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Asia,'Response 'Indigenous Indo-Aryans'gveda' N. Kazanas

EdwinRutgers University

problem has, of late, become one ofmost contentious issues field of Indology. WhileIndological consensus of an Indo-Aryan invasion or migrationinto the Indian subcontinent has long been taken granted,at least in western academic circles, it has been ferociouslycontested amongst Indian scholars over the last decade or so(and on margins of academia India fo r well over a, an d debate has now become an unavoidable issuescholars dealing with the early of

must confront. Unavoidable too,

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342 Edwin


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'"Somewhere in 'and No More" 343the discussion of is of heis that the Vedic deities have

other languages.mythology tospecifics allowing somequibbling over details, assume his basic premise to be generallycorrect. Kazanas' next assumption, "the people orthat has preserved most ceteris paribus has moved least," needsmore attention. This principle, which has also been referred toas the 'conservation principle,' has a long historyEuropean homeland quest in the field of linguistics, and is stillused by various homeland proponents. Kortland (1990), fo rexample, promoted the Ukraine as the homeland partly ongrounds of the archaic character of the Lithuanian language,and Gamkrelidze an d Ivanov ( 1983, 1985, 1995) , Anatolia, onthe same grounds but in relation to the Hittite group oflanguages. One corollary of this view, that emigrating languagesinnovate as result of has also foundsupporters, albeit (e.g.

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344 Edwincentral ones and one would need to

v u ' - J u ~ ; : . reasons as to why the same no t

relies on (1973) support of the Sanskritis the most conservative Indo-European language. I would alsobe interested in his response to the view (e.g. Polome, 1985)that the features languages such as Sanskrit and Greek thathave historically been considered most conservative orarchaic, such as the reduplicated perfect, in fact representinnovations. There has, since Burrow, developed an IndoHittite school which argues that the existence of the laryngealsand various morphological features of especially thosefeatures i t shares with Germanic, point to its greater archaicnessin comparison to Sanskrit. From this perspective, the absence ofsupposedly archaic Indo-European features in such asmasculine gender,since these features are in fact

thus such as Sanskritwhich

Studies


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'"Sornewhere in 'and No More" 345

since Kazanas,as a Sanskritist, does noton archaeologyastronomy). I also agree that, given the problems associatedwith all homeland theories, it does appear rather precarious tosingle out NW India/Pakistan/Mghanistan as definitivelyineligible fo r the dubious privilege of being the homeland,especially given the criticisms that can and have been raisedagainst migrationist interpretations and other homelandtheories. I will only comment, here, given Kazanas' view"philology has little competence in this field," that he dedicatesthe bulk of his paper to utilizing philological data gleaned fromthe texts - th e Vedic deities and comparative mythology,Sarasvati., the horse, chariot, and astroarchaeology - to argue

the possibility of an Indian homeland.Be as i t may, the argument the Vedicand volume, preserve no

back at

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346

Moreover,arguments

Edwin

too, I cannotKazanas' evidence, Ito be somewhat cavalier his dismissal No on e

can deny that there are many sound changes occurringhistorical linguistics that do not seem to correspond to anyknown law, but can it be denied thatphonemes, words an d grammatical features areat odds with the basic Indo-European patternconspicuous as foreign linguistic features. There isdoubt (and Kazanas himself begrudgingly accepts)Vedic texts themselves attest to the existence of DravidianMunda, and, in probability, anEuropean language, in the form of loan words inperiod (therefore, it is not correct to state

no


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'"Somewhere in 'and No MMe"the former shares with

or

have beenof

rather than as the result oftheir language on indigenous speakers.

347

even if migration were a factor, how do we know it was notDravidian, Munda or 'language x' speakers migrating into IndoAryan territory influencing Indo-Aryan as a fleetingsuperstratum rather than substratum? All these along withother possibilities have, in fact, been considered by scholars,and they combine to considerably diminish the persuasivenessof the substratum theory.I agree that a plausible explanation has yet to be givenas to how, if there were indeed no actual invasion of IndoAryans but only migratory 'trickle' into which it has been

the newcomers have completelyof the North

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348 Edwin

text isdata are as valid evidence for an for the IJgveda(which long proceeded all these texts), as any evidence broughtforward to promote a later date. The evidence of k r ~ r w ayas,iron (literally 'black metal') in the Brahmal)as fails to concludeissue although smelted does not surface in thesubcontinent late 2n d millennium BCE, objects madeof black iron ore have been discovered Harappan sites goingback to 2600 BCE (Possehl 1999). is no way, to myknowledge, of asserting that k r ~ ' I ' J f 1 ayas refers to smelted iron inthe earlier texts (as it did in the later ones), rather than ironore or even, as Kazanas speculates, blackened copper.legitimate counter-arguments can be raised against

(primordialcould have


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'"Somewhere in 'and No More" .

I willthe ratha to the IJgveda isnot a heavier one from an earlierseems to be suggesting it might

HH


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350 Edwin

regard, to a priori assumevoices nationalist or fundamentalistssome sort (nor is i t helpful, our post-colonial academicculture, if we adopt a tone presuming to correcterroneous views rather courteously differing ourcolleagues who have offered interpretations to ou rown). Having sa:id I do , however, feel the rhetoric ofKazanas article to be on th e polemical side, even if is by nomeans unique in this regard. The Indo-Aryan problem is likelyto remain unresolved for the foreseeable future, so we might aswell attempt to address it in a cordial fashion. Kazanas takes 1tgranted that "mainstream philologists will reactthesis; somewhat contentious

not itto of


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"'Somewhere in 'and No More" 351

much"i f an answer must be given as to the ourancestors dwelt before their separation ...! should say, asforty years ago, 'Somewhere in Asia' no more."ReferencesBryant, Edwin200 l In Quest of he Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Invasion Debate.New York, Oxford University Press.Bryant, Edwin, Patton, Laurie (eds)

forthcoming The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in IndianHistory. Richmond, Curzon Press.I.1965 A lexicostatis tical classi fication of the Austronesian

InternationalJournal ofAmerican Linguistics.Feist,,_.,.. .. " .. .1932

Gamkrelidze Thomas V & Ivanov, Vjaceslav, V.1983 Th e migration of tribes speaking the un v - cAHtheir original homeland in the Near East toEurasia. Soviet Studies in History 22, 1-2, 53-95.

dialects from

1985 The of the original homeland of thelanguages. Journal1995 and the !nn'tJ-r.'un">hPI'l.ns80Hock, I Ians Henrich

1999 Out oflndia? h e " " ' " ~ ' ' ~ ~Asia. Harvard unnu. . uH.1909

1910

Kordandt, Frederik

Volume

and lvn:n-ii'Y'Iln.nMinora 1-18.

Number3&4,

South

2002


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352 Edwin1990 of ndo-European Studies

Latham, R. G.1862 Elements London: Walton and """nProvLaw,N. N.1965 Age f!gverkt. Calcutta: Firma K.L.Muller, F. Max.1887 jjzoflTaiJtnes of Words and the Home New Delhi,1985.

Of the J .U 'UV-L l l lan d Matthew Spriggs

London, Routledge, 122-148.1998 Th e Eurasian spread zone an d the ln(::lo-Jpt.> to determine the au-uucv of Vediccivilization. Indian 24: 85-100.Lokamanya.n.d. The Orion. Poona, Messrs Tilak Bros.n.d. The Arctic Home in the Vedas. Poona, Messrs Tilak Bros.

W.D.On a recent attempt an d Tilak to determine onastronomical evidence date of the earliest Vedic as 4000BC. Indian 24: 361-369.

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