--- In cybalist@..., Max Dashu <maxdashu@...> wrote:
> >11. Vedic culture...
Title: The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture. The Indo-Aryan
Migration Debate
Author: Edwin Bryant
Publisher: Oxford University Press, New York
Year: 2001 pp. 387, price = $45.00
Available from Amazon at
http://www.amazon.com (search using the
category `books' and then enter `Edwin Bryant' as the author's name).
The inner flaps of the jacket of the book read:
QUOTE
"As a result of the discovery of similarities between Sanskrit and
the classical languages of Europe, scholars hypothesized the
existence of an early "proo-Indo-European" people, who spoke the
language from which the others evolved. The solution to the Indo-
European homeland has been one of the most consuming intellectual
projects of the last two centuries. At first it was assumed that
India was the original home of all the Indo-Europeans. Soon, however,
western scholars were contending that the Vedic culture of ancient
India must have been the by-product of an invasion or migration
of "Indo-Aryans" from outside the subcontinent. Over the years,
Indian scholars have raised many arguments against this European
reconstruction of their nation's history. Yet western scholars have
generally been unaware or dismissive of these voices from India
itself.
"In this book, Edwin Bryant offers a comprehensive examination of
this ongoing debate. He presents all of the relevant philological,
archaeological, linguistic, and historiographical data and shows how
they have been interpreted both to support the theory of Aryan
migrations and to contest it. Bringing to the fore those hitherto
marginalized voices that argue against the external origin of the
Indo-Aryans, he shows how Indian scholars have questioned the very
logic, assumptions, and methods upon which the data is based, and
have used the same data to arrive at very different conclusions. By
exposing the whole endeavor to criticism from scholars who do not
share the same intellectual history as their European peers, Bryant's
work newly complicates the Indo-European homeland quest. At the same
time he recognizes the extent to which both sides of the debate have
been driven by political, racial, religious, and nationalistic agends.
"The only complete and up-to-date survey of the evidence and
arguments for and against the Indo-Aryan migration theory, this
volume is of crucial importance to the study of early Indian history
and the origins of Vedic culture."
END OF QUOTE