I have been lurking with respect to discussions here re: the vexed debate
over AIT.
If appropriate I might interject a short remark, and leave it at that.
These discussions of AIT versus OIT are complex and confusing, but it
should be noted that they
are curiously recent in the sense that a generation ago many students of
Indic religion cared little for the issues, and simply assumed varieties of
conventional AIT to be the case.
A figure such as the guru Rajneesh (significantly a Jain), as I recall,
denounced as Hindutva nonsense the sudden appearance of these claims denying
AIT. Thus the discussion transcends colonialist harangues, pro or anti.
Thus, also, that devoted student of Hinduism and convert thereto, Danielou,
with his useful A History of India, from another generation, simply assumed AIT
in some form and, issues of the Indus set to one side, since we can speak of the
Indic tradition (primordial Shaivism with its tantra/yoga, and
Jainism/proto-Jainism) going back to the near Neolithic, without deciding
about Indus archaeology, which often muddles all arguments from all sides. In
the process he also made clear that he thought Indic tradition preceded the
Aryan entry on the scene, thus implying the problematical character of the Vedas
in that regard. The exact language involved would not therefore have been
Indo-European, presumably thus by speculative inference a Dravidian
tradition being the case.
The point of my communication is to refer to some of Danielou's
considerations as a possible alternate form of research here, for it was his
hypothesis that literature such as the Puranas, and much else, was in
fact translated from this original pre-Aryan language. That's a line of
attack rarely taken up, but a brilliant intuition, one that Danielou simply
assumed as the case, given his linguistic specialties.
These are statements that an expert in the history and linguistics here
could verify or refute, surely, with a close analysis of the texts involved,
thus offering, as Danielou in all innocence suggested as the case, a new way to
support the AIT or dismiss it. Thus, it seemed obvious to a close scholar
such as Danielou that these literatures were in many instances were translations
(cf. Danielou's work on this). These are probably falsifiable hypotheses, thus
yielding an alternate venue in the AIT/OIT debate.
On Danielou and Puranas: