--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...>
wrote:
>
>
> --- Andrew Jarrette <anjarrette@...> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> AFAIK genetically, there is plenty of evidence of
> genes flowing into India --e.g. light colored hair and
> eyes the closer you get to NW India and the Khyber
> Pass; and there is little or none coming out of India.<
I could only echo that with another "AFAIK". It seems we both are
simply not expert enough to decide this. And the science is still in
its infancy, so I wouldn't read its current findings as victory
bulletins for either theory.
> The Hindutvawallahs ignore this.<
There is nothing Hindutvawallah about the OIT. It was started by
European Indophiles like Schlegel, perhaps even Voltaire. Early
Hindu nationalist leaders elaborated on the AIT (Tilak) or simply
accepted it (Savarkar, herald of the term "Hindutva"). For a
detailed overview of the different Hindu positions regarding the AIT,
see the relevant chapter in Talageri's "The Rigveda, a Historical
Analysis" and my own book "Asterisk in Bharopiyasthan" (both can most
easily be ordered through www.bibliaimpex.com).
Of the present crop of AIT opponents, I wouldn't strictly say that
what they espouse is the OIT. Both the AIT and the OIT acknowledge
the linguistic kinship of the IE languages and the need for
historical migrations to explain their wide geographical spread.
Most Hindu AIT critics, or rather the most vocal ones among them,
simply don't acknowledge any migration. They obviously reject a
migration into India, but they also don't spare a single thought for
an emigration from India. Their horizon simply doesn't reach beyond
India. They are satisfied to have "proven" that IA did not originate
outside India, and how the other IE languages ever arrived in their
historical homelands simply doesn't interest them. Talageri is the
big exception here, for he does realize the need to explain the whole
IE phenomenon, including the emigration history implied in the thesis
of an Indian Urheimat.
> Linguistically, the trajectory of loanwords shows IA
> separated from Iranian in Central Asia.<
The details should be very interesting. To my knowledge, except for
Iranian, all the languages in or near Central Asia (Ket, Burushaski,
Turkic, Uralic, NE Caucasian) have left no written testimony until at
least 3,000 years after. I wonder what geographical information can
be deduced from those loanwords. Not a rhetorical question, I'd
really like to see it.
> The only way
> to account for I-A originally in India would be if IE
> started there<
Certainly the most likely and least contrived.
> but that would mean that IA separated
> from IE before Anatolia and that ain't so.<
I think most questions on early IE fragmentation history remain
open. Even between linguists solidly united on the AIT assumption, I
see plenty on disagreements on them.
> IA ivocabulary shows no signs of originating in India
> and names for orange, rice, etc. that are indigenous
> to India come from loanwords.<
We'll have to discuss that in some detail. Not now, it's late at
night here.
> Archeology, see Mallory, Witzel et al.<
Well, I know little about archaeology and find it very tedious to
read, so I'll have to rely on others. However, I've attended plenty
of AIT/OIT debates both live and on the net, and I have never ever
heard or seen an archaeological proof for the AIT. On the contrary,
even some AIT proponents concede that such evidence is lacking.
Bernard Sergent claims to have traced a migration of people looking
like C-Asian barbarians ending in 1700 BC in Pirak, west of the
Indus, but then "il n'y a pas de post-Pirak", there is no
continuation of this C-Asian immigration deeper into India, much less
a cultural transformation of the whole of North India in a way
recognizable as being due to this band of immigrants. So, it was
just one of the many little immigrations into big India, not the
Aryan invasion that supposedly changed India so thoroughly.
As Edwin Bryant has reported, the common opinion among Indian
archaeologists is that there exists no archaeological proof of the
AIT, and most of them conclude that there was no AIT either. This
includes converts from the AIT. Prof. BB Lal made his name with his
work on the Painted Grey Ware, which he identified as Aryan. Since
most of NW India was Indo-Aryan-speaking by ca. 1000 BC, the users of
those implements would indeed have been "Aryans". But the point he
later realized is that there is nothing *distinctively* Aryan about
them, setting them apart from nearby non-Aryan settlements, nor can
PGW be traced to a non-Indian point of origin. If PGW makers were
certainly Aryan, nothing indicates that they were Aryan *invaders*.
Today, octogenarian B.B. Lal is among the articulate critics of the
AIT.
> Regarding reliance on astrology --the stars change
> position relative to the earth over the millennia and
> to make claims that star charts formulated hundreds or
> thousands of years before writing entered India could
> be relevant strikes me as hogwash. Star charts for
> 2008 don't necessarily work for c. 3-500 BCE when
> writing entered India, much less for fantastic dates
> such as 3,000 BCE. Only the likes of von Däniken would
> claim the heavens stand still.<
How shall I put it? Your confusing "astronomy" and "astrology" is a
pretty explicit indication of the astronomical iliteracy among
philogists. Nothing wrong with that, most astronomers are
philologically illiterate too. The point is only that the heavens
don't stand still, indeed. There is the phenomenon of the precession
of the equinoxes, which means that the position of visible stars
changes vis-à-vis the geometry of the seasons (solstice & equinox
axis) at the rate of 1° in ca. 71 years. When Sanskrit writers care
to tell us that on solstice day, the sun rose in opposition to a
particular star, this does give chronological information, exact to a
few centuries.
Kind regards,
KE