Steve,
�Vedic Aryan� is just shorthand for �Old Indo-Aryan
language, as attested in the Vedas� and/or �speakers
of Old Indo-Aryan language, as attested in the Vedas�.
Hence it refers in the primary sense to a language and
in the secondary sense to a culture. Now, as we all
know, the Indo-Aryan languages belong to a much bigger
family of languages, namely, the Indo-European family
of languages. Careful studies of this language family
have shown that (while our reconstructions of it must
always be imperfect and amenable to revision) there
are good reasons to represent it as a nested hierarchy
of some sort. In particular, such a reconstruction
must have this hierarchical progression:
Proto-Indo-European > (Proto) Indo-Iranian > Old
Indo-Aryan, Old Iranian (and possibly Old Nurestani)
It follows that it makes no sense to talk about �Old
Indo-Aryan�/�Vedic Aryan� before the splitting of the
(Proto) Indo-Iranian language community. �Vedic Aryan�
is simply a temporal segment in this genealogy. Thus
the �Vedic Aryan� language is preceded by the (Proto)
Indo-Iranian and followed by more modern forms of
Indo-Aryan languages.
Whatever debate may exist about the possibility of
reconstructing �horse� for the PIE, it is virtually
certain that �horse� can be reconstructed for the
(Proto) Indo-Iranian. Indeed, it is entirely possible
that we can reconstruct also the �chariot� for the
(Proto) Indo-Iranian language. In vulgar English, this
means that horses and perhaps even chariots were
familiar things in the (Proto) Indo-Iranian language
community, they were a part of their culture. A
fortiori, the Vedic Aryan speakers must have known the
(domesticated) horse from the very beginning. And most
likely they also knew chariots from the very
beginning, although here the situation is not as clear
as with respect to the horse.
It may be protested that language and culture are two
different things. They certainly are. It is possible
to share pretty much the same language while differing
widely in terms of culture. And it is possible to have
pretty similar cultures while speaking different
languages. However, whatever the continuities,
peculiarities and vagaries of cultural change
vis-�-vis language change in our case, �Vedic culture�
refers primarily to a culture that was shared by the
speakers of the Vedic Aryan language.
Could we extend �Vedic culture� backwards in time as
we are going backwards in the genealogical hierarchy
(representing the dispersal history of the
Indo-European language family)?
From my perspective, such a decision would be an
obvious abuse of nomenclature. If we want to follow a
nomenclature that follows the languages, we must speak
of �(Proto) Indo-Iranian culture� etc. If we find such
a nomenclature a contrived and misleading (as we well
might find) and adopt a nomenclature that is
independent of the linguistic taxonomy, we must pay
careful consideration to the use of �Vedic culture�
because that term makes an essential reference to a
particular language, to a language that is represented
by a well-defined segment in the genealogical tree of
the Indo-European language family.
To repeat, we can certainly talk of �Mehrgarh
culture�, �chalcolithic culture� or �steppe cultures�
without referring to any specific language, but the
identity of the �Vedic culture� is anchored in the Old
Indo-Aryan language that succeeded the (Proto)
Indo-Iranian language. Extending �Vedic culture�
backwards and forgetting the genealogical
relationships of the �Vedic Aryan� language segment is
unacceptable. Indeed, it is not just that the Old
Indo-Aryan and the Old Iranian languages are closely
related sisters � also their cultures are very
similar. It follows that there is no sense in speaking
of a separate �Vedic culture� before the splitting of
these two daughter languages and cultures. And this
(Proto) Indo-Iranian culture was certainly familiar
with horses.
Hence the attempt to talk about �Vedic Aryans� before
horses is like an attempt to talk about Hominid genus
before the emergence of primates. Such confusions
follow easily if one fails to give a clear answer to a
fundamental problem of genidentity, namely �what fixes
the identity of an entity that is changing?� As we
have seen, in the case we have been studying here, the
answer follows from the existence of the Indo-European
language family and the genealogical relationships
that connect its various members to each other. Given
what we know about this genealogy, we can say that the
Vedic Aryans must have known the (domesticated) horse
from the very beginning.
It also follows that one cannot avoid Witzel�s
challenge. Witzel is simply saying that the following
set of statements is an inconsistent set of
statements:
(S1) The horse was part of the Vedic Aryan culture (as
attested by the Vedas)
(S2) The horse was neither a part of the Harappan
culture nor a part of its ancestral cultures in the
Indian subcontinent (as attested by the material
remains of these culture)
(S3) Either the Harappan culture or one of its
ancestral cultures in the Indian subcontinent was a
Vedic Aryan culture.
It follows that if one gives good evidence in favour
of the statements (S1) and (S2), one has ipso facto
given an argument against (S3).
Regards, Juha Savolainen
---
x99lynx@... wrote:
> 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
>
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