From: Gerry Reinhart-Waller
Message: 1922
Date: 2000-03-22
> > > > Gerry:Gerry here: Perhaps if you could rearrange your speakers, my comments
> > > > Then are you saying that since the Indus civilization wasn't
> Aryan but
> > > > was Burushaski an invasion actually took place? And where did the
> > > > Burushaski march in from? Or were they indiginous to north of the
> > > Indus
> > > > Valley? Were they hill people?
>Gerry here: Your question of the urheimat of Indo-Aryan is most
> Dear Gerry and Guillaume
>
> Guillaume wrote
> > > > Gerry:
> > > > Then are you saying that since the Indus civilization wasn't
> Aryan but
> > > > was Burushaski an invasion actually took place? And where did the
> > > > Burushaski march in from? Or were they indiginous to north of the
> > > Indus
> > > > Valley? Were they hill people?
>
> Gerry replied
> > > no, they were indigenous to south Indus valley,from the greater
> centers
> > > of tht Indus civilisation. They were forced to the North because of
> > > aryan encroachment in their country. If you don't have a copy of
> > > Bernard Sergent's book in your library, I will loan it again from
> mine
> > > and explain more in detail the arguments.
>
> Guillaume asked
> > Gerry: So you're saying the Aryan invasion was from the south and
> > forced the Burushaski to the north? Not only do I not have Sergent's
> > book in my library I have no access to a library. Thanks anyhow for
> the
> > offer. Do you know if Sergent perhaps has excerpts on the web?
>
> Gerry I wonder about Indo Aryan being indigenous to the south of the
> Indus. I have seen analyses that suggest the earliest IE of which we
> have record, the Rg Veda shows a sophisticated understanding of the
> Kabul and Kunnar Rivers that flow through the Khyber pass, as well as
> the Indus Punjab, but show very little knowledge of the Sind, Gujerat,
> Bolan Pass or Indus mouth, which they would have preserved if they had
> come from the south. The question about "indigenality" if the Urheimat
> of PIE is not the Indus region (which I doubt exceedingly) is that
> Indo-Aryan must have come from somewhere outside India at some time.
> It then becomes a question of "when" (revisionist Indian historians
> here in Questioning the 1,500 BCE Aryan Invasion would have just
> succeeded in pushing the date backwards)
> Gerry again wrote--
> > > I think a good point to test this theory would be searching for a
> > > burushaski substrate in Indo-aryan that does not exist in iranian.
> > > Toponymy of course can be also useful.
> > >
> > > However we lack of historical records on brusha people. The
> earliest I
> > > know id the tibetan record of the bru-zha people (see Toung Bao,
> 1912,
> > > B. Laufer). He gives a little text in the 'bru-zha language' -- it
> > > looks like gibberish rather than burushaski so I think it is a
> > > invention by tibetan clerks (they were fond of such things, to make
> > > their books look 'mysterious' an all).
> > > Are there records of them in Iranian chronicles ?
>
> Iranian chronicles of Eastern Iran are fairly late. Zaehner suggested
> that Zarathshtra could be placed in Eastern Iran roughly
> contemporaneously with the Medes, and that in that case King Vitaspa
> was a monarch who had built a confederation of Eastern Iranian tribes
> into a loose kingdom in the area of Ariana ("homeland of the Aryans").
> This confederation was fairly shortlived, as it was (within a
> generation or two) quickly absorbed within the great Persian Empire of
> Kurush (Cyrus the Archaemenid). Zaehner then suggests that either then
> or shortly before there was a migration of peoples (possibly even
> refugees from Vitaspa's aggrandising tendencies) north, from Ariana to
> Kwarazim and the mouth of the Oxus as it flows into the Aral Sea (in
> the vacinity of Urgenj).
>
> Aggrandising monarchs are always on the lookout for ideologies which
> will justify and legitimate their power. Monotheisms are particularly
> good at doing that. Athough Zoroastrianism has a reputation of being a
> dualistic religion - the battle between dark and light etc - Zaehner is
> fairly convincing when he shows that the original message of
> Zarathshtra was in fact a monotheistic one. Thus it was readily adapted
> into the belief system of the Persian royal line - a fact which made
> Cyrus capable of being seen as the promised messiah by the Jewish
> exiles of Babylonia, especially when he allowed the newly reformed and
> monotheistically purged Jewish elite to return to Zion from their
> Bablyonian captivity to rebuild their temple. In this way, a great
> number of Babylonian-Persian beliefs entered into Judaism (eg Eden =
> Edin (Sumerian for garden), Paradise (from the Persian), winged angels,
> the mother of all living (Eve) being made out of Adam's rib (from the
> Sumerian pun = Ninti), the story of Ruth and Esther (Persian for
> Ishtar) etc).
>
> Apart from the Elamites to the south west, there is no reference in the
> Iranian mythos to my knowledge of any indigenous or "foreign" peoples
> until the Shah Namah of Ferdausi. In his stories of the struggles of
> Rustam, the central theme is of the irreconcilable and eternal struggle
> between Iran and Turan (urkic Altaic peoples) in North Eastern Iran.
> And Ferdausi composed his great Epic in the late courts of the last
> Samanid monarch and later of Mahmud of Ghazna - far too late for your
> purposes her Gerry.
>
> What can we assume from this? Firstly that Indo-Iranian languages were
> well established throughout northern and eastern Iran from a very early
> time. The linguistic shift from *s to *h (eg *Soma (Indian) to *haoma
> (Ianian), *Asura (Indian) to *Ahura (Iranian)) shown in the very
> earliest Zaraoastrian Gathas occurred very early. If we are to abolish
> the theory of the Aryan invasion, then the earliest that Indo-Aryan can
> have appeared in India would have been sometime in the early formative
> period of the Indus civilisation - 2,500 to 2,000 BCE. If they were
> present in the Indus civilisation period (as Hindu revisionist
> historians argue) then that civilisation - like Mesopotamia - must have
> been multiethnic, in which a unitary culture transcended linguistic
> differences.
>
> Hope this helps
>
> John
>
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