--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Andrew Jarrette" <anjarrette@...>
wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "koenraad_elst" <koenraad.elst@>
> wrote:
> >
> > Since India was obviously an emigration country, it is
> > perfectly likely that more Indo-Aryan groups went westward and
> > ended up elsewhere. Without committing myself to these
> > hypotheses, I would think this could explain the presence of
> > Indo-Aryan in the Pontic region (Sindoi) and, as I learned on
> > this list, in Mordvin and other Uralic languages. Aryan
> > Invasion diehards could still argue that the Aryans had invaded
> > from the west in 5000 BC or so and then in the RV period moved
> > westward again. But that would be a scenario radically different
> > from the AIT as we know it. And so far it has no evidence to
> > support it.
>
> Do you believe that the PIE homeland was in India? In my view, what
> you have presented in this posting suggests that one might as well
> take India to be the homeland of PIE.
This is what Elst wrote w.r.t. the problem of the IE Urheimat in his
1999 book _Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate_ (N.B. I now see he
has somewhat changed his mind re: the thesis about the identity of
the Vedic Aryans and the Harappans with maintaining, in his lates
posting to this List, that "the (probably multi-lingual) Harappan
civilization was [not necessarily] Vedic. They existed in the same
time-bracket, but not in the same place. The Vedic heartland was on
the eastern border of the Harappan cities' area, in the westernmost
part of the monsoon area, a different milieu in climatic and
agricultural respects"):
http://www.voiceofdharma.com/books/ait/ch63.htm
<< 6.3. THE NON-INVASIONIST MODEL
The emerging alternative to the Aryan Invasion Theory may be
summarized as follows. In the 6th millennium BC, the Proto-Indo-
Europeans were living in what is now Panjab, Haryana and western
Uttar Pradesh, speaking a variety of mutually comprehensible
dialects, and tending cattle as well as practising agriculture. Due
to demographic growth, internal conflicts and the occasional
economic crisis, some of them moved out through the Khyber pass to
Margiana and Bactria, which was to remain a frontier zone of Indian
culture for millennia. From there, some of them moved on to the
Caspian coast, while others moved east to become the Tokharians.
During this stay in Central Asia, they adapted to the local way of
life, growing millet and domesticating the horse, a skill which was
soon communicated back to the motherland. The group which separated
earliest from the rest was the one which took the oldest form of the
IE language along: we encounter them by 2,000 BC in Anatolia.
The next move of the IE settlers in Central Asia, by 4,500 BC,
brought them across the Urals and the Volga into Europe. By internal
development and because of interaction with ever new native
populations, their dialects changed and differentiated. Expanding
ever more westward and southward, they broke into the Old European
civilization of the Balkans and overran Anatolia. Another group
developed its own distinctive culture in northern Central Europe,
and was poised to overrun Western Europe and the British Isles.
Meanwhile in India, civilization made great strides, writing was
invented ca. 3,500 BC (unfortunately too late for the emigrants to
take along), astronomy perfected, cities built of ever greater
urbanistic quality. The language, still spoken only in a limited
area, had developed the characteristic traits of Indo-Iranian,
except in some outlying regions where older forms of IE were
preserved, among them Proto-Bangani. Priests composed hymns to the
gods and learned the hymns composed by their teachers and colleagues
by heart, accumulating a tradition known as Veda.
In the northern Indus basin, the Indo-Iranians started fighting
amongst each other, and one result was that several factions
followed the beaten track to Afghanistan and beyond. We meet them in
history as the Iranians, who had built strongholds in Bactria whence
their adventurers trekked north and then east as well as west,
turning the whole of Central Asia into an Iranian Lebensraum; much
later, they also conquered the countries to the west and southwest
as far as Mesopotamia. They often clashed with the Indians, who had
just reached the apogee of civilization with their large and
numerous well-planned cities, and who tried to gain control over the
Afghan mining centres. Later, perhaps already as a result of the
crisis which sounded the death-knell of the magnificiant Harappan
cities, more people migrated from India to become the West-Asian
Indo-Aryans. Having moved through Margiana to the south side of the
Caspian Sea, they mixed with Hurrites, Kassites and others, and
pushed as far west as Palestine, making their mark for a few
centuries (18th-12th century BC) in different parts of West Asia
before disappearing through assimilation,
In the southern Indus-Saraswati basin, the Indo-Aryans met the
Dravidians whom they assimilated. However, Dravidian language and
culture were preserved thanks to Dravidian colonists who had started
settling in the south, in their turn assimilating the Veddoid and
other native tribals. In a parallel movement, Indo-Aryans were
colonizing India?s interior, assimilating the tribals they
encountered, except in the less accessible corners where they left
them to their traditional way of life. This movement from the
northwest to the rest of India accelerated with the decline of the
Harappan cities, yielding essentially the very distribution of
languages over the Indian territory which exists till today.
This model will certainly need amendments and corrections, but it is
better able to explain the data than the dominant Kurgan-to-India
invasionist model. >>
Regards,
Francesco