausibly thought to be
disease casualties, perhaps cholera, perhaps malaria.

What puzzled me was a book being published in 2000 or 2001 referring in
its title still to this idea of "invasion".  My reading has led me, in an
admittedly amateurish way, to think that there has been some sort of
consensus amongst the best scholars for many decades now that a) the arya
people came into India in more than one migration (Burrow et passim), and
b) that the migration was either agricultural expansion (Renfrew) or some
other expansionist population movement, but by no means necessarily or
even probably a militaristic one.  Furthermore, the Bactria Margiana
Archeological Complex and related data cited by Parpola and Sarianidi
etc., suggest that military conflict, very likely involving aryas,
occurred *outside* the Indian peninsula.

Hence my puzzlement at a book which seemed (somebody stop me!) to be
flogging a dead horse.

--
Dominik Wujastyk
Founder, INDOLOGY list.