For the last two centuries the proponents of Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) made every attempt to undermine the idea of India. While the Out of India (OIT) or Indian Homeland Theory (IHT) contested the preposterous construct, the AIT brigade managed to mislead people churning out deeply flawed analysis that exacerbated the fissures in Indian society. OIT defenders often called the bluff of the AIT which fares poorly in test of scrutiny in terms of linguistic and archeological evidences. Having failed to convincingly establish their theory, AIT has taken the refugee of the sophisticated genetic analyses to add some credence to their propositions.
To this end, Tony Joseph, who regularly brings out article in favor of AIT, last year published a book, Early Indians to strengthen the claims of the Vedic people being the steppe pastoralists who invaded India. With the chatter of AIT slowly gaining considerable momentum to destabilize and divide India, there is now a sudden need to demolish the mythical AIT theory. Shrikant Talageri, an independent scholar who did pioneering work on the Aryan issue reviewed Tony Joseph's book and published a rebuttal through his latest work, "Genetics and the Aryan Debate". The book besides meticulously exposing the distortions of AIT with irrefutable data in the long term can pave way for mainstreaming of OIT. MyIndMakers congratulates Shrikant Talageri on his publication.
Here is an excerpt of e-interview carried out by me for MyIndMakers.
Q1) According to you, what
has been the basis for the categorisation of languages into different
linguistic groups? b) Why were Aryan Invasion Theorists drawn towards Sanskrit
language? c) Is their keen interest an endorsement to Sanskrit as an evolved
language?
a)
The basis of the categorization of
languages into different "families" is their definite relationship to
each other and their origins in a common ancestral "proto"-language
(I will not bother to consider more hypothetical and in my opinion dubious categories
such as the so-called "Nostratic" group of families).
I ask you to consider the
clear relationship in the following examples:
English relationship
words father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter, Sanskrit pitar,
mātar, bhrātar, svasar, sūnu, duhitar, Persian pidar, mādar, birādar,
xvāhar, (Av.) hūnu, duxtar, etc.
English number three,
Sanskrit tri, Avestan thri, Latin treis, Greek treis,
Russian tri, German drei, Lithuanian trys, etc.
English personal pronouns we, you, Sanskrit vay-, yūy-,
Avestan vae, yūz, etc., and also Sanskrit: nas, vas, Avestan noh,
voh, Russian nas, vas, Latin nos, vos.
English personal pronouns me and thee, Sanskrit me
and te, Avestan me and te, Greek me and se/te,
Latin me and te.
The most basic verbal forms which can never be borrowed: (English am,
art, is) Sanskrit asmi, asi, asti, Avestan ahmī, ahī,
astī, Greek eimi, essi, esti, Latin sum, es, est, Gothic: em,
ert, est, Hittite: ēšmi, ēšši, ēšzi, Old Irish: am, at, is,
Russian: esmy, esi, esty, Lithuanian: esmi, esi, esti, Albanian: jam,
je, ishtë, Armenian: em, es, ê, Tocharian: -am, -at, -aṣ.
To get the full impact of the relationship, compare all these words
with the equivalent words, eg. the words for three, in the Dravidian
languages, Tamil mūnṛu, Malayalam mūnnu, Telugu mūḍu, Kannada mūru, Tulu mūji, etc., or in the Austric languages
Santali pɛ, Turi pea, Vietnamese ba, Khmer bǝy,
etc.
b) The early European scholars (there were no "Aryan
Invasion Theorists" till much later) were drawn towards Sanskrit for
two reasons:
First: they were amazed to find languages so very similar to their
own, with Sanskrit representing an ancient period, in a distant area
separated from them by unrelated languages like Turkish, Georgian and Arabic.
Two: Sanskrit grammar, as codified by Panini, represented a highly
advanced form of grammatical analysis before which their own grammars seemed
almost childish.
All this led to the science of Comparative Linguistics and the
concept of language families.
c) Sanskrit was an evolved language in the sense of its highly
codified grammar and rich literature. Sir William Jones who first concisely
presented the case for this language family, described it as follows: "The
Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more
perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely
refined than either".
Q.2. In your book you
discuss the Old and New Rig Veda in length. Why is the chronological data of
Rig Veda so important for Aryan Debate?
The chronology of the
Rigveda, especially its division into the Old and New Rigveda, is absolutely
vital to any historical study of the text. Treating the whole Rigveda
as one single text can make it amenable to false historical analysis: e.g. you
can say: "The spoked wheel is known to the Rigveda" or "The
Rigveda has a large name-culture and vocabulary in common with the Avesta and
the Mitanni documents" or "The Indus and its western Afghan
tributaries, and the western mountains, lake, places and animals are familiar
and well-known to the Rigvedic people". This allows the false picture
that the invention of spoked wheels and the common period of Rigvedic-Avestan-Mitanni
unity are pre-Rigvedic, and that the original area of the Rigveda
extends from Afghanistan to westernmost Uttar Pradesh.
