It has taken a few years, but that's not unusual in academic publishing, and the result turns out to be well worth our patience. Edwin F. Bryant and Laurie L. Patton have edited a collection of papers arguing for or against the theory that the Indo-Aryan languages have entered India from outside in the so-called "Aryan invasion": The Indo-Aryan Controversy. Evidence and Inference in Indian History, Routledge, New York 2005. The book is a must-read for those who are interested in ancient Indian history, in Indo-European (IE) linguistics as related to the findings of other disciplines, and in a case study of the politics of history. It juxtaposes very divergent viewpoints, ranging from the total confirmation of the predominant Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) to its total rejection in favour of an Out of India Theory (OIT).

A note on a Harvard professor's assiduous misrepresentation of my position in the Aryan invasion debate

It has taken a few years, but that's not unusual in academic publishing, and the result turns out to be well worth our patience. Edwin F. Bryant and Laurie L. Patton have edited a collection of papers arguing for or against the theory that the Indo-Aryan languages have entered India from outside in the so-called "Aryan invasion": The Indo-Aryan Controversy. Evidence and Inference in Indian History, Routledge, New York 2005. The book is a must-read for those who are interested in ancient Indian history, in Indo-European (IE) linguistics as related to the findings of other disciplines, and in a case study of the politics of history. It juxtaposes very divergent viewpoints, ranging from the total confirmation of the predominant Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) to its total rejection in favour of an Out of India Theory (OIT).

1. Stalwart invasionism

One up-to-date instance of the full-fledged AIT developed in this book is by linguist Asko Parpola and archaeologist Christian Carpelan: "The cultural counterparts to Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Uralic and Proto-Aryan. Matching the dispersal and contact patterns in the linguistic and archaeological record", p.107-141. They confirm the widely accepted theory that the IE language family originated in Southwestern Russia and spread from there, with its Indo-Aryan branch penetrating India ca. 1500 BC.

On p.123-125, they propose a shockingly - or refreshingly - detail-happy identification of the PIE-speaking culture and its daughter cultures. Just next to the cradle-land of Proto-Uralic, the Lyalovo (5000-3650 BC) culture on the upper Volga, it is the Khvalynsk culture (5000-4500) on the middle Volga that spoke PIE. It was itself the local continuation of the Samara culture (6000-5000), around the present-day city of Samara, which must have spoken an even earlier version of PIE. So now, at any rate, the Urheimat is known with some precision.

From Samara and Khvalynsk onward, the scholars identify some expansions and migrations in the archaeological record. This leads to the secondary joint homeland of all the European branches of IE in the Strednij Stog culture (4500-3350) in Ukraine, whence they follow Proto-Anatolian through the Ezero culture of Bulgaria (3300-2700) on its way to Anatolia, while another branch becomes the Corded Ware culture (ca. 3100) and spreads as far as the Netherlands, differentiating along the way into Proto-Balto-Slavic, Proto-Italo-Celtic and Proto-Germanic, under the impact of various substratum languages. On the eastern side, the Khvalynsk culture was taken to southern Siberia to become the Afanasievo culture by 3600 BC; apparently that's how Tocharian came about. Staying behind in Ukraine for another millennium or so, before they moved on to their respective destinations, the Proto-Greco-Armenians developed the Catacomb Grave culture, while their eastern neighbours in the Poltavka culture became the Proto-Aryans, or more unambiguously, the Proto-Indo-Iranians. The Proto-Iranians retained this region while the Proto-Aryans spread to the north to develop the Abashevo culture before turning southeast on their dramatic migration to the Andronovo culture of Siberia and Central Asia (1800-1500) and thence to India.

We can follow all of them from the one archaeological site to the next, located and dated with precision. And in parallel with this proliferation of IE, we are also treated to the exact genealogy of the branches and individual members of the Uralic family, complete with place and date so that the family astrologer can draw up their horoscopes. Well, that's the old school, not afraid to call a spade a spade, no pussyfooting with "hypotheses" and "probabilities" there. Nothing wrong with that: it is an attempt at the complete knowledge to which every researcher implicitly aspires. The only question is whether this scenario is indeed the correct one.

After all, there is a gap of more than 5000 years between the Samara culture and the first attestation of a known language in the region through written documents. And the migration from Central Asia into India, implied in this theory, has left no traces identifiable as such by B.B. Lal, Jim Shaffer and Diane Lichtenstein, specialized archaeologists contributing to this volume. At the present state of knowledge, and all the more after reading this new collection of contributions to the Aryan debate, I still feel more comfortable with the cautious modesty of Hans H. Hock, who writes about the astronomical evidence in the Vedas that "a few things can be established with certainty, others with a good degree of likelihood, and yet others remain entirely uncertain". (p.297) I believe that this still describes the over-all status quaestionis.

Meanwhile, politicians need not feel any of those scruples that restrain researchers. Having received the okay from a duo of top-ranking scholars, the local government of the Samara region may now grab the opportunity and open an Urheimat Theme Park, bringing to life our prehistorical linguistic ancestors in exchange for solid euros and dollars. Complete with fire altars, horse sacrifices, chariot races, bearskin-clad wolf hunters, a festive bridge across the Volga with horse heads on poles, staged thunderstorms featuring the Lightning God, and bouts of soma drinking. They may even concoct a special Aryan soma brew with three distinctively-coloured layers (dark, red and white) to represent the three functions of IE cosmology, a liquid version of the Russian tricolour. Yeah, Mother Russia, mother of all the Aryans!

2. A stain on the white shirt

Unfortunately, the aim of the present note is not to evaluate the various contributions to this important book on their scholarly merit and evidential strength. First another account must be settled.

In reading through Harvard Sanskritist Michael Witzel's contribution, "Indocentrism: autochthonous visions of ancient India", p.341-404, I noted a rather systematic misrepresentation of positions taken by me in the course of the AIT debate, especially in my book Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate, Aditya Prakashan, Delhi 1999. The book is extant in cold print, so everyone can verify for himself that what I have written and what Witzel claims I have written are often very different things. Let us have a look at the main instances.