Limits of historical linguistics and the IE problem

I am happy to reproduce excerpts from Kazanas' path-breaking
article. Linguists may like to ponder on the limits of historical
linguistics in establishing historical chronologies of peoples as
argued by Kazanas and search for new methods which will make a
paradigm shift in PIE/IE linguistics. Hopefully, "Will the `real'
linguist please stand up"?

Kalyanaraman

…we are now concerned with the question when and how Vedic appeared
in the historial habitat. Since Vedic and other languages did not
sound of themselves in vacuum but were spoken by human beings, these
questions involve movements of peoples and their cultures. Philology
has little competence in this field, even historical linguistics
would be trespassing since it deals with changes within language(s)
in relative not absolute chronology – actual dates being derived
from other sources. This is the field of history and in prehistoric
times of archaeology and related disciplines. The difficulties
besetting the larger IE issue are due, I think, to the fact that
linguists continue to arrogate to themselves the competence of these
other disciplines…

Mallory ended his overview of the "IE problem" (1973: 60) with this
perceptive statement: "a solution to the problem will more than
likely be as dependent on re-examination of the methodology and
terminology involved as much as on the actual data themselves." The
method of approach in the West has not changed since then.
Methodology itself (and terminology, which may be regarded as one of
its aspects) depends on the human element known as conditioning, or
prejudice, which often reproduces mechanically inheritd forms…

One does not begin the study of the history of a people, even a
people speaking a particular language (IE in this case), with highly
ambiguous and controversial linguistic considerations. As was said,
these are useful in establishing relations with other members of the
language family but not in establishing dates…

…to start with the assumption that Vedic was an intruder when no
other language of equal age was attested was wrong method or
defective scholarship. Chronologies are usually established by
written records; in the absence of such documents, we turn to
archaeological finds and similar datable evidence. The unreliability
of the linguistic data and theories based thereon can be amply
demonstrated by the very case we are investigating. The same
philological data with minor variations and differences in emphasis
have been examined and interpreted differently by different scholars
who reach thereby different conclusions. T. Burrow (1973: 9ff.) on
purely philological considerations takes central Europe as the
urheimat…Gamkrelidze and Ivanov (1985, 1990, 1995) posit as the PIE
urheimat the region south of Caucasus…I. Diakonov favours the
Balkans (1985) and G. Owens takes Minoan to be the first IE
language, the Greeks indigenous and the Aegean the cradle of PIE
culture (1999). Others again have other views. Mallory examines
summarily some of these conflicting `estimates' and cries out "Will
the `real' linguist please stand up" (1997:98). No linguist is saved
simply because he/she claims to have `correct' data and method.
The `when' and `how' are concerns of experts other than linguists.

…Why mainstream scholarship should single out and ostracize only N-W-
India-and-Pakistan is incomprehensible – particularly when
archaeology and anthropology since the early 1980s stressed that
there was no trace of mass invasion in this area (Jarrige and Meadow
1980; Lal and Gupta 1984: 343), unlike all other locations. Thus in
a recent work (2001: 138-139) Mallory mentions Europe, the Pontic
Steppe and Anatolia as possible urheimats but not Northwest India.

…as far as historical records go (and despite the fact that most of
these may be more or less mythological), in comparison with their
relatives, the Vedic people have a better claim for being
indigenous. We know from other sources definitely that the Balts,
Celts, Romans and Slavs migrated…

True, the tradition, which is found in Epics, Pura_n.as and
astronomers, which knows nothing of an invasion but, on the
contrary, has the IAs spreading out with their culture in all
directions, and which places the RV (its arrangement) just before
3102, appears to be late, within, say, 1st-6th centuries CE. But we
must not ignore the weighty evidence of the classical sources (the
Megasthenes report c. 312-280 BC) giving related chronologies.
Arrian (Indiaka 1,9), Pliny (VI, 21,4) and Solinus (52,5) – all give
dates of 6000+ for Indian royal genealogies: so this aspect of the
tradition is at the very latest of the 4th century BC…There is,
then, nothing in the `written' records that supports the AIT (Aryan
Invasion Theory)…Suffice it to quote Elst who has surveyed all the
literature and says of B. Sargent's 1997 Genese de l'Inde, "the Indo-
Aryan invasion doesn't get farther than Pirak in Baluchistan" (1999:
320).V. Sarianidi too cannot get any closer with his NE Aryan
invaders (1999)…

No other IE branch preserves so much of the PIE inheritance as the
Vedic tradition; and a cursory glance in Baldi 1983 or any other
similar study will demonstrate that the Vedic language itself
suffered fewer losses (Kazanas 2000: 87-90). Retaining the dual to
this day, conservative Lithuanian has, even so, lost the neuter
gender and the ablative case, reshaped its verbal system and
regularized the comparison forms of adjectives…

From Kazanas, 2002, JIES, Vol. 30, Nos. 3 and 4, Fall/Winter 2002