But the truth is: "The
spoked wheel is known to the New Rigveda, but totally unknown to the Old
Rigveda" and "The New Rigveda has a large name-culture and
vocabulary in common with the Avesta and the Mitanni documents which is totally
unknown to the Old Rigveda", and "The Indus and its
western Afghan tributaries, and the western mountains, lake, places and animals
are familiar and well-known to the New Rigveda, but totally unfamiliar and
unknown to the Old Rigveda". This shows that the Old Rigveda
represents a very ancient period long before the invention of
spoked wheels and the common period of Rigvedic-Avestan-Mitanni unity, and that
the original area of the Rigveda extends only from Haryana to
westernmost Uttar Pradesh.
So stark is the
difference that the New Rigveda knows and uses the word rātri for night,
which is known to all post-Rigvedic Sanskrit, Prakrit and Indo-Aryan texts and
is the common word for all modern Indo-Aryan speakers and in all other
languages (Dravidian, Southeast-Asian) which have borrowed it from Sanskrit.
But rātri is totally unknown to the Old Rigveda (and the
word is unknown outside India as well): the Old Rigveda uses the
word nakt- which is the common word in all the branches of
Indo-European languages outside India, but totally unknown
to modern Indo-Aryan.
Q.3. Your book is a
rebuttal to the claims made by Tony Joseph in favour of AIT (Aryan Invasion
Theory) based on the genetic analyses carried out by 92 scientists. What are
your specific objections to his conclusions?
As I have shown in detail
in my book:
a) Tony Joseph's book
claims proof for the AIT on the basis of genetic evidence. The only
evidence which can show the geographical origin of the location of anything is
evidence from the fields of Linguistics, Archaeology (and related sciences) and
Records (reliable traditions, and actual texts or inscriptions). We know from
the evidence from these three fields that chess and Buddhism originated in
India: there is no "genetic evidence" showing the movements of chess
and Buddhism from India to North, East and Southeast Asia (and in ancient
times, West Asia as well).
Likewise genetic evidence
cannot show the movement of Indo-European languages into India. The evidence
from the fields of Linguistics, Archaeology (and related sciences) and Records
(reliable traditions, and actual texts or inscriptions) absolutely and irrefutably
proves the OIT (out-of-India Theory) or IHT (Indian Homeland Theory), which is
why there is this desperate attempt to squeeze out evidence for the AIT from
Genetics, which is like trying to squeeze out blood from a stone.
Genetics can neither
prove nor disprove either the AIT or the OIT.
b) Tony Joseph claims
that "genetic evidence" shows that immigrants from the Steppes into
India brought the Indo-European languages into India between 2000-1000 BCE.
At the most, genetic evidence can show that immigrants from outside brought new
DNA (haplogroups, genomes, or whatever) into India from outside, that they
mixed with the local populations, and that this DNA is present in the present population
of India. Whether the claimed evidence shows all this or not, and whether it
shows that this happened between 2000-1000 BCE or not, will have to be
determined by an examination of the evidence by unbiased expert scientists in
the field of Genetics.
But even if all this
turns out to be true, it cannot under any circumstance show that these
immigrants brought the Indo-European languages into India. Even with
all other factors being neutral, the logical conclusion would be that
since all their alleged migrations and intermixing within India did not create
even a ripple in the archaeological record, or leave any kind of memories among
any section of the different groups concerned, it would only show that they got
integrated into the local populace everywhere, accepting the local languages
and the general culture and traditions, like most other later ancient people in
the historical record (the Greeks, Persians, Scythians, Huns, etc.).
But all other factors are
not neutral, they are very positive: it is impossible
to make these linguistic claims in the face of the fact that the recorded
evidence of the Rigveda, the Avesta and the Mitanni records, as I have
irrefutably proved (and no-one has dared to take up the challenge to try to
prove me wrong), shows that the Vedic people were exclusive residents of the
Haryana-western U.P are as far back as 3000 BCE with more ancient antecedents
going back further east and further backwards in time. It would be like trying
to claim, in defiance of the evidence of the Buddhist, Chinese, Greek and
Persian records, that "Aryans" entered India from the northwest 2000
years ago.
c) Tony Joseph claims
that the Reich genetic report of 2018 proves all these above claims about
Steppe people entering India from Central Asia between 2000-1000 BCE. As a
matter of fact, even without the "Indo-European" aspect of the claim
(i.e. irrespective of the "Aryan" aspects of it), an examination of
the data in the report shows that the Reich report fails to show even the
definite intrusion of these Steppe people ("Aryans" or otherwise)
into India in that period.
