On S. Farmer, also on invasion

[Gunthard Mueller]

Just on the side--don't confuse the Minotaur myths with the
centaurs... The Minotaur myths seem to carry a form of
reflection of the cultural/political relationship between
the main carriers of the non-IE Minoan culture vis-á-vis the
partly IE pre-Mycenaean/Mycenaean culture(s) that were
fringe members of the Minoan ambitus, but later conquered
the Minoan sphere, leading to Mycenaean culture proper.
The saga of Theseus sailing to Crete to kill the Minotaur
in order to stop the yearly slaughter of ritual human victims
from Athens seems to carry a remembrence of the previous
subservience to Crete, and of the successful struggle to
shake it off.
The centaurs, like so many other features of Greek culture,
are, in my view, a remembrance of the arrival of the
horse people in Greece. If one wants to identify the arriving
horse people with Indo-Europeans, the centaur myths could
be a reaction to them on the part of the non-IE culture that
was confronted by them. It would have made its way into
what would become Greek mythology just like so many
other vestiges of non-IE Minoan culture, such as the animal
goddess, potnia theron, and a large section of the classical
Greek pantheon and the related sagas.
I have long felt that Greece and India seem to have a lot
in common in the way IE and non-IE cultures created something
third. The fact that Greek is an IE language with a relatively
small proportion of linguistic carry-overs from the
Minoan culture (the word for bath tub for example...) cannot
hide the fact that an enormous part of the religious aspects
of the post-Minoan Greek cultures are definitely non-IE
in origin, even when they carry IE names, like potnia theron.
Something new came into being, from two very
different cultures. Isn't this very similar to what seems
to have happened further east after the arrival of Indo-Europeans
in the Mitanni areas and then in India proper.
Already very early brahmanical culture seems to contain very
substantial non-IE components, and so do modern Indian forms of
religion, including the brahminical aspects--to an extraordinary
extent.
The fact that Vedic is nevertheless very much an IE language with
not too many non-IE intrusions yet is quite parallel to the Greek
situation after the arrival of Indo-Europeans there.
For me, the current verbal warfare around Aryan invasions etc.
seems an anachronistic absurdity--Indian culture contains irrevocably
IE and non-IE components, having created already thousands of years
ago something new, genuinely Indian from this coming-together.
Imagine some Greek pseudo-scholars writing invectives against
the HIT (Herakleidai Invasion Theory)... Hilarious!
We should not respond to such anachronisms with too much
attention other than maybe asking the people who keep coming
back with these strange sentiments to form their own list --
or political party...

On a personal note, I would like to add that this list could
do with a bit more "sine ira et studio". There have been
very unnecessary attacks on the persons of Steve Farmer and
Michael Witzel which where not just misguided, but also
totally unworthy of a scholarly list. They really threaten
the academic atmosphere which most of us enjoy. Maybe
we should ask Dominik to bring in some additional
discipline, or some of us, including myself, might prefer
to go off this list.
This list is for asking questions, finding answers together, and
for announcing scholarly news.
If you cannot contribute to any of these, or if you are writing
with personal anger or excitement, you should consider
quitting this list.

Sorry this is an outrageously long posting. I'll impose a few
days of silence upon myself...

Yours,
sine ira et studio,
Gunthard


Vanbakkam Vijayaraghavan wrote:

> On Fri, 13 Apr 2001 20:43:57 -0400, Michael Witzel <witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU> wrote:
>
> >I think in our present discussion it is important to stress that, in the
> >case of the Indo-Aryans, we do not simply have language take over  (for a
> >more or less peaceful one covering a very large territory, note Suahili:
> >from Zanzibar to E. Congo., from Kenya to N. Mozambique..)
> >but we also have the take-over by local people of the *whole set* of
> >spiritual culture (complicated IE/ IIr poetics!, ritual, religion, etc. --
> >something that did, by and large,  not happen in the Suahili case), and
> >also the take-over of some material culture (complicated chariot building,
> >import of horses, dress, hair style, but also rather primitive ritual
> >implements & pottery, etc.). We need a model that covere all such changes.
> >
> >C. Ehret's "elite kit" and a post-Indus, opportunistic shift to more
> >pastoralism will work best here.  No big wave of "invaders" is necessary
> >then, just some Afghani tribesmen who chose to stay in their winter
> >quarters in the Indus,  instead of going back to the Afghani highlands (as
> >they  did in Avestan times and as they still do.)
> >
> >Such a group could  set off a wave of change, with adaptation (and further
> >change!) of the dominant elite kit, all across the Panjab and beyond...
> >(See forthcoming EJVS 7-3).
> >
>
> For these "elite kits" to work, the "natives" should be able to look up to the
> newcomers as elite. The "natives", in this case,  cannot but be remnants of the
> urban IVC. The present area of IVC is at present estimated to include large larts
> of North-west and North India. Why should these remnants or inheritors of IVC
> look up to some wandering tribesmen as elite?
>
> If one is proposing a scenario of "revolution from the top" , certain pre-
> conditions be met
> 1. Centralised spiritual and political structure of the "natives"
> 2.The new elite should consider themselves part of or representatives of some
> larger entity in cultural terms so that they maintain sufficient distance from
> the natives
>
> Only then the "elite kits", either material or cultural can be disseminated with
> any degree of efficacy.
>
> In the case of Cyrus conquest of Babylon or the Spanish conquest of Aztecs , it
> was a pyramidal structure and easy for the new rulers to impose their language,
> religion and culture on the "natives". Babylonian culture merged into
> Achameanids and the Spanish culture "swallowed" Aztecs.
>
> In the propsed scenario of aryan spread over India, it is not clear why should a
> civilized descendents of IVC look up to some wandering tribesmen as elite who
> ought to be emulated. Even if such had been the case it would have been a local
> phenomenon since we don't have definite conception of the "native" culture of
> North India as a centralised one wherein cultural spreads can be across the
> board.
>
> About the "natives" being overawed with chariots and arrows, in all other parts
> of the world different "natives" were first shocked and awed by an intrusive
> military technology, but usually have quickly recovered to adapt the same
> technology for their own use. Romans were overawed by Hannibal's elephants in the
> beginning, but recovered their poise soon. Even ancient Greeks are believed to
> have been overawed by horsemen (Minatour legend), The American Indians also
> adopted and adpated to the new technologies of horse and rifle brought in by
> Europeans. The defeat of American Indians cannot be blamed on lack of
> technological backwardness. The point I am making is that aryans could not have
> militarily defeated "natives" and overawed the presumably civilized "natives"
> over a long period of time and over a vast space becuase the same technologies
> could have been adopted by the natives after the initial shock.