I wrote previously:
�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�
You objected to this paragraph:
�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.�
Your exact words were:
�No. This is the same presumption again.�
So, let us analyse your objections one by one�
The first objection:
Steve: �First of all, what was the word for "wild
horse" in proto-IIr? Presumably, the domesticated
horse did not fall from heaven and was early on pretty
much an identical animal to the wild horse, whose
habitat was Central Asia. At
some point and for a long time after first
domestication, there would be more
wild horses than domesticated horses. This could mean
that any reference to
the horse in p-IIr could have been a reference to the
wild horse or their
traded by-products like horse-hides, horse-meat,
horse-hair, horse-hooves,
etc. And where we DO have historical evidence of the
introduction of the
domesticated horse, native speakers very often called
them "deers", "dogs"
and "buffalo" -- so it's not clear that the early
pre-literate word for horse
even specifically referred to a horse.�
My reply: Well, I will leave it to you to analyse and
explain the horse related words that are attested in
various Indo-European languages, including Avestan,
Old Indo-Aryan etc. and to make a plausible case for
thinking that while some of them may have thought
about horses, the rest surely had in their minds
deers, dogs and buffalos�
Steve: �Secondly, there is NO evidence that "horses"
were "familiar things" in p-IIr culture. The presence
of the word in a reconstructed language just does not
prove what you claim. "Elephant" was a word in 19th
century American
English, but the vast majority of its speakers had
never even seen an
elephant. And "dragons" and "unicorns" are familiar
words in many languages,
but they never existed.�
My reply: Well, I will leave it to you to make a
plausible case for thinking that when Avesta and
RigVeda are talking about horses, they are thinking
about deers, dogs, buffalos, dragons or unicorns�
Steve: �Thirdly, what is your dating based on? If you
are saying Vedic culture
started with RigVeda, that's fine. But if you are in
anyway talking about
the pre-literate IE in India, you have no proof for
any absolute dating prior
to that. In fact, for all you know, Harappan culture
might have adopted IIr
just like the Normans adopted French. And more
importantly, you don't know
when horses became "familiar things" in "pre-Vedic"
culture and just how much
of "pre-Vedic" culture was in fact continuous with
Harappan.�
My reply: As I have already pointed out, there is no
merit in pushing around the �Vedic� label unless one
is serious about it. Whether preceding cultures were
similar or not with the Vedic culture (as attested in
RigVeda) can be sensibly talked only after one has
identified the key items serving as the marks of Vedic
culture. Simple logic demands that any candidate for a
flesh-and-blood Vedic culture must not lack the key
items serving as the marks of Vedic culture, such as
domesticated horses, spoked two-wheeled chariots etc.
Spoked two-wheeled chariots do not appear anywhere
until around 2000 BCE or perhaps little earlier in
Arkaim Sintashta. There is no evidence whatsoever for
their appearance in India during the Harappan period
and it serves no serious purpose to pretend otherwise.
Marrying �Vedic Aryans� now to Harappans, then to
entirely unspecified prehistoric communities of India
is an entertaining cottage industry for religiously
minded people, but has little to do with scholarly
research.
Steve: �If you and Witzel want to believe any of this
based on your own personal
convictions, that's fine. But let's not pretend that
there's any objective
certainty in any scientific sense in any of this.�
My reply: My personal convictions can be defended by
evidence and argument. Your comments show that you
show little interest and care in the vitally important
questions of how to establish the identity of
entities.
You started these exchanges by a personal confession:
�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.�
�Cowboys� can be �American� because well-defined
identities can be provided for �America� and
�American� that make cowboys Americans, identities
that are entirely and plausibly independent of
knowledge and use of automobiles. It is just that your
attempt to turn Harappans into �Vedic Aryans� requires
that we obscure beyond repair what �Vedic Aryan� is
and can be.
Regards, Juha Savolainen
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