Q.4. You mentioned
that India has traditionally preserved the Rig Veda for thousands of years
through oral transmission. Is this something unique to the culture of this land
unlike people with religion of book?
Yes, this is absolutely
unique to the culture of this land, but only with respect to the Vedic
texts and particularly the Rigveda. The two following videos on youtube
demonstrate the rigour of the method of Vedic oral transmission:
But this is best
described in the words of none other than Michael Witzel:
“Right from the beginning, in
Ṛgvedic times, elaborate steps were taken to insure the exact reproduction of
the words of the ancient poets. As a result, the Ṛgveda still has the exact
same wording in such distant regions as Kashmir, Kerala and Orissa, and even
the long-extinct musical accents have been preserved. Vedic transmission is
thus superior to that of the Hebrew or Greek Bible, or the Greek, Latin and
Chinese classics. We can actually regard present-day Ṛgveda recitation as a tape
recording of what was composed and recited some 3000 years ago. In
addition, unlike the constantly reformulated Epics and Purāṇas, the Vedic texts
contain contemporary materials. They can serve as snapshots of the
political and cultural situation of the particular period and area in which
they were composed. […] as they are contemporary, and faithfully
preserved, these texts are equivalent to inscriptions. […] they are
immediate and unchanged evidence, a sort of oral history ― and sometimes
autobiography ― of the period, frequently fixed and ‘taped’ immediately after
the event by poetic formulation. These aspects of the Vedas have never been
sufficiently stressed […]” (WITZEL 1995a:91).
“[…] the Vedas were composed
orally and they always were and still are, to some extent, oral literature.
They must be regarded as tape recordings, made during the Vedic period
and transmitted orally, and usually without the change of a single word.”
(WITZEL 1997b:258).
“It must be underlined that just
like an ancient inscription, these words have not changed since the composition
of these hymns c.1500 BCE, as the RV has been transmitted almost without any
change […] The modern oral recitation of the RV is a tape recording
of c.1700-1200 BCE.” (WITZEL 2000a:§8).
“The
language of the RV is an archaic form of Indo-European. Its 1028 hymns are
addressed to the gods and most of them are used in ritual. They were orally
composed and strictly preserved by exact repetition through by rote learning,
until today. It must be underlined that the Vedic texts are ‘tape recordings’
of this archaic period. Not one word, not a syllable, not even a tonal accent
were allowed to be changed. The texts are therefore better than any manuscript,
and as good as any well preserved contemporary inscription. We can therefore
rely on the Vedic texts as contemporary sources for names of persons, places,
rivers (WITZEL 1999c)” (WITZEL 2006:64-65).
Q.5.
While AIT fails to explain several incongruities, academic curriculum is
awash with theory of Aryan Migration. Your rebuttal substantially disproves the
AIT. But how can the false myth of Aryan Invasion, which attempts to divide and
destabilise India through the handle of caste system be countered?
The
caste system has become a multi-headed hydra today. It was basically a
sociological problem whose ill-effects had to be countered and reformed by
Hindus themselves, but this prospect seems more difficult by the day. On the
one hand we have the enemies of Hinduism using it in order to divide, destroy and
destabilize India, Hinduism and Indian/Hindu society. On the other hand, we
have politicians of every single hue contributing, in different ways, to
convert it into an undefeatable bhasmasura who can never be reined in or
destroyed. But so far as linking it to the AIT is concerned, once the OIT is
generally accepted as the official, mainstream and true position, the link
automatically stands destroyed.
To
make the OIT the official and mainstream position, we must present one strong
unified OIT case, which is irrefutable and unchallengeable, based on the true
data, facts and evidence, as I have done in my books, and not let our side be
sabotaged from within by various "Hindu" vested interests who are
more interested in pushing their own unscientific and illogical positions than
in winning the battle. I refer to the
Vedas-are-eternal-and-not-composed-by-human-beings militants,
Vedic-culture-is-the-ancestral-culture-of-the-whole-of-India-(or-the-whole-world)
enthusiasts, Linguistics-is-not-a-science-and-there-is-no-such-thing-as-Indo-European-languages
dogmatists, the-whole-theory-is-purely-a-conspiracy-of-colonial-rulers
insisters, etc.
This
should be followed by officially and unitedly compelling the AIT
side to either disprove or accept this OIT case in fair, open and
honest debate, and not letting them get away with stonewalling and ignoring.
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