I WROTE ORIGINALLY:
<<One of my favorite positions is Witzel's statement that'Harappan' could not
be 'Vedic' because 'Harappan' did not have the horse -- which seems like
saying that 'cowboys' were not 'American' because 'cowboys' did not use
automobiles.>>
Juha Savolainen <juhavs@...> wrote:
<<Indeed, it is entirely possible that horses came into Indian subcontinent
before the coming of the Indo-Aryan speakers. However, it is indisputable
that the domesticated horse... were part of the “Vedic Aryan” culture, as
revealed RigVeda.>>
Now, hold your horses there, partner. It IS disputable that horses were
ALWAYS part of Vedic culture. It is just as easy to assume that the
domesticated horse was a late-coming piece of technology that neither
Harrapan nor early Vedic culture had in any pervasive degree. Nothing in the
RigVeda says that Vedic-Aryan types brought the horse with them when they
first came, whenever that was.
Please read my comparison accurately. There is no reason to think that
Vedic-Aryan didn't get the horse well after they "arrived" in India. And
there's nothing to say they weren't "Vedic" if they didn't have the horse.
We called Americans Americans even before they had cars.
<<Conversely, there is no indisputable evidence that the domesticated horse
and chariot would have belonged to the culture of the Harappan civilization
(say, from 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE).>>
Chariots? Who said anything about chariots? Witzel said horses. And as far
as chariots go, what is the earliest archaeological evidence of chariots in
India?
<<A little bit of logic suggests, assuming that our evidence can be trusted
here (hence
removing the familiar problems concerning substitution in epistemic contexts)
that these cultures were different and hence the Harappans were not Vedic
Aryans.>>
Yeah -- unless of course, a good piece of Harappan culture turned into good
piece of Vedic culture -- putting aside the horses. A little bit more than a
little bit of logic suggests that tying pre-literate languages to an isolated
change in material culture -- or denying continuity where material culture
changes -- is an assumption and not proof.
19th Century American culture did not have radios, cars or computers, but
20th Century American culture did. So, must we conclude that about this time
the Vedic-Aryan-type automobile people invaded?
(And I don't mean the Japanese! Or perhaps I do mean the Japanese? How else
will future scholars explain all those sushi bars found in 20th Century
America? Perhaps English-speaking Japanese invaded the U.S., bringing the
automobile, along with their language, displacing the earlier American
language --- of which we have only traces in the amulets bearing the name of
their chief god, in epistemic context, a mouse whom they called <Mickey>.
The name has no known etymology in the post-invasion English spoken by the
chariot-riding -- I mean, automobile-riding Japanese.)
<<The same goes for your analogies: Cervantes surely was not a Pre-Columbian
Indian author because Cervantes certainly knew something they did not know
–the domesticated horse.>>
Well, Cervantes also knew tobacco, which his ancestors did not. So the
reason he could write about tobacco was NOT because the "Spanish" always knew
about tobacco. For all we know the horse was a brand-new novelty in the Ri
gVeda -- just like tobacco was to Cervantes.
Regards,
Steve